A ship as a dread golem

[The Lesser Evil]

Rereading over Pieter Van Riese's description, I had a thought. Although dread golems have usually been roughly humanoid, they need not be. The concept of a ship spirit had me thinking, what if a shipbuilder became so obsessed with making the perfect ship it became a dread golem? What kind of stories/hooks could you imagine with it? How would it act or function?

[Five]

Awesome ground zero, 'Lesser!

A dread golem ship that was created by a wistful captain who for some reason or other attempted to re-create his past: ship and crew. Things go wrong and he now finds himself a slave to his memory, so to speak, doomed to captain a ship that sails him and the memories of his former shipmates who act as a crew of (equally altered) vardogers: evil spirits ("remnants") that precedes their physical forms but who can interact with the living world.

Makes even more sense to have a shipwrecked captain attempt to re-create ship and crew to escape his tragic circumstances, only to find himself worse-off. Perhaps he even accidentally stole the spirits of his former crew while creating his golem/ ship, or was tricked into it...?

Or have him an intentionally evil individual who (unknowing to them) enslaved the spirits of his former crew. They get a sickening feeling of dread deja-vu everytime the evil man and his golem ship set sail but are too weak and lethargic to even begin to understand their dire circumstances...

Here the golem ship is given life from and is fuelled by the spirits of the former crew. A mish-mash of barely controllable collective thought and ability. The crew members themselves, as vardogers, are able to be individually summoned and sent forth (pillaging, ravaging, etc) but this weakens the ship/golem itself. Somehow...

I'll think some more about this later. This is a very cool concept..

[Dark Angel]

For those of use who don't speak more-current-edition-speak, is a dread golem a specific type of golem (like flesh, mechanical, etc) with greater powers/hit dice or something else specific? Would a greater animator work just as well with the powerful spirits of the crew being bound to the ship, able to control it and manipulate it? The captain/creator could still have a level of control over it, hell they could be the reason the spirit is drawn back to the vessel in the first place.

[The Lesser Evil]

For those of use who don't speak more-current-edition-speak, is a dread golem a specific type of golem (like flesh, mechanical, etc) with greater powers/hit dice or something else specific? Would a greater animator work just as well with the powerful spirits of the crew being bound to the ship, able to control it and manipulate it? The captain/creator could still have a level of control over it, hell they could be the reason the spirit is drawn back to the vessel in the first place.

A dread golem is just another term for a Ravenloft golem, one that's made from obsession and dark desire rather than magic. Aka one of the Created, as it is referred to in Van Richten's Guide to the Created.

[High Priest Mikhal]

That's...actually a rather creepy, disturbing idea, TLE. I like it!

But the Relentless is described as being just as ghostly as its captain. Can a dread golem also be a ghost?

[The Lesser Evil]

That's...actually a rather creepy, disturbing idea, TLE. I like it!

But the Relentless is described as being just as ghostly as its captain. Can a dread golem also be a ghost?

Thanks, though I wasn't suggesting that the Relentless in specific be a dread golem so much as citing the QtR netzine article as inspiration for the general idea of a ship dread golem.

[A G Thing]

Just a note on something I think might be good to use for reference.

In Dragon magazine issue 333 on pages 74 to 77 is an article for "Robin Hobb's World of the Farseers" which has 3.5 statistics for Guardian Ships from the setting.

It is basically a sentient construct ship and the article pretty much goes on to describe their stats and how they work in that setting.

[Jimsolo]

I have used Liveships from the Robin Hobb series even before the Dragon stats came out for them. I love the concept more than I can possibly say. The idea of fusing that to Ravenloft via a Dread Golem sort of thing hadn't occurred to me, but by Vecna it's gonna show up now!

[The Lesser Evil]

Possible shenanigans for a dread ship golem:
-Speaking/cackling/spellcasting through the maidenhead
-Rocking the ship or sudden bursts of movement to knock people overboard or simply off their feet.
-Slamming doors or holding them shut
-Strangling/entangling with ropes and rigging above deck and with chain and anchor below
-Blinding with sails
-Animating the dead of those whom die on board.
-Rearranging the rooms below deck
-Whispering through the walls
-Summoning rats from inside its depths
-Minor weather control of nearby environs
-Sharks or other predatory sealife following close behind in the water to feast off of people who get thrown overboard
-A crew or passengers in cahoots with the ship for any variety of reasons, from fear to greed. They might need periodic "sacrifices" in order to please the ship's sadism or sense of grandiosity.

[Manofevil]

What about the savage, gruesome and tyrannical practice of keelhauling.

[Five]

What about the savage, gruesome and tyrannical practice of keelhauling.

This is one way in how the ship heals/"regenerates" itself...?

Rusted chains or half-rotted rope, coated with a diseased mix of seaweed, algae and corpse rot scurf, snaps out, binds its victim(s), and drags them overboard to borrow a pound or three of flesh. Hence the constant circling of sharks (see above), perhaps even led by a wereshark (a sometimes/mercenary ally of the captain/ship/crew?).

I think it'd be cool to have the chains and ropes attached to the keel of the golem, having them act as some sort of twisted dreadlock tentacles that come out of nowhere and just as quickly disappear. Skinning things beneath the waves when not onboard victims of course. Perhaps they are the beneath the surface sadism of the golem (when she lets out, she lets out!).

[Five]

This needs more thought(s)...

Could we Ravenloft Charles Darwin to be its creator? Play out his obsessions while steering clear of Victor Frankenstein? And maybe his original victims (the core and now irreparably warped fragments of the ship golem's consciousness) were Lewis and Clark-ish explorers who stumbled upon something that no man was meant to find..?

[The Lesser Evil]

This needs more thought(s)...

Could we Ravenloft Charles Darwin to be its creator? Play out his obsessions while steering clear of Victor Frankenstein? And maybe his original victims (the core and now irreparably warped fragments of the ship golem's consciousness) were Lewis and Clark-ish explorers who stumbled upon something that no man was meant to find..?

Charles Darwin wasn't really a shipbuilder though, was he? He seemed more interested in his scientific work and what he took from his journeys more than the boat itself. Also, some of the more interesting and darker character motifs for obsession (such as eugenics or social Darwinism) come from not so so much from Darwin but more from other sources such as Francis Galton or Herbert Spencer. Certainly, a Darwin knock-off (or a knock-off of one of his contemporaries) might be a crewman or passenger of the boat, but perhaps not the creator of the golem.

As for modeling the ship's builders, perhaps something riffing and twisting the account of the Titanic, a ship of unprecedented size and thought unsinkable? Its construction was notably dangerous for the workers with few safety precautions and lots of accidents. Unprecedented ambition and ruthlessness are the hallmarks of obsession. Additional inspiration for a dread crafter might come from the Mathew Baker/Phineas Pelt shipbuilding rivalry, Phereclus (causing great trouble with his inventions, wondrous crafting skills, and believed by a goddess of knowledge yet ignorance of the gods' wills), and Tom from One Piece (taking pride in all of one's inventions no matter how they might be used.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathew_Baker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phereclus
http://onepiece.wikia.com/wiki/Tom

[Manofevil]

Aw you HAD to mention the Titanic. Now you've got me thinking of this particularly bizarre episode of the Superfriends: https://www.watchcartoononline.com/supe ... he-titanic

[DustBunny]

Rolling some thoughs off the brain...

The 'emotional' components of a older ship can be speculatively focused on - Captain, the designer, the name and the figurehead. The crew who man and dockworkers who buit it are too disparate and 'background' for a golem focus - but they can make for great hauntings (such the tales of the dockworker in the hull for the Great Eastern or Lieutenant Richter on U-Boat 65 ). The captain is already covered to a gretaer or lesser degree above - so I'll keep with the latter three.

The designer could build a golem - willingly or unwillingly. Apart from obsession, a designer could easily try to build an 'automated' ship. The end result is something like the Automatic Man golem, except is a boat - and with a little nudge from the dark powers it could easily become fully independent. And it probably wont be happy being regarded as 'a flawed prototype'. It may also capture people to perform maintenance on its systems. Even if they don't create a golem, the designer is still important as they define the role of a ship - a golem rowboat is likely to have differing priorities over a front line galleon.

The ships name - this is a big one. The ship itself is nothing special (unless a unique design) but the name defines it - compare 'Mary Celeste' vs 'Amazon'. Not only was/is considered vital for a ship to have a name since antiquity, you can also throw in the old sympathetic magic of 'Names have power'. Mess with the name and the metaphorical 'spirit of the ship' could easily become a real spirit of the ship. And suppose the name board was made from a certain bit of wood - say... Azenwrath? One spin you could have is that the ship doesn't have a name for some reason - and it is searching for a new one by stealing it from other ships.

The figurehead - not so much anymore but the figurehead of ships was an important part of it. I remember an adventure in dungeon where a crimanal was nailed to the prow of a new shep by the local crimelord (he had embezzled the Dons money in the construction) and turned into wood - becoming the figurehead. And unsprprisingly, his spirit haunted the ship. If an enterprising individual decided to get a real figurehead in the ame way - say a unicorn, lion etc, and do the same said spirit wont we happy. Even if they just use essence or blood it could be enough. Or of couse, a crewman could develop some obsession with the figurehead.