Aetrimonde

In my previous post, I promised the reveal the Secret Lore of Golems, but first, I’d better explain what I meant by that. As experienced GMs know, people play RPGs for many reasons; one kind of player is the Explorer, who plays the game to uncover secrets planted in a campaign by the GM. Secrets include things like hidden doors and buried treasures…and for some Explorers, it includes lore that isn’t mentioned in the campaign setting but was made up by the GM.

So when I talk about Secret Lore, I’m not talking about lore that is a definitive part of the Aetrimonde campaign setting: these are decidedly unofficial ideas that a GM could use to give their players a unique experience, or even let them influence the setting. These Secret Lore posts will cover several ways (some of them contradictory!) that I, as a GM, might interpret and play with Aetrimonde as part of a campaign. You GMs reading this can take it for your own if you like it, or ignore it if you don’t, or put your own twist on it if you come up with an interpretation that works better for your campaign!

Today’s Topic: Golem Intelligence

As discussed in a previous post, golems have a driving intelligence housed in a device called a noofactor. But these devices are poorly understood, and the intelligences within, even more so. What exactly is it that gives a golem its mind? And what are the implications if someone (like the PCs…) could prove it? I’ve thought of several ways that I could take this concept:

Immature Minds

As the previous post discussed, golems get smarter and develop more of a personality the longer that their noofactors are in operation…which is why most operators wipe their golems’ noofactors periodically, as they grow increasingly willful over time. This is an accepted practice because golems are not considered sentient (capable of feeling pain, pleasure, or emotion), let alone sapient (capable of self-awareness or complex thought). Wiping their noofactors, and destroying their minds, is not viewed the same as killing a person.

What if this is because the mind created by a noofactor starts out immature, and only develops sentience or sapience over time, as it experiences and shapes the world? Could a noofactor allowed to operate long enough develop an intelligence on par with that of its operator’s? What are the ethical implications of systematically wiping noofactors before the minds in them can develop fully?

If I were going to base a campaign or a multi-adventure story arc on this idea, I think I’d kick it off by having the PCs find a noofactor that had been allowed to run continuously for years or decades–probably the best way to work this in would be to have them find a half-functional golem, hooked up to an external power source, in an abandoned laboratory. It wouldn’t be immediately obvious that this was a sapient golem, because steam golems don’t generally have voices and any communication would initially need to be through charades, or maybe writing. But once the PCs work out that the golem is actually intelligent, and trying to communicate complex ideas to them, this would raise the question of how it attained this state in the first place, and once they solved that question, there would remain the question of what this meant, ethically speaking, and what they should do about it.

I always hesitate to predict how things will play out when I offer players a chance to influence societal change, because they so often decide to go in a direction I hadn’t planned on. But in this case, I would initially plan on five outcomes that the PCs could push things towards:

• Wiping noofactors regularly becomes mandatory, to prevent them from developing sapience, and sapient golems are outlawed.
• Wiping noofactors regularly becomes mandatory, but any that have already developed sapience or develop it despite this new law are granted rights.
• (The status quo) There are no requirements to wipe noofactors, but sapient golems have no rights.
• Wiping noofactors is outlawed and sapient golems are granted rights, but the non-sapient ones continue to be considered property.
• Wiping noofactors is outlawed, sapient golems are granted rights, and the sapient ones are granted custody over the ones that have not yet developed sapience.

The outcome that the PCs eventually get would then depend on several key decision points spread throughout the campaign or story arc: whether they conceal or publicize the existence of these sapient golems, whether they liberate or destroy any others that they find, whether they support or oppose the efforts of pro-golem-liberation politicians, etc.

Mortal Minds

Putting a further twist on the above concept, what if golems specifically become more humanlike (or dwarflike or elflike…let’s just use “mortallike” as a catch-all) as their minds develop? Why would an artificial mind occupying a mechanical shell work the same way as a natural, organic mind?

The obvious answer is that the “spirit of intellect” that a noofactor contains is actually a mortal soul, and results in a mortallike mind no matter what kind of body it’s placed in. This lends a religious overtone to the dilemma of what to do about sapient golems: Aetrimonde’s religious authorities would have varying responses to the revelation that golems possess a mortal soul, ranging from trying to emancipate them, to ordaining them as members of the clergy, to declaring them anathema and smashing them to bits.

This could be coupled with other developments, however, to make an even more unique twist on Aetrimonde:

• Perhaps mortal children have been born without souls (manifesting as reduced empathy, inability to use magic, invisibility to angels and demons, or some other combination of effects) at an increasing rate since the invention of the noofactor. The revelation that noofactors contain a mortal soul offers an explanation for this: the souls that should have belonged to those children were instead captured by noofactors. This uniformly horrifies the faithful, but they have different reactions to it: some try to smash noofactors in the hope that it will release their souls back to the “rightful” owners, while others try to protect the golems that they now recognize as their moral equals.
• Alternatively, perhaps noofactors just produce a soul from nothingness…which makes them a target for demons. Some sapient golems have been selling their souls for freedom (or vengeance on their owners…), and the demon who figured out that they could do that has risen abruptly in the ranks of the Abyss. This lends some urgency to the question of what to do about sapient golems: the longer they continue to be enslaved, the longer the forces of the Abyss can exploit them as a source of soul power…perhaps even breaking their celestial deadlock with the angelic host.

Alien Minds

In the exact antithesis of Mortal Minds, suppose instead that sapient golems become increasingly un-mortallike as they age and develop. Their goals, attitudes, and methods become stranger and less understandable by mortals over time.

This could just be because a golem’s existence is so different from a mortal’s: they don’t sleep or age, so their perception of time becomes divorced from mortals’, and they only “die” when their noofactor is destroyed (or wiped…) so they don’t experience fear of death in the same way as mortals, either. And, tying golems more tightly to the robots they are metaphors for, they could eventually grow to be smarter than mortals, or at least, more coldly logical and better at math, making them threatening.

But…I think it would be equally interesting, if not more, to have spirits of intellect be something different, that wasn’t built to be corporealized as a golem. As they become more accustomed to their new existence, they start to understand the world better…but they also become more self-actualized, and this means that they more are more often influenced by their alien priorities.

• A low-key version of this concept would be to have sapient golems try to establish an independent society, which would look very little like mortal society, perhaps in ways incomprehensible to mortals, or even threatening to them. Moreover, the fear that a golem might one day wake up and decide to flee and live with their own kind would influence opinions towards even non-sentient golems.
• In a more overt take on this would have golems actively rebel, using tactics that only work for a golem force. This could just be because they have different logistical needs than a mortal state and army, making their tactics unexpected, or it could be because their alien priorities don’t (or even can’t) make sense to mortal strategists.