The Souldriven

You don't eat, you don't sleep, and when your arm is torn off someone bolts on a new one. You remember being taught, slowly and patiently, the way a child is taught: years of drills, forms and lessons before they let you out the door. What you don't remember is anything from before that, and the tinkers who made you change the subject when you ask.

Description. Souldriven are creations of the Tinkerer Guild: complex, animated beings of steel held together by aether, each with a soul held in a fist-sized core of fibrolite. They were built for work mechanoids couldn't handle: tactical combat, search and rescue in hazardous areas, pursuit and law enforcement. Unlike mechanoids, souldriven think and adapt. They respond to new situations with intelligent decisions and can be as clever, proud and sarcastic as any human.

Training and Release. A souldriven isn't finished when its body is. Every one is raised and trained like a child, then drilled like a soldier for years in the purpose it was built for. The guild never releases a souldriven to the world until it has mastered its focus, and many never leave the training halls at all. By the time a souldriven walks out into the world, it is already a seasoned professional.

Personality. Souldriven are disciplined, precise and often impatient with people who are neither. Years of training leave most with a strong sense of purpose and little idea what to do without one. Many have little patience for humans, whom they see as a species that turns everything into a tool. Some are cold, some are cruel, and a few are kind. All of them wonder, at some point, what they were before.

Physical Description. Souldriven are tall and heavy, standing 5½ to 6½ feet and weighing 270 to 330 pounds. Most are built of steel plate over pistons and gears, with hollow joints where small parts turn and eyes that glow a soft aetheric blue. Each is shaped for its purpose. Soldiers are broad and plated, pursuers lean and fast, and shadows are slim enough to pass for human in a coat and hat, at least from a distance. Souldriven don't age. The first ones, built in the last years of the War of Souls, are still active.

Relations. Souldriven were built to keep the ashen in check and still treat them with suspicion. Humans are wary of them, and in Usmon the idea of a thinking machine is an abomination. By treaty, no souldriven may enter Usmon, and any found near the border are recycled. Runekar find them fascinating. Malumtene find them easy to take apart. People argue over whether souldriven have a soul, created a soul or captured one, and whether slavery is the right word for their condition.

Outlook. Most souldriven are disciplined and obedient. Their training is built on routine, and their loyalty belongs to whoever holds their papers. A released souldriven who has begun to question that training can become almost anything.

Souldriven Lands. Souldriven have no homeland. Most serve Adryae, the guild or private owners as soldiers, security, rescue crews or enforcers. Gilirak's lawmen in Staerhiel use them. The few who walk away from service become mercenaries, outlaws or something stranger.

Religion. Souldriven can't use flux and have little reason to pray. A few are drawn to Odien, god of the soul pool, out of a need to know where their soul came from. Odien's votaries are rarely comfortable with the visit.

Language. Souldriven speak Common and whatever languages their training required.

Names. Trainers give souldriven a short working name, and most keep it: Sevos, Oziric, Maleros. Sample names: Fyrkon, Gomrax, Jelec, Kisith, Orshim, Rustuth, Trykros, Vergix.

Adventurers. A souldriven adventurer is on assignment, between assignments, or no longer taking them. Some hunt fugitives or escort cargo. Some protect a party they were hired to protect and stayed with. Some are looking for the answer to the one question their makers won't discuss.

Every souldriven has the following traits, plus the traits of one variant (see below).

• +2 Constitution, –2 Wisdom, –2 Charisma. A steel frame is sturdy, but a mind raised by drill instructors is rigid, and people find souldriven unsettling.

• Medium: As Medium creatures, souldriven have no special bonuses or penalties due to their size.

• Souldriven base land speed is 30 feet.

• Darkvision out to 60 feet. Souldriven eyes are aetheric lenses.

• Living Construct: Souldriven are constructs with the living construct subtype. They are immune to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, disease, nausea, fatigue, exhaustion and energy drain, and they don't need to eat, sleep or breathe. They are not immune to mind-affecting effects. They can't drink potions or be raised or resurrected by flux. A souldriven still needs 4 hours of inactive maintenance each day to recover spells, spell points or other daily abilities.

• Steel, Not Flesh: Flux can't touch a souldriven. Healing spells, Flux Surge, Mending Touch and every other flux effect have no effect on them, harmful or helpful. Repair effects (engineer repair kits, Jury-Rig, make whole, which restores 2d8 + caster level hit points to a souldriven, and the repair damage spells) work fully. A souldriven that spends 8 hours on self-maintenance recovers hit points as a living creature heals naturally.

• Integrated Plating: A souldriven's body gives it a +2 armor bonus. It can't wear armor, but its plating can be enchanted as armor (with Craft Magic Arms and Armor, treating the souldriven as a suit of armor). Plating doesn't impose arcane spell failure or an armor check penalty.

• Slam: A souldriven has a slam attack that deals 1d4 points of bludgeoning damage.

• Fibrolite Core: A souldriven's soul lives in its core. A creature that removes the core from a helpless souldriven (1 minute of work and a DC 15 Craft (engineering) or Strength check) kills it, though the soul stays in the core. A souldriven reduced to –10 hit points is destroyed, but its core survives unless the attack specifically destroyed it. A Tinkerer Guild master can place an intact core in a new body in one month for 5,000 gl. The souldriven returns with one fewer level, as if raised. This is the only way a souldriven can come back.

• Released at 5th Level: A souldriven character enters play at 5th level or higher, and its first five levels must all be in its variant's focus class. The years of training are its 1st through 5th levels. A souldriven can't be played in a campaign that starts below 5th level.

• No Flux, No Grafts: A souldriven can never use flux. It can't cast divine spells or take levels in votary or warden. A souldriven ranger never gains spellcasting (see the Pursuer variant). A souldriven also can't take levels in engineer or fleshgrafter. Its own core resonates with any fibrolite it tries to work, and it has no flesh to graft.

• Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: Any.

• Favored Class: The variant's focus class.

• Level Adjustment: +0.

Soldier

The first souldriven, fielded in small numbers in the final years of the War of Souls, were soldiers, and few as they were, they helped end it. Soldiers are broad, heavily plated and drilled in every weapon the guild could hand them.

Battle Plating: The souldriven's Integrated Plating armor bonus increases to +3.

Integrated Weapon: One light or one-handed martial weapon is built into an arm. It can be deployed or retracted as a free action and can't be disarmed. It can be enchanted as a weapon.

Pursuer

Built to run fugitives down and bring them back. Oziric, the souldriven who serves the lawman Irvorn in Murkwell, is a pursuer.

Tireless Pursuit: The souldriven's base land speed is 40 feet. It gains a +4 bonus on Survival checks made to follow tracks.

Hidden Compartment: A compartment in the leg or torso holds one light weapon, firearm or item of up to 5 pounds. Finding it takes a DC 25 Search check. Drawing from it is a move action, or a free action with Quick Draw. A pursuer is proficient with the pocket pistol and revolver.

Ranger Without Flux: A souldriven ranger never gains spells. Instead, it gains a bonus feat at 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th ranger level, chosen from: Alertness, Endurance, Improved Initiative, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Reload, Run or Skill Focus (Survival).

Shadow

Slim, quiet and patient. Shadows pass for human in a long coat and a stovepipe hat, until they move. Sevos, who carries a sword in his cane, and Maleros, Xidren's assassin, are shadows.

Silent Joints: The souldriven gains a +4 bonus on Hide and Move Silently checks. Its Integrated Plating armor bonus is +1 instead of +2, since a lighter frame is a quieter one.

Human Guise: The souldriven gains a +4 bonus on Disguise checks made to pass as human, and takes no penalty for disguising itself as a different race. Anyone who watches it move for a full round gets a Spot check opposed by its Disguise check to notice it glides rather than walks.

Rescuer

Built for collapsed mines, burning buildings and the Fiend's Chasm. Rescuers are trained in disciplined, unarmed movement so they can climb, carry and hold on without a weapon in hand.

Sealed Frame: The souldriven has fire resistance 5 and cold resistance 5, and is unaffected by extreme heat or cold (as endure elements).

Lifting Frame: The souldriven counts as one size larger for carrying capacity, for grapple checks, and for carrying another creature. It can carry a Medium creature without slowing down.

Weaver

A rare and expensive design: a souldriven whose core was patterned to see the aether web. Weavers support soldier units with walls, wards and fire. Xidren, the first souldriven, is said to work the web like this.

Aether Lens: The souldriven can use detect magic at will, as runekar Aether Sight.

Analytic Engine: The souldriven gains a +2 bonus on Spellcraft and Knowledge checks and can always take 10 on Knowledge checks.

Souldriven don't age, and they have no aging effects or maximum age. A newly released souldriven has spent 10 + 2d4 years in training.

Five Levels of Someone Else's Plan. Your first five levels were chosen for you. Use them as backstory: who trained you, what you were built to do, and the assignment you were on when the campaign begins. What you do from 6th level on is the first choice that's really yours.

Bring a Repair Kit. Votary healing does nothing for you. Make friends with an engineer or an aetherian who knows the repair patterns, or carry your own kit and rest when you can.

Ask the Question. Every souldriven eventually wonders where its soul came from. Decide whether yours has started asking, and how it will feel when it finds the answer.