And yet another serial fiction urban fantasy faction – the Constructs.
Lightning crashes as the storm outside the castle rages. Inside, a body, composed of parts of the dead harvested from graveyards, lies on a slab, connected to wires and strange machinery. A bolt strikes the lightning rod on the highest tower, sending millions of joules of energy down a wire and into the machinery, shocking the lifeless body.
A scientist is nearby, watching for any reaction. When nothing happens, a wail of despair escapes him.
A groan answers him from the slab. The scientist rushes to the side of his creation. The hand twitches, the eyes open. A low moan escapes the creature’s lips.
“It’s alive! It’s alliiiiiiiive!”
This faction covers those creatures that have been created, either through foul, dark magics, or scientists delving into things Man Was Not Meant To Know. The archetypical creature of this sort is Frankenstein’s Monster. Created by Dr. Victor von Frankenstein from lifeless body parts, the Monster has been the subject of a number of movie, TV, book and comics adaptions. Maybe as many as Dracula but that is just a guess on my part. Most of the time he is portrayed as a low-intelligence but very strong brute, tormented by his own existence. In the original novel, the creature was actually quite intelligent.
In a similar vein, we have the golems from Jewish myths. Made from clay, these creatures serve as guardians and protectors. They are powered by a scroll placed in the golem’s mouth. Removing the scroll renders the creature helpless. As with Frankenstein’s creature they are unnaturally strong, the better to protect whatever they are guarding. They are given a set of instructions and don’t deviate from them, which makes them good watchdogs.
I would add mummies to this category as well. It takes a lot of time and effort to embalm someone and wrap the body. They needed to be prepared properly so the Pharoah (I don’t know if anyone other than Pharoahs were mummified) would have a nice afterlife. They are usually animated when someone disturbs their tomb and takes all the riches stored with the body for the Pharoah’s use in the afterlife. I imagine I’d get a little peeved too if someone stole all the money I was using to party it up in the afterlife. Much like Frankenstein’s Monster and the golems, mummies are often portrayed as having great strength, and sometimes have the ability to cause their victims to start rotting away. Some curse their victims, who then die in various horrible ways.
Side note: The first time a mummy was portrayed as a reanimated malevolent creature was in the 1892 story ‘Lot 249’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes!
If you want to stretch the concept of being a ‘construct’ you could lump zombies into this category. I’m not talking the hordes of shambling undead brain-eaters as is portrayed in the popular media of the day. No, I’m talking about Haitian Vodou where zombies were servants who did the bidding of their master. The method of making such a zombie varies a bit, being either a reanimated dead body, or a live person put under a spell by a voduo priest. I suppose if you broke the spell, the reanimated dead zombies would just go back to being dead, and the live zombies would no longer be under the spell and could back to their lives before becoming zombies. (I’d imagine there is some social stigma in that situation.) The zombies have no special abilities beyond doing what they are told. I’m not sure if the zombies need to eat, drink or sleep. If it’s the case that they don’t, then they are effectively immortal. Or maybe they just exist until the voduo priest dies and can no longer command them.
Thinking about it, these creatures all seem to parallel robots and automatons. They don’t need to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom, can be assigned tasks that they will carry out endlessly, and can be built stronger than a human. I suppose automatons fit in this category as well.
What do you think, my Hordeling? Hit reply and let me know.
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