Book of Bone and Ebony

etched into bones are often the anchors for necromantic
magic, the means by which the magic grips the corpse (flesh
is poorly suited to this due to its excessive malleability and
tendency to rot). Necromancers employ a wide range of
techniques for fusing, shaping and sculpting bone.
Resources Cost: None to •••, depending on the
rarity of the bones. Human bones are common and omnipresent.
The bones of the largest cachalots, on the other
hand, are both popular in war machines and hard to come
by and therefore carry a Resources ••• price tag.
METAL
The basic frame of a necromantic siege engine doesn’t
even need to be made entirely from the bodies of the dead,
as long as they’re cleverly incorporated into the device.
The Abyssal Charm Bone Graft Technique allows a
necrosurgeon to fuse flesh, bone and metal into one
smoothly functioning whole. Metal may be little more
than a practical embellishment on a walking war engine,
like hooks or blades fused into the war machine’s bones.
Alternatively, the siege engine could be made almost
entirely of metal and incorporate the walking dead as its
method of propulsion. In some cases, corpses are incorporated
into large metal wagons used to carry passengers or in
odd variants of the rickshaw or palanquin.
Resources Cost: This is where walking war machines
get expensive. The costs in the table below represent the
cost for metal embellishments on a war machine of the
appropriate size. If the actual infrastructure of the war
machine is composed of the material, double the Resources
cost below.
NECROTIC PROPULSION
Some war machines incorporate the walking dead
only as source of power. Like slaves rowing a barge, the
dead take their places at oars, chains or drive shafts and
row, pull or turn, as appropriate. Entire corpses aren’t
needed for this. As little as one joint — a knee or perhaps
a shoulder — can be enough to animate certain simple
devices.
Resource Cost: None to •, depending on how the
corpses are integrated into the device.
SIZE
The phrase “walking war machine” is, in some instances,
misleading. It brings to mind images of colossal
horrors of fused flesh, bone and metal. In some cases, this
Metal Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4
Iron • •• •• •••
Jade •• ••• ••••• •••••
Soulsteel •• ••• ••••• •••••
Other (Brass, Steel) • •• ••• •••
97
CHAPTER FOUR • CREATIONS OF BONE
is accurate. The enormous fortress-corpse Juggernaut and
the horrors of the thousand-corpse war frame (see p. 105-
106) are only two of many applications of necromancy,
but the range of sizes varies immensely. The weapon of
mephitic desolation (see p. 108) requires only five bodies
and can potentially wreak havoc on a vast scale. While
necromancers don’t think in terms of “size class 2” or “size
class 4” war engines, it’s a convenient system for keeping
track of game mechanics.
LESS THAN HUMAN (SIZE CLASS 1)
Devices used in war don’t always have to be enormous
and obvious. A severed hand has enough mobility that it
can be dropped near its target and scuttle closer on its own,
committing small acts of espionage or sabotage. Augmented
with (or powering) a metal frame (a head atop
limbs grafted to eight soulsteel insect legs, for example),
these small war machines make excellent drones and
citadel guardians.
Such devices are also more affordable and easier to
animate.
ON A HUMAN SCALE (SIZE CLASS 2)
Many war engines aren’t necessarily as big as the term
“war engine” might suggest. Creature on this scale range
from the size of a single human to the size of a large horse.
Many necromantic creations this size are very similar to
the transcendent revenant vessels used by nemissaries in
their work in Creation (see p. 87-91), single corpses highly
augmented with metal, bone and parts from other bodies.
Also in this categories are other devices of moderate size,
such as those comprising two or three augmented bodies
grafted together. Spine chains (see Exalted, pp. 299-300)
and the weapon of mephitic desolation (see p. 108) fit into
this size class.
BIG AND DEAD (SIZE CLASS 3)
Ranging from the size of a small wagon to that of a
moderate building, these are the walking war machines
that people imagine when they hear that phrase. These
are the self-propelling bone golems, the highly augmented
reanimated yeddim with soulsteel exoskeletons,
the iron wagons propelled by the labors of hidden dead
flesh and so on. War engines of this size can only be
animated by the Labyrinth Circle spell Spurring the
Beast of War or stronger spells (see p. 98-99).