Telurra Constructs

Constructs on Telurra are slowly becoming commonplace fixtures in modern life. From the more common “dumb” constructs that fulfill a singular role, like crop harvesters, garbage collectors, and rope weavers; to the more sophisticated “smart” constructs that act as butlers for noble households or guides for cities and important landmarks.

Golems are the oldest examples of constructs, humanoid frames of flesh, clay, stone, or iron animated by elemental spirits depending on the materials used in the golem’s construction. In common practice, earth spirits were used to animate stone golems, water to animate clay golems, fire for iron golems, and wind for flesh golems.

Modern constructs utilize the Haynes Engine, a piece of machinery that draws in ambient arcane energy, refines it utilizing a synthetic crystal, which then allows the construct to move according to its programming. Other forms of technology, like the storm rail and airships, utilize bound elementals.

Truly intelligent constructs, machines with true life, are considered an impossibility through modern, conventional science and spellcraft. But, as things go, stories and tales are told of automatons gaining sentience or being made with a spark of life burning within them either by design or by accident.

The changing realities of life brought by constructs have meant certain people being out of a job, the work they’ve done being subsidized by machinery. It also means more employment and job opportunities for engineers and artificers. People from the countryside have moved into the cities, living lives of factory workers and menial laborers.

Meanwhile, other workers within the cities of Alyssia and across the sea in Albia, protests have erupted over the loss of work; as well as those employed being payed too little for too many hours.