Graven Wardens

"It is always possible the records are incomplete."

- Proverb of the Azurejays, Scholar-Knights of San Sylvester

This article is incomplete and will require additional work.

The Graven Wardens are a type of medium, undead aberrations, of middling intelligence which can be found in Graven Keep, and, rarely, in its surrounding environs. As one of the Gravenlings, they are a species believed to have been created at, and exclusively found within, Graven Keep, during a disasterous experiment by Kerr Ultwin in the early first century of the Age of the Summer of Mortals. As their name implies, the Wardens serve Graven Keep as its primary servitors and protectors, usually glimpsed through the morning fog as sillhoutes moving across what is left of the fort's parapets.

They are known to be hard to kill, and lethal in their own right.

Appearance

While all aberrations to some degree or another readily defy attempts to categorize them, the Graven Wardens are fairly simple to conduct a study of within their own ranks. They fall, more or less, into three broad categories: Graven Warden Pikelings, Graven Warden Reachers, and Graven Warden Captains. In general, all three types have humanoid body plans, with lumpen heads atop more or less ordinary-proportioned torsos. Their forelimbs, alike to arms, come in three seguments, with an "extra" forearm extending from the position of an ordinary human's wrists. This extra forelimb varies in usage from the three varieties and causes their arms to extend as far as mid-shin, if not further. All types of graven wardens have a sickly yellow outer carapace with ruddy flesh visible beneath, and their eyes are shockingly human, though devoid of the light of intelligence. Graven Wardens have no mouths, noses, or external ears, and require neither food, water, nor air.

In Graven Warden Pikelings, by far the most common variant, the hand on one of the forelimbs has hardened into a calcified point, and the entire arm is used in a stabbing motion as a weapon, in like manner to a pike or spear. Such Graven Wardens fill the grounds and walls of Graven Keep and have been known to throw themselves down from the walls to reach and attack creatures passing near the fortress ruins. Such Graven Wardens are direct in their thinking and simple in their problem solving, and have no conception of retreat - they will chase fleeing foes to exhaustion or until destroyed, and invariably fight to the death.

Graven Warden Reachers, by comparison, are more measured in their intelligence, and understand the use of cover and concealment. They rarely leave the keep unless directed to appropriately, and instead keep to its walls, ceilings, and other vantage points. In Reachers, both forelimbs are converted to handless supports for an orificed organ that appears to be a badly swollen forearm. This organ's foreward opening is used to project "bolts" of sharp bone in a method not unlike a heavy crossbow might be used, though the number of such projections is limited by the ability of the Reacher to grow replacement bolts, which takes several days if fully depleted. They will also use these forelimbs as reasonably effective bludgeons, if no other means of attack and no opportunity to retreat presents itself. A wounded or depleted reacher will happily flee deeper into the keep to attempt to hide until it can recover.

Graven Warden Captains border on full human intelligence, though their lack of an ability to speak makes this harder to qualify. Captains tend to have one or both forelimbs ended in an ossified blade of bone, which they are adept at fighting with in a manner not unlike Bastonian swordplay. Captains can further be distinguished by the metallic sheen of their carapace, especially that which covers the tops of their skulls. They have minor psychic abilities, including telepathic command and control over the Graven Wardens in their charge, which includes awareness of the health and position of their subordinates. Fortunately, captains are limited in number, and slow to be replaced. Even after Graven Wardens begin to reappear in Graven Keep after it has been purged, it can take several years for even a single captain to develop.

Ecology

Graven Wardens, like many species of Aberrations, have an unusual ecology. For starters, they are one of the most geographically restricted creature types in Wisteria, sharing Graven Keep with all the other Gravenlings. They are unsexed creatures incapable of their own reproduction, and have no meaningful metabolic processes, leading some to compare the limited examples that have been studied with more traditional versions of the same idea, such as Flesh Golems.

Graven Wardens also have no meaningful economy, since their primary weapons are entirely biological in nature, and are grown together with the rest of them.

"It is neither wise nor desirable to attempt to know everything."

- Excerpt of the Handbook of the Angharite Janissaries

This article contains optional lore or worldbuilding that may or may not be true at the discretion of your Dungeon Master.

It is posited by some, who claim to have bypassed the heavy warding underneath Graven Keep and managed to scry after its inner workings, that Graven Wardens are fully artificially created, produced by either Kerr Ultwin or his Judges of the Change in enormous vats of raw animal biomass, using dark magic to form their bodies and forge something like life into them.

Origins

While the original Graven Wardens were Men of the Gauntlet who manned Graven Keep at the time that their commander, Kerr Ultwin the Undiminished performed the ritual that brought about the fort's downfall, and were therefore corrupted into being from living footmen of the order, the more modern versions of the Graven Wardens are the result of experiments on surviving members of the original cohort, and on successive generations of attempts to re-create them.

In Relation To Others

Graven Wardens are a mixed bag. While they are lethal and dangerous to any and all who tempt them, Graven Keep's remote and isolated position, and reputation for perilousness, combined with the Wardens' own predilection to not stray far from the keep, combine to make them an easily-avoided hazard. With no major strategic concern or localized resources to merit a concerted effort to take and hold the keep, most prefer to simply avoid its surroundings, and the Wardens therefore mostly prey on wild animals that stray too close rather than causing problems for the mortal races of Ahren.