The Warforged Colossus, a 10-story weapon of mass destruction wandering Eberron's Mournland, combines the roles of dungeon and dragon in Steve Fidler's Mythic Eberron.

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As you progressed forward, you came to this room

where there was this big window.

Right.

And you realized you were like elevated above the ground and it's moving.

So you kind of realize you're in this vehicle of some sort, and then this like

mechatronic, robotic head looks into it.

Like it's peering down and looking through inside.

Hello and welcome to Making a Monster where game designers show us their

favorite monster, and we discover how it works, why it works and what it means.

I'm Lucas Zellers.

This week, we're leaving the Forgotten Realms for Eberron.

Steve Fiddler creates adventures and encounters for D&D under

the label Vorpal Dice Press.

His monster blurs the line between enemy and environment,

between dungeon and dragon.

My favorite, I just finished it, is the Warforged Colossus.

So it's a Warforged that is the size of a skyscraper, a hundred feet tall, has

an entire dungeon inside of its body.

Warforged are part of Keith Baker's Eberron setting for D and D, which

is a bit like Tolkienian fantasy aged forward into an industrial revolution.

It's a world where people travel by magical elevators, air

ships and the lightning rail.

Yeah.

It's also a world that only recently ended the longest and most destructive

war anyone has ever seen the war.

Forged are an entire species of sentience constructs designed to be soldiers.

And now the war they fought in is over.

Most Warforged are the size of a person, but a very few were built

on a much, much grander scale.

There's only like 8 to 10 of them that anyone knows about.

They're not operational, so they were more like sites to scavenge,

but they were given stats.

They can stomp stuff and shoot laser beams and do some pretty cool stuff.

The, the specific Warforged Colossus that we're using its name is Arkus, and

that was very briefly detailed in Rising of the Last War as being a Warforged

Colossus that was missing an arm and found in the Glowing Chasm in the Mournland.

So what I wanted to do with it was this really cool idea that came from

a really, really weird dream that I had where essentially in the dream you

were fighting this endless horde of robots that were like cobbled together.

And you're in this like factory setting and it was kind of

like fighting a zombie hoard.

So I had this whole idea and mythic encounters gave me a great

opportunity to expand on that.

A mythic encounter is an optional rule for creatures in D and D

that triggers a mythic trait.

Usually when the creature is reduced to zero hit points after which it

transforms musters its strength or exposes a new objective, extending

the fight and unlocking new powers and abilities for the creature.

My favorite thing about mythic encounters in that mechanic is

you can take what is normal.

Or, you know, traditional and kind of builds a lot of uniqueness into it.

Hi, to your monsters in D and D have regional effects impacting

the terrain around them.

Layer actions occurring at intervals during the fight and

special legendary actions they can take after a player's turn.

So I've given to him.

Some regional effects because he's placed in the morn land.

She has this devastated apocalyptic terrain that was left over

from a devastating attack that happened in Iran just before the

campaign setting becomes playable.

And then you fight this monster and it's legendary actions are all about it.

Creating.

More war forged.

So it creates a war forge Titan, which is another large war forged

and uses its actions to command it, to move around and attack.

So you're almost fighting two monsters at once when you destroy it, the

Colossus, it collapses in a heap.

But then all of this activity happens inside of it body.

Like you can see the lights come on and all this activity and motion

and an opening appears, and it kind of invites you to come inside.

And the whole second phase still uses the war force, Colossus stat block

and its attacks and it's legendary actions, but now it introduces

its layer actions, which all.

Occur inside of its body.

So it, you know, detaches portions of its body to make it more difficult

for you to traverse and it squeezes you in the hallways and it spawns more

war forged inside to defend itself.

And the idea being is your need to fight through.

This onslaught and get to its heart and you essentially have to destroy it to

truly destroy the Colossus, to stop it from functioning and, and terrorizing

anyone exploring the more land.

So we've kind of envisioned is kind of elevating what a monster can be

and turning it into this whole, like self-contained adventure within its own.

Right?

The thing I really like it because it gives you an opportunity to

include a creature of fights.

An exploration pillar, where you're diving into it and trying

to figure out what what's ticking.

And then also that dungeon crawl that you get in a typical, the D

session where you're just kind of fighting through a dungeon and dealing

with traps and that kind of thing.

And it's all.

Almost all of it is enclosed in the step block of the creature.

There's going to be some room descriptions like you would

have with a typical adventure.

And you know, this is what's in this room and here's what you can find here.

And there'll be a map as well.

But the idea is essentially to enclose as much as I can in a stat

block, which I think is pretty cool.

Yeah.

That's great.

So what is it that you think makes this whole idea that effective on its own?

I think that by making it more than just a fight, you're not just punching

a hip point punching bag you're, you know, progressing the encounter further.

You're uncovering mysteries.

Why is there a creation forge inside this Colossus who would have put that there?

Why is it not making real war for us?

Why is it only making these like abomination war forged?

You can kind of throw that at somebody and you you've essentially got your

next arc of the campaign, you know?

And I think that that.

Is where this encounter will be really effective.

Steve, once his players to dread this creature to feel a sense

of ominous inescapable dude.

But I think it will be really useful as a tool.

You can kind of put it in the distance.

It can always be this thing that the players that are interacting

with, like NPCs and what have you.

They kind of mention it and it'll always be this kind of carrot on a stick.

And then when you finally do encounter it and hopefully defeat

it, you've now got a whole other carrot on a stick to build off of.

And so it's kind of this midway point for your players narratively.

And it can kind of always just be sitting on the horizon for when all the other

storylines sort of threads together.

What do you think this tells us about what we, what we want our monsters and villains

to be the story around it, why it exists?

Why you're fighting.

It is not necessarily black and white, but it's not ambiguous.

It's it's quite clearly a threat.

You could maybe try to wrangle it and turn it to your side, or try to find some

alternative way of bypassing the encounter or accomplishing it in a different way.

But I think some players like to have a very clear unambiguous.

Something to accomplish.

I like the idea of using robots for that, because you don't have to worry

about their morals and their, you know, they're not usually persuadable.

It's usually just some obstacle that you have to deal with.

Given the deformed war, forged its spawns and its origin story in the glowing chasm.

It's pretty easy to read the war, forged Colossus as a metaphor

for nuclear fallout, a kind of.

Steam punk Godzilla as such.

It affords players a straightforward moral choice.

Whereas in mythic encounters, there's a lot of demon, princes, grafts, and orcas.

And what have you from forgotten realms lore, where they could have so many

motives and your players can deal with them in so many different ways.

You know, you could appeal to grasses, vanity, and possibly

even get him to come to your side on things at least momentarily.

Whereas this is very.

Clear cut.

There's a lot of things to learn, but going into it, you know, that this

is something you're going to have to defeat or overcome right off the bat.

And there's a very clear way to do that, which I think it tells maybe doesn't

tell the story, but I think that if you were to introduce this to your players,

they would have a lot of fun with it.

And I think a lot of players do just enjoy beating the bad guy.

Sometimes my guest is Steve Fiddler of Vorpal dice, press artists.

The war forge Colossus will appear in mythic, ever on a new supplement featuring

mythic encounters for monsters in the ever on campaign setting, releasing on the

dungeon masters Guild in September, 2020.

You can see a full page illustration of artists on the shows, website,

scintilla.studio/monster it's half character art, half all beautiful.

And it was drawn by saga Mackenzie as a special bonus

for listeners of the podcast.

Steve has made available one of mythic everone's mythic rewards.

It's called a salvaged Titan chassis, and it's a fully operational mech suit.

Your D and D character can pilot, if you want the Saturday morning, lot of even

Voltaren power Rangers or Gundam wing in your Dungeons and dragons campaign,

download the free pdf@scintilla.studio.

Slash monster.

Here's how to get in touch with Steve.

You can follow me on Twitter.

It's at Vorpal dice press.

I also have a website up and coming, which is for both dice, press.com.

I think it's going to be pretty interesting.

Thanks for listening to making a monster.

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next time on making a monster.

Alright.

Symptoms of the disease include itching, sneezing being spontaneous

narcolepsy, willful disregard for one's own safety, a craving for fish,

an overwhelming desire to shell.

One liners, vertigo, and frequent public urination.

Incubation time.

DN seems to be about 14 seconds and the contagion is spread through bodily fluids,

dirty toilet seats, crisp high-fives awkward hugs and prolonged eye contact.

In a possibly unrelated event that nice colony of leper nuns.

We picked up hitchhiking on the side of the hyper route.

After their shuttle bros bus broke down has gone missing.