Mammon's Holy Defenders

Full Description

The Priests of Mammon, unlike many other faiths, instead of taking a vow of poverty, took a vow to enrich themselves and their Church through legal means.

And as their order slowly grew and prospered, others began to worship their God and their churches grew from rough-hewn buildings and empty caves to ornate churches and impressive temples. When they became the major faith in an area, instead of forcibly expelling other faiths from their territory they let them continue for a fee. With all this money entering their coffers, inevitably it attracted thieves and robbers and this soon became a serious problem.

So the Cardinals met in a secret conclave to decide what to do about the problem, whilst at the same time staying within the law. One suggested hiring mercenaries to deal with the problem, but this was decided to be too expensive in the long run. Another suggested setting up a new Order of fighting monks, trained until their hands and feet could be used as lethal weapons, but this would take time and expense, both in training them and in persuading the ruling nobles that a new Order of fighting monks would not be a threat to their secular power.

Then it was decided to turn to the wonders of thaumatech and create machines to deal with thieves. First they approached two elderly monks who had spent their lives in faithful service to the Church and asked them if they could perform a ritual to take part of their souls, so that they could serve their Church after death. It took a while to convince them, but they got them to agree and promised them that they only wanted a small part of the soul, not all of it. Then they hired the finest thaumatech engineers to make two statues of knights in polished bronze, with cut rubies for eyes and iron swords in their hands.

Their brains were crystal geodes etched all over their surface with silver runic writing, and their nerves were of thin silver placed within the bronze by the finest jewellers. A mage wrote into their brains exactly who was and who was not a thief. No expense was spared with making them. When the monks died of natural causes the ritual was preformed and the statues were animated and placed on either side of the altar. After a while somebody tried to steal a golden candlestick and the eyes of the statues flicked open. They spoke in a metallic voice Put it back and leave this place and no harm will be done to you.

The thief turned to run but they caught up with him with ease, sliced his leg muscles open from behind, and then thrust their blades through his back. The monks placed the body in the crypt. After this very public slaying few dared to steal from them and the few who did and refused to return what they stole were dealt with very brutally indeed by Mammon's Holy Defenders, which was the name given to the statues.

Additional Information

The Holy Defenders are very hard to beat in combat as arrows, edged weapons, blunt weapons and all but the most dangerous spells, whilst they may scratch or bend their bronze frames, will not be strong enough to destroy or cripple them. They do have a weakness, their ruby eyes. If both of these can be smashed or pulled out the statues will *die* and fall to the ground as lifeless hunks of metal.

The statues will not harm the lawful, nor those who promptly return what they have illegally taken and leave the cathedral that they guard. They also will not pursue anybody beyond the cathedral limits. A Priest of Mammon fully dressed in his robes can handle cathedral property, so those dressed in the robes of such a priest would be likely to be able to fool the statues to steal the cathedral treasures, as long as the robes were genuine and properly worn.

The statues also treat all thieves the same, from the starving person stealing for food to the organized robber. One warning and then the death penalty by sword and bronze fist unless a fully robed Priest orders them to stop.