Automata Lore
Below the earth, the remnants of millennia of failed civilizations and slumbering monstrosities lay entombed by miles of stone and soil. In dark caverns, primal undead from the founding war created to devastate armies await the commands of long dead masters, while immense worms burrow through the rock in search of dead Leviathans to feast upon.
In this hostile environment devoid of light or organic life, the Automata make their home.
Society: Automata are one of the most reclusive and paranoid of sapient species, a trait develop from the hostile and highly unpredictable nature of their home. Since their civilization inhabits the tunnels they have mined out and caverns stumbled upon in the process, they often encounter the old things that sleep below the earth.
Whether powerful undead, arcanely engineered plagues or spider deer, the uncovering of such hazards is dangerous and often not immediately clear. This has bred a strong distrust of the unknown or new into the Automata, anything not of them seen as a hazard.
Ironically, this paranoia extends to the surface world, the prospect of traveling above something most of them would avoid at all costs. In their common wisdom, they live below the surface to avoid the dangerous and irrational organic creatures, the surface dwellers need for light and food keeping the Automata safe from them.
Automata society itself is broken up into various tribal city states, each consisting of a network of inhabited tunnels converted from their mines. Since they do not need food or drink, their labor economy is mainly focused on the extraction and processing of raw minerals needed to construct their bodies.
Their ability to change bodies is an integral part of their culture, certain designs of body being made for certain tasks. When an Automata is working as a minor, they will wear a body designed solely for mining. If they are acting as a guard, they will wear a warrior model.
This is not simply a matter of practicality in the design, but also alters their mindset. Since Automata bodies are made with supporting processors to aid their thinking, their behavior will be subtly altered by the body.
This effect has been likened to that of certain mind altering drugs, not truly changing their personality, but affecting their focus and behavior. In a warrior body, they may have more situational awareness and a reduced aversion to violence. In a minor’s body, they may more easily fall into a comfortable flow of their manual labor.
This even applies to the bodies they use for recreation. A leisure body is designed to help them relax in a rewarding manner. While in one, they have little interest in, or ability to focus on, palpably productive activities. However, they will find the pursuit of fulfillment and mental balance easier, being able to relax and enjoy themselves.
The use of leisure bodies is a required activity in most settlements, since spending to long in a body designed for a form of labor can have detrimental effects of their psyche. Of course, the average period of labor for an Automata is around forty years, with periods of leisure averaging sixty years.
Ecology: Automata have one of the less practical reproductive methods of any clan, needing a limited resource not available underground to produce offspring. Specifically, the cores of Automata are created from the cores of hive drones.
Inside each of a Hive Queen’s secondary bodies, there is a hard glassy sphere approximately an inch across. This core is what connects the drone to the Hive Queen, being a highly mana dense organic magic item.
These hive cores can be harvested for use as mana batteries or soul traps when properly enchanted, most modern Arch Lich tethers being made from them due to the ease of enchanting. However, the Automata can use these cores as the physical component of a new Automata, the parents imprinting an amalgamation of their mana pathways into the blank core.
Despite the immense impracticality, they refuse to trade directly with the Hive Queens, often fearing that buying from the source would allow them to be trapped in a single supplier monopoly. Instead, they trade through third party traders, the majority of their hive cores coming from Elven traders.
Appearance: The true appearance of an Automata is a small faintly glowing sphere. However, their core is almost always contained in a body. Their bodies can have almost any design, which may vary by tribe. The most common traits are exposed metal revealing arcane markings to channel their mana through the body, but these can be covered in some designs.