Puppets

Puppets are used as necessary workers and laborers who keep society functioning throughout the nations of Great Europa. A lot of criminals and runaways have their souls transferred into these puppet bodies to serve for years to come, some even say for an eternity, as a form of punishment. These puppets are manufactured to perform jobs that others do not want to undertake or as a status symbols for the wealthy. The patron of Puppets is Diligence. It is rumored that Diligence's cults have started to create a farm of sorts to produce the best souls for their puppets. To most it is madness, but to few their is a method within. Few beings with incredible willpower and mental fortitude have intentionally become a puppet with their prior memories and soul fully intact.

Not everyone would be able to make a proper puppet shell, and fewer still knows the magic needed to give life to them. Diligence cults are known to manufacture Puppets as well as selling them to interested parties. A puppet's intelligence comes from a former sentient soul, wiped clean of their memories and other emotions deemed unnecessary, then placed into a hollow shell. The gender of the ego or soul does not matter in the placement of the shell, as most of their memories and experiences will be scrubbed anyways in order to fit the hollow puppets. It is known though that the stronger souls or wills end up manifesting more personality once turned. Puppets are known to come in many shapes and sizes depending on need, with some even bearing resemblances to animals. However all puppets need the soul of a human or human like being, as animal souls are too faint to work.

Puppets are beings overall more magically made than technologically, they still require many mechanical connections to work, like tendons, as well as the quality of the puppet. Be it from good craftsmanship, or high quality material, with wood from a treant able to create a puppet automaton with sentience without the need of another's soul.

However, there are occasions where the soul remembers their past life and create a dissonance between mind and body. These are called rogue puppets and they tend to quickly go mad. If you ever encounter a puppet screaming "Ⱳħⱥⱦ ħⱥꝑꝑēꞥēđ ⱦꝋ ᵯē ?", please report to your local guard as this is called soul resurfacing, and should be avoided as much as possible to ensure consistent productivity. Though there are groups that oppose the existence of these Puppets, citing them as far too cruel, they also realize that they are instrumental in maintaining society, by repurposing criminals and dark sealers into pillars of community.

Puppet shells are usually made of fragile or light material, and most of them are not able to do combat in order to stave off an uprising. Though combat models exist, they are reserved for the extremely wealthy and royalty. Specialized Puppets also exist, however, their souls and memories are handpicked to produce specialty puppets meant to perform specific tasks like assassination or even sorcery. For them to work properly, fuel is needed in the form of supplements provided by their respective puppetmakers. They are special food created for puppets that maintains their personality and provides them energy. They could be fed ordinary food, but this behavior makes them risk soul resurfacing from the disconnected realization because of the sense of taste they once had.

Phoebe, for example, is a luxury grade maid model made of porcelain and rare wood. Phoebe can clean, cook and take care of children and pets. To avoid soul surfacing, Phoebe if often will be given a violin to play on her spare time.

=Puppet Queen= Puppet queens are exquisite custom automatons that are meticulously made from the best materials and have a well-formed soul. They can act as both a companion and a protector. Their look, figure and even speech are all altered to suit the client's every preference. Since puppet queens are often used as a status symbol, only extremely affluent and powerful clientele could afford one. A Puppet Queen is on par with a veteran knight in terms of strength.

They are equipped with razor sharp Mythril wires that could slice through flesh with ease, they are extremely agile often beyond human capabilities as well as provides comfort with their presence and voice. a base model Puppet Queen's price starts at least with 1 Mythril Medal, but gets considerably more expensive with higher end materials.

=Puppet Knight= Puppet Knights are created from better materials like tempered steel, they are extremely sturdy and tough to kill, providing great support for actual Knights. The armor is build into their shells, so they are more mobile than expected. Unlike Puppet Pawns that use broken souls, a Puppet Knight utilizes a stable soul giving them higher combat intelligence and the ability to execute more complicated plans and formations.

Used by law enforcement, merchants, and even the Inquisition, Puppet Knights are uncommon but their presence are well known in most societies. Each one costs around 15 gold per unit, but can vary with equipment quality.

=Puppet Pawn= Puppet Pawns are disposable troops with wooden shells; they are frail but inexpensive and easily mass-produced. They are inferior to real soldiers, yet morale is never an issue for them. A puppet pawn costs 3 gold per unit.

They are usually outfitted with chainmail or low quality armor, they are meant to overwhelm with sheer numbers or simply act as cannon fodder until real soldiers could take the field safely. Puppet pawns are not capable of complicated tasks aside from attacking or defending. Peasants could rent the services of pawns for minor quests such as harvesting Herbs.

=Golems= Golems are bigger tougher puppets that are often serve as miners, construction workers or even as war machines rarely.

=Rogue Puppets= Rogue puppets are the consequences of a total collapse of the psyche of an existing of a puppet. They would break down and lose their minds, delving further into a full psychotic breakdown, this term is coined as a "Dysmorphosis". Puppets exhibiting unhinged behavior are one symptom of dysmorphosis, and if left untreated would soon spiral into the puppet going fully rogue and belligerent. A strange phenomenon found within most rogue puppets is the desire to turn other people into puppets, as if trying to spread it's suffering unto others, and they seem to cling into any fetish object of their own past with extreme fervor.

Rogue puppets bear a shred of their actual personalities, often exaggerated to an extreme degree as if compensating for their current reality. Some rogue puppets can still be reasoned with and stabilized, as long as not enough time has passed for them to completely lose their minds. In the event a puppet goes full rogue, one should remind them of the humanity they used to have to stun them temporarily for a decisive blow.

Pure Ego

Puppets are all given mechanical hearts which also contains personalities and memories of the person implanted upon it. When a puppet goes rogue, the heart produces a sizable amount of power, able to power a variety of engines and machinery.

Combat Guide

Puppets are made through a very particular method, puppetfication requires original parts of the human body in order for the personality to recognize that they still possess a shape. Without the original body parts and organs, a puppet is limited with it's functionality and prone to break easier especially for those with weaker minds. Ordinarily a puppet is fed a special paste made of a secret mixture of ingredients, only available within the puppet guilds of the realm, but once they go fully rogue, their hearts are self sustaining and they could effectively function as long as their chassis hold, which is also based on their varnish.

Depending on the stage of dysmorphosis and the puppet's model, the threat can range from 1 Menace Mark to 6 Menace Marks. Combat puppets pose far more of a threat than a service puppet. The inability to feel pain nor exhaustion sets the rogue puppets as an incredibly dangerous and unrelenting threat that need not rest. Puppets no longer have the faculties to cast spells, any attempt to do so would overload their senses and eliminate themselves.

Puppets can change limbs and forms depending on what is available and what is needed. Artificial tendons exist within the puppet chassis and once severed would also render the puppet immobile, this is an effective way to shut a puppet down provided one could not sever it's limbs properly. Prioritize in disabling a puppet's limbs since puppets as a whole could take quite a bit of thrashing, by disabling their limbs one simply disables them as an active threat, though do be careful as their limbs occasionally could move by independently from their main body.