Bestiary: Asterite Calicrat

Okay, so I have had slightly more beer than advisable and decided to write a thing instead of going to bed like a sensible person. (Somewhat motivated by the fact that someone texted me about D&D so that is what I want to do right at the moment.)

Also on the subject of doing things that are not sensible, I have chosen to write another bestiary entry based on words I have discovered whilst reading the OED. (This is not sensible, because the previous bestiary thing was not terribly popular.)

Anyhow...

A Bestiary

Dictated Posthumously by Zovik the Doomed

Entry #2: Asterite Calicrat or Ant King

The Ant King is not a natural creature — as we all know, true ant colonies have a Queen only, never a King. It is not even organic; it is a made thing. And easily enough made, too, for any mage who has the time, the money, and some strange reason of their own.

First, shape a sculpture-mold of an ant. This mold should be at normal ant-scale, or as close as one can make it. Then, take enough molten iron to fill the mold and sprinkle in dust-of-asterite¹ in whatever quantity you desire whilst chanting a simple ritual². Pour the mixture into the mold, and proceed as if dealing with any work in cast iron. The quantity of asterite determines the capabilities of the Calicrat, as follows:

The Asterite Calicrat, once made, is not compelled to obey the orders of its creator. Calicrats with more than 1 HD will generally recognize their creator as someone to whom they owe loyalty and gratitude, and will cooperate with their creator’s wishes voluntarily.⁶

Eventually, however, any Calicrat with more than 2 HD will decide that their needs are not best being met in their current servile relationship and will attempt to change things. This could be something as benign as an argument that they and their creator should be equal partners in whatever endeavor, something as malign as an attempt to assassinate and replace their creator, or something as simple as just wandering off one day. The more intelligent the Calicrat, the sooner this occurs.⁷

Once a Calicrat has abandoned its creator, or its creator has died, they embark on the sort of behavior that has led to their being called “Ant Kings”. Ant Kings will find an ant colony that is not currently occupied by one of their own, and use their innate verminous authority to alter the ants’ instinctual behavior so that they allow it to dwell in a specially-made chamber within the colony. The ants of that colony will then begin to behave abnormally in a way that the Ant King has “commanded”. There is a great deal of variation in what an Ant King will cause his ants to do, and the purpose of these machinations is rarely clear.

If I were writing this up for publication, I would include here a d100 table of Projects of the Ant King. However, I am not, so I won't. Maybe another day.

Image obviously not mine; I found it on Google Image Search.
Sculptor is someone by the name of Will Carr.
Carr's work can be found at http://willcarrsculptures.co.uk/
(Yeah, yeah, it's not MLA format. Fuck off.)

Sidebar: Zovik's Personal Account

It was in the Empire of Stones — far distant, long dead — where I first learned of the Calicrat and its construction. The Emperor was a foolish man, and — a quality rare among fools — well aware of this deficiency. Having learned of the ritual that allows one to construct an Asterite Calicrat, he declared that he would have the wisest advisor ever seen in the Empire, and ordered his court to collect every piece of asterite they could find.

The process of finding the asterite had gone on for years by the time I had arrived, and the Emperor had four of the gems in his possession. Each had been the proudest possession of a noble house, and their acquisition had been difficult. All four could have fit together on a man’s fingernail, and I would have dismissed stories of their value if I had not seen one struck by the light and been paralyzed by its beauty. I stayed for several months within the Empire, my tales of other worlds keeping me much in the Emperor’s favor, while the asterite project continued.

The Emperor shared with me the old manuscript in which he had found the instructions to the ritual of crafting the Calicrat, and I was chilled when I learned that one created with two of the miniscule gems was more intelligent than any man or monster on record. At this point in time, the Emperor had six.

A month later, the Emperor acquired a seventh gem of asterite, and decreed that construction of the Calicrat begin that evening. I left at once. That evening, well out of the capital city but still travelling as fast as my horse would take me, I was stricken by a sensation of something pressing in on my mind from all sides. I fell from my horse, not even noticing the pain, focused only on the vision forcing its way into my head. Seven gems of asterite, forced into the rough shape of an ant by a bare iron filigree, glowing with an unearthly light. Chanting seemed to assail my ears, in what I knew in my bones and my blood as the True and Ancient Language, which no living being understands or speaks, but which all will recognize upon hearing.

When I returned to my senses, my horse had gone, and I seemed to have been lying there in the dust for days. Others in that part of the country later told me that they had the same experience. What those closer to the event may have experienced, we shall never know; the lands east of the city and the lands west of the city now meet, seamlessly, as if nothing had ever stood there.

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1 An extraordinarily rare and valuable gem.^↩
2 Do not worry about causing impurities in the metal; the magic will hold the thing together.^↩
3 Only at ant-scale. Left to its own devices, tends to create vast and complex subterranean complexes.
4 It should be noted that Will hates this.
5 Answers, while coherent, contain only things an ant would know.
6 Calicrats with only 1 HD just act like ants; why did you make that?^↩
7 For Calicrats with more than 5 HD, this period can be measured in hours. Sometimes minutes.^↩