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Creature

Sand Homunculus

CanonOfficial lore from the booksBoDp. 36-37

A Sand Homunculus is a humanoid servitor made of sand by a Sandshaper. The magic of the Sandshapers comes from the crystalline dunes of the Desert of Time, and it shifts as the magical energy around them shifts, much as the desert itself does. Sand magic is no easy art: it demands long training, which has much in common with the training of conjurers, and Sandshapers are known for calling forth with great precision things that are usually hard to make manifest.1

Sand is exceptionally good at holding magical energy, and sand sorcerers draw their power from it.2

Making a homunculus

A Sandshaper can shape any loose earth nearby into a homunculus and then animate it, or call one into being at once through sorcery. The servitors require their maker's concentration, as a spell does. An active homunculus serves for up to a day, after which its maker must spend more of their magic to keep it active for another.1

A homunculus is a construct. It understands every language its creator knows but cannot speak, and it senses what is close around it without sight, being blind beyond that.2

Glass and grain

A skilled Sandshaper can change a homunculus for a day at a time. Glassified, it turns to glass and becomes transparent, so that it is hard to spot by sight. Granulated, it loosens into a large, drifting body of grains, practically a creature of the air, and it can fly; the space it fills is hard to see through.2

Notes

  1. ↑BookBook of Dead, p. 36
  2. ↑BookBook of Dead, p. 37

Sources

This article draws on:

  • BoDBook of Dead(Bad Badger Games, 2024), pp. 36-37

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