Tahsildar

The tahsildars are the armed guardian automata of the Geroni in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). The head consul Orpi of Avlor Aten distinguished them from the automata that serve as servants and labourers. They stand tall on long legs and carry a very heavy metal sword; their faces are eyeless, helmet-like, with glass in the chest, and their armour looks like bronze or copper.¹²³

Design

Their complex design, the work of arcanists, went back to the war between the Geroni and the Inran. They draw in magical energy from nearby and add it to the blows of their glowing blue swords, a design made against the old nature magic of the Inran, and a tahsildar may raise a blue barrier with its free hand. Orpi said that they were not made to raise an alarm by voice, which is why human guards stand with them, though they can sense a presence even when no one stands before them. Unless someone commands them, they act by written fighting protocols rather than by a living mind.⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸

The escape from Avlor Aten

When a band of strangers broke out of their cell in Avlor Aten, they found two tahsildars on the lower floor and one above. The Inran guide Fauna could not shut down their design with her magic, and the band's attempts to disable them were not strong enough. The machines were crushed one by one; each shrank in on itself as it was destroyed and burst in flame, and one drew the flame of another into itself.^91031112

The larger kind on the Aquila road

On the road back to Aquila, the band met larger tahsildars, with thicker armour, a longer reach of arm and sword and an upper body that turned to strike back; their metal was said to be brass and another alloy. With a woman arcanist directing them, they did not have to keep to their fixed protocol and passed over targets they would normally have attacked. When she died they paused, turned their heads and went back to fixed protocols; they can sense magical power and choose their targets by closeness and such power. One wounded Fauna gravely, another struck down Finli's clockwork dragon Safir, and one of them, as it fell, dealt a last blow.^{131415161718192021}

The mage who appeared with these constructs might be an operator who could take them beyond their usual protocol, and they had been sent by Deimos.²²²³