Gemstone golem

Gemstone golems were beautiful but deadly automatons created from various precious gems. The three most common forms of gemstone golem included those made from rubies, emeralds, and diamonds.

Description
Owing to having the appearance of being carved from glittering precious stone, the average gemstone golem had a decidedly more delicate and agile look than the average golem. This was deceiving, however, as a gemstone golem could easily weight up to.

Each type of gemstone golem was said to embody the power of that specific stone's gem magic, a lost and imprecise form of the Art: rubies were said to embody healing, emeralds embodied gates and similar teleportation magic, and diamonds embodied perfection. However, just as gemstones may be flawed, so too were gemstone golems, and these flaws led them to diverge from the intentions of their creators and the powers which they were intended to embody.

Behavior
As a general rule, gemstone golems were not as accurate in following commands as other golems, and could be hard to control. In order to control a gemstone golem during battle, a circle of at least a dozen wizards, led by a superior, was needed. Directing the golem required the circle's complete focus, and any interruption resulted in the golem wandering aimlessly. The control extended for beyond where the circle was first formed. Gemstone golems were deactivated when not in use by a circle.

Gemstone golems could understand verbal commands and language, but could not speak.

Combat
Regardless of the type of gemstone used during construction, these golems were highly resistant to physical damage and were practically unstoppable when unleashed.

Society
By the 14 century DR, gemstone golems were controlled almost exclusively by the Red Wizards of Thay, although many had since gone somewhat rogue, wandering the lands to fulfill partial or garbled versions of ancient commands.

Creation of a gemstone golem did not require that the entire body be carved out of a certain precious stone, as was a widely believed myth. Instead, the golem could be cobbled together from many semi-precious stones, however the golem's "heart" did need to be a large and valuable specimen of ruby, emerald, or diamond. This heart became the magical locus of the golem's construction, and could cause the other component materials to meld into a facsimile of the same gemstone. If the creation process failed, the heart would be lost but other materials could be reclaimed to try again.

A gemstone golem would collapse into a pile of rough cut precious gems and powder when slain. The gems were quite valuable and the powder could be used by wizards for spell components.

History
The first recorded creation of a gemstone golem was by the god-kings of Mulhorand. The secrets to their construction was lost for centuries, until in 1368 DR when the Red Wizard Zulkir Aznar Thrul discovered the ancient Mulhorand manuals that detailed the process and went about unleashing them upon the Rashemaar. However, Thrul lost control of his army, and they scattered across Faerûn as semi-independent constructs.

During this time Thrul experimented with creating golems from gemstones other than diamonds, emeralds, or rubies but the results were always mixed.

As of the 14 century DR, the original means of crafting gemstone golems was only half-remembered, and there was reason to believe that modern methods were based on a misunderstanding of the original Mulhorandi texts.