Part 2 In which a witch starts building a golem

Players:

Marlot
A witch, bored out of her mind with loneliness and has decided the best way to relieve her boredom is to create a golem companion

Jinx
The most useless mostly black cat a witch has ever had

The story continues as Marlot looked through the list of ingredients with growing anticipation.

“I can probably pull this off,” she whispered, “the recipe doesn’t look too hard, the incantation is a bit complex but at least I can tell what it means.” The witch leaned back in her chair, “What to make him out of,” she wondered out loud, “of course clay would be necessary but it says that isn’t the only thing you can make them out of and I don’t have much.” She stood up and walked to her storage closet which was stuffed with any number of odds and ends she had collected over the years. “There it is,” she pulled out a pail of dry clay ‘add water and your good to go’ said the note tied to the handle. A fellow witch had traded the clay for a start off of Marlot’s apple tree, which grew apples perfect for adding spells and potions too. Marlot liked to pretend that it was for poisonous apples, but she herself had never actually used it for that purpose and she was fairly certain that the other witch hadn’t either because the apples also made truly amazing pies.

“There isn’t much here,” she said, looking over at Jinx who was pretending not to watch her every move. “But there is plenty of mud outside, and sticks. That is how I will make him, form the clay around some sticks, make him look like a man, and then coat it all in mud to make him a little bigger. It will be perfect.” She smiled at Jinx who yawned back and rolled over, still on top of the table his black and white feet on his chest.

Outside she went to the shed and found a wheelbarrow and a shovel, which she used to gather some of the mud caused by the rain the night before. The sticks she was able to find were from the foot of her apple tree and she wondered what kind of effect enchanted sticks would have on a golem, “I guess I will find out,” she said to Jinx who had followed her out. She held up a rather large branch, about the length of her torso with a mass of green leaves sticking out the top in random directions like a head of hair, the other end of the branch was still green, it must have been knocked down in the storm.

Back at her table Marlot arranged the other ingredients for her potion in a row and she was rather impressed that she actually had everything, even though most of it was tucked away in strange places, like the small attic and a bottle of dragons blood was under a floor board in the kitchen. She smiled at Jinx as he batted at one of the leaves on the branch and she scratched his ears.

She mixed the clay with water until it became easy to work with and then arranged the sticks and branches to resemble a person. The book said that it just needed to slightly resemble a human with a body, arms, legs, and a head, everything else would be formed by the potion over the next month. She then covered the branches with the clay until they resembled a rather skinny man and over it all she put the mud, which didn’t exactly have the desired effect and looked more like he was wearing very dirty clothes rather than being normal sized. Marlot giggled over her creation, not very witch like, but she was more giddy than malicious. Looking closely at the image in the book she turned his arm so that the inside of his wrist was facing up and into the clay she drew the tree of life, the symbol that would animate her creation.

After her golem was put together she hurried to make the potion, but realized that her largest cauldron wasn’t nearly as big as she had thought, it barely rose to her hip at its highest point but it would have to do and she wondered how short her golem would be if he was small enough for the potion to rise over his head but she didn’t mind, she wasn’t very tall herself. She gently sat her muddy man cross legged into the cauldron and began to poor her finished liquid over him until he disappeared under the dark liquid. Some of the leaves that had made up his hair floated on the surface and then vanished as though eaten by acid. “Jinx, don’t touch this, I’m not sure what it will do to you.” The cat opened one eye in acknowledgment and then went back to sleep. The fire she built under the cauldron would have to burn for the entire month or all her work would be in vain.

Part 1 In which Marlot and Jinx are introduced, and Marlot comes up with a plan

Players: Marlot
A witch, relatively young, old enough to be registered and accepted among other witches and feared by the locals, kind of a loner, and kind of lonely

Jinx
Marlot’s cat. Black, with of the exception of its right front paw and yellow eyes. Fat, lazy, and useless.

And so our story begins, on one not so typical, warm, sunny day after a light sprinkle the night before. Marlot, the lonely and rather bored witch sat at her ‘experiment’ table, covered in books, loose recipes for half written potions, a medium sized caldron with some kind of inky black smoke pouring out of it menacingly, and Jinx, laying on top of some of the papers and watching a spider walk across the table. Marlot watched it too and wondered what she could use it for but decided not to bother catching it, the spider was garden variety and easy to come by.

“So Jinx, what are you going to do today?” the cat’s only response was to twitch his tail and give her a ‘don’t talk to me’ look. “Right, lie there all day and when you get tired of that find some sunshine and lay there instead. Why do I ask?”

Marlot and Jinx stared at each other for a moment until Jinx rolled over and lay on his back instead, his black and white paws curled up on his chest and he closed his eyes. “You have to be the most pointless cat ever, you know that right?” Jinx opened his eyes slightly then closed them again. Marlot stood up and walked across the room to the bookshelf covering one wall of her small cabin. It was your typical witches cabin, minus the gingerbread and candy coating, she also didn’t each children contrary to popular belief and she believed that those fairy tales gave witches a bad reputation. Which is exactly why she kept many of them on hand in case of emergency, then she could just mimic the witches in the tales and make any intruders leave instantly. “Only problem is,” she said to herself as she ran her fingers over the spines of Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, and Rapunzel, “I’m lonely and chasing everyone away kind of leaves me with no one but a lazy cat to talk to.” She paused when her fingers brushed against a spell book, or THE spell book, a dictionary of creatures, spells, magic, and potions every witch needs to know. She hesitated for only a moment then pulled down the heavy tomb and carried it over to the table, staggering slightly under its weight.

She sat looking at it for a moment and even Jinx rolled over and watched her with whatever interest he could muster. “I wonder…” she said to the book, or the cat, she wasn’t sure, then closed her eyes, ran a finger down the pages and then opened it in one big sweeping motion. There was the letter G written in the top corner of the page, but she had bypassed the beginning of the letter and instead found herself in the ‘Go’ section of the book, she looked down the page passing over tiny words followed by a short description and uses, if any. “Goblins, Golden eggs, Golems… Now there’s a thought.” Marlot held her finger over the word for a moment, reading the description, ‘a creature, usually made of clay and animated by a complex potion, and incantation. They are useful around the house but take orders very literally. Other natural fibers can be used to shape the Golem and a caldron large enough to hold the creature is necessary until it is fully complete which takes one moon cycle. The recommended ingredients include…

“That’s it!” Marlot yelled to the room at large, book, cat, and all, “I’ll make a golem, and it can keep me company.” She looked around the cabin, “not to mention, this place needs cleaned.”