In his office Leo is working overtime again.
The mountain of paper in front of him was his only companion for the last few weeks since his coworker got kicked out because he got into an argument with our boss over his salary.
Leo stands up and walks over to the office kitchen where the old water dispenser stands and fills himself a glass of water.
He goes back to his office desk and sits down.
After a few sips of water he lays his head on the desk and sighs.
,,I am so tired‘‘
He closes his eyes.
,,Maybe just a short nap and then back to work.‘‘
…….
Leo fell asleep and the world fell silent.
Hours, days maybe a week passed until Leo woke up.
,,Haaaa my head hurts.‘‘ Leo woke up with a terrible headache
,,how long was I sleeping? Shit I haven’t finished today’s documents‘‘
,,I better hurry and continue before even more can pile up‘‘
Leo tryed to stand up but only now did he notice something is not quite the same as when he fell asleep.
,,Huh? Why can I not feel my body?‘‘
When he looked around he noticed another thing. He was in a little corner at the entrance of a cave.
,,Why am I in a cave?‘‘
While he was looking around he tried to see his own body only to be surprised once again….
,,WHY AM I A CRYSTAL BALL?‘‘
Random thoughts about the concept:
I have thought about this concept before personally, but I never did anything with it as the main character being a walking pile of rocks looked like it would somewhat hinder the story and it did not seem too interesting. It would not provide much depth as such a restrictive, simplistic body would make it hard for the MC to make deep connections with society and people. He cant go shopping as the shop will literally turn into rubble! And he can't show emotions well because he is stonefaced, literally! But because he is pretty much a walking tank you can go to really hostile places really early on with little to no issue. If you skip the societal and social interactions, you could make the story about him helping people by wrecking problematic monsters and causing great changes to the world around him thanks to his actions as a mercenary hired by some people who found out he is a normal well meaning dude on the inside or something. Or you could give him a weaker, smaller, sleeker, smoother more human looking transformation as an extra skill to incorporate more societal and social aspects into the story, but say goodbye to intimacy, because who the hell would want to hug rocks!? Actually, nvm what I said in the beginning. This concept is actually fairly interesting! But you will have to use your noggin alot to make it work. It will be a struggle for the MC socially, but you could definitely make a power fantasy out of this. He can make strong, physical impacts on the world thanks to his body and drive the story in an interesting direction. He can also have a picnic in a hellscape where normal people would melt like icecream in a cloudless summer day in africa. Cool!
Dude thx for the comment. That is one hell of a text.
It's your fault that I now have to sit here and answer it... I hope you know that. SO LETS GO. (The following text contains possible spoiler material so if you don't want that skip to the end.) First a Golem can be made out of literally any material so there is a lot of story that you can create just in the process of acquiring new and better materials. As for restrictions on social interaction and the question on who would like a Golem, an example for that is Blue core. Sheyna(I believe was the name?) blue are a pair of demi human and dungeon that is sweet enough that it can give you diabetes(and it started with something like a rape scene). And when Leo's Material manipulation reaches a higher level I am thinking about the options for assimilating flesh and other biomass. And depending on the Mana conductivity the feeling Leo gets through it changes.
So now you have to read and think and a Comment.
A big thank you for taking time to write such a comment.
@Schmidtyyy Thanks. But... I messed up! I should not have assumed that the story was about a regular, normal golem! I should have read it through before commenting. I have read it through now though.
Mount Everest sized freaking text wall incoming! Take cover! Even more random and much deeper thoughts about the concept:
But what you did with the concept of golems is very interesting and cool, using a core to accumulate materials to fuel it's strength. It is more flexible and interesting than the concept of a regular golem in many ways. But it's weaknesses still stands to some extent, but the manipulation skill circumvents it to some extent too, possibly being able to create a face that can show emotions.
However, calculating the mass, volume, density, hardness, toughness and strength of the materials would be a monumental task if it were to be made more realistic, and as such an achilles heel to the concept. Knowing the properties of materials is very hard unless you are a mathematician or physicist. Circumventing this will need assumptions, like assuming iron takes up 4x times as much mass as dirt but gives 16x the hp compared to dirt. As such the golem is 4 times smaller, but 4 times tougher than a full mass dirt golem. The same is with flesh and objects like claws. However, the material manipulation skill meets an obstacle on how to manipulate iron. Will it use a softer material to move around pieces of iron, directly attracting and manipulating pieces of iron like a telekinesis spell or directly bend it? Bending it would be too far fetched I think.
Another thing that arises is that the golem will be completely immune towards specific damage sources. Or might be so tough that it will be nearly immune to anything other than explosions, which forcibly removes material from the core. An endgame golem I would assume would be a mass of magically enchanted objects like swords, dragon claws, trinkets and stuff that are more powerful than steel and/or some kind of rare magical material with pipes chock full of gunpowder able to shoot powerful projectiles made from it's mass and perhaps use the trinket's magical abilities. The enemies would need to power-scale enough to be able to pierce steel with their swords, magic or bites etc to be able to stand a chance against such a golem, or just using powerful explosives. The material manipulation must be severely limited so fights will not turn into zero sum game: Aka either the golem regenerates faster than you can do damage, making the fight impossible and resulting in you getting obliterated, or you literally instantly kill it by being powerful enough to destroy the core before it regenerates. To make the battle exciting is to slowly chip off chunks of mass from the golem that it cannot restore in any viable amount of time. Either the enemy gets killed, or all your mass gets chipped off and your core gets annihilated.
I personally feel that levels should not give anything other than maximum collectible mass, as adding skills on top of potentially being made from a mass of weapons and rifle barrels along with trinkets might be too much. I also feel that it should not be able to obtain special skills through training and actions. For a golem the power is the massive accumulation of powerful materials and items along with rifle barrels made in its body and perhaps magical trinkets that can activate specific, possibly limited times of uses skills. This is unlike humans who uses training and powerful learned magical abilities and strength and toughness empowering levels to become powerful, along with using strong magical items. This is of course if you skip out on normal leveling and skill learning mechanics for the golem that I later mention below.
This brings up the question: Should the golem be able to channel magic into trinkets to activate their magical abilities or not? What will it have to sacrifice
As you said, the story can progress through collecting materials. This brings up two progression path's.
1: Collect better materials and items through going to stronger and stronger areas. The enemies will need valid reasons to be stronger than in previous areas. Essentially it is a story-wide tournament arc. But there needs to be a reason enemies haven't flooded into previous areas to wreak havoc upon the poor n00bs in them. The manga "One piece" does this wonderfully by locking off the power accumulation area from the rest of the world, aka "Grand line" and "New world". There is little reason to venture outside, as all the riches and power lies in this area. There needs to be something big and angry at the end of the tournament like a demon lord or a great treasure that serves as motivation for the protagonist.
2: Collect better materials through occasionally gaining them from occasionally strong enemies. Strong enemies are along with the n00bs, and are perhaps suppressing them. When enough powerful materials are gained by challenging and defeating enough rare big baddie bosses you challenge the ultimate big bad, like a demon lord and win the story. Using antagonists could work well here. Could be monsters and/or humans.
Side characters and/or properly evil antagonists could work well to support and/or hurt the MC, putting emotional weight into the story other than just being a mindless "I get stronk, I kill stronker guy! Huehue! TWOMP!". The side characters should have good reason to fight along with the main character, such as: "The MC is a good friend, and I will follow him to the end!" "Together, we shall purge the world of villains in the name of god!" "The demon lord killed my family and must DIE!" "Let us obtain and share the treasure at the end of the tournament area together, my fellow greedy power-hungry warrior!" This is very similar to how the manga "Berserk" uses powerful demon apostles in random areas in an otherwise weak world that suppresses the poor n00bs through their horrendous powers. Though keep in mind the fact that the MC is a ball surrounded by materials, and social interaction will be a weakness. Weaknesses such as this are actually good, might make the MC more interesting. Could wait for a long time before making him able to show emotion and perhaps talk to make it all the more satisfying and thrilling.
Or well... If you for some reason want to skip the power trip and well deserved power fantasy...
3: The MC suddenly comes across a great treasure filled with super high value and power mass and items to accumulate, power-levels to the extreme and becomes stronger or nearly stronger than anything else in the world, then lives an "Isekai slow life", occasionally instantly obliterating random annoyances, and that sounds boring as ****!
That is pretty much all I can think of about the concept. Thanks for your time.
I'm finding this interesting, do you by any chance want some assistance?
if you have any advise scream it at my face. I never wrote anything and do this just for fun
lets see where I end up.
@Schmidtyyy ok
@Schmidtyyy Can you give me a list of what you like and don't like so I don't give the wrong suggestions.
At first you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention
