A little more than a century ago, a rabbi in Tsarist Russia was accused by a noble of poisoning his child. A complete falsehood, as far as anybody knows, but truth hardly matters when falsehood has soldiers at their beck and call. At his wit’s end and with enemies closing in, he tried something truly desperate: a ritual to create a golem, a creature that could only be created by someone wise and kind, which would protect him from his persecutors and help him flee the country to safety. It wasn’t an impossible attempt; there were dukes and lords even in early 19th century Russia; the rabbi knew things that seemed impossible were just very, very difficult. He succeeded, both in creating a golem and escaping his pursuers, but the cost of his success was deep. To create a golem, you need *two* wise and kind people: one to make the golem and conduct the ritual, and the other to volunteer their soul to give the golem life. 

It’s estimated that there are five or seven true glamim in existence (nobody ever suggests that there are only six). In a world where magick is almost universally gray, turned to personal needs of various levels of selfishness or cruelty, a true golem is a tool that desires to be used for noble means, to bring peace, to make a better future. Rather than this impetus being sealed into the golem by a name of God, like in the stories that stem from Poland and Prague, the impetus is sealed by human faith and purpose. Each golem obeys the whims of a like-minded master – either its creator or a chosen successor. When the golem’s master gives it a command that both the golem and the creator believes will do good and no harm, the golem can pursue it unceasingly and effectively, without the worry of flesh or conviction or even time getting in the way. As far as arcane objects go, it’s not just benign, but helpful.

The only catch is that it’s powered by a human soul. A human soul that has to be ritually, metaphysically, and bloodily extracted from someone the creator loves and trusts dearly, who must volunteer to accept virtual immortality to complete a shared, noble goal. And if you mess up the ritual (which is dependent on several factors ranging from the current calendar date to the volunteer’s dietary restrictions), they die, horribly. There’s a reason why the few rabbonim who’ve obtained or derived the ritual keep it under wraps. There’s a reason why there aren’t more glamim. There’s a reason why even the most desperate hesitate to even try making one. 

Attributes:

Wound Threshold: 150 – A golem will recover all wounds over a week if given access to the material it’s made of. 

Following Valid Orders: 80% – Substitutes for Status, Substitutes for Fitness, Substitutes for Knowledge (Obsession ability).* 

Protector: 60%

Leftover Skill: 40% – This skill can be any skill with 40% or more that the golem’s soul had as a human

*Following Valid Orders can be used for any command given to it by its master, with the following conditions:

• A true golem cannot be ordered to commit an act it believes is wicked
• A true golem cannot be ordered to hurt someone, and will avoid causing physical harm to others while carrying out its orders
• A true golem will go dormant during Sabbath/Shabbes, regardless of any standing orders
• A true golem can only have one standing order at a time

The Ritual:

The ritual used to create the true glamim has been lost. Or hidden. Or it was never written down in the first place, each rabbi independently creating their own ritual and taking their secrets to their graves. Occult researchers are split on the subject, and the rabbonim aren’t talking. What is known about the ritual is below:

• The body must be made out of unrefined material, unshaped by any human hands. Clay is ideal, but stone, wood or metal can also work. 
• The soul of someone close to the person conducting the ritual must be used.
• Both the person conducting the ritual and the soul have to satisfy certain requirements, at least some of them stemming from Jewish tradition (almost all theories agree that both parties can only eat kosher for a certain period of time before the ritual; whether it’s a week or a decade depends on the researcher).
• It’s also theorized that, should the soul be unsuited for being a golem, there may be a process to remove a soul from an existing golem, or exchange it for a different soul.

The Iron Golem:

The Iron Golem was created in the late 1930s, in the opening months of WWII. Poland had been freshly invaded by Nazi Germany, and rumors spread amongst the Jewish community in nearby Hungary that the ‘politically unreliable’ would soon be conscripted into forced labor as part of the war effort. In the bleakness of this time, Rabbi Szerda of Miskolc came across a copy of the golem creation ritual in a disused office of his synagogue. It was his best friend, the sickly poet Leopold Valko, who encouraged him to use it, to use him. After seeing so much trouble in the world, he was desperate to do something besides just writing about it. 

In a single night, Leopold dug out a basement underneath the synagogue where Szerda and others hid from the conscription officers. Then, tunnels were dug, to spirit away conscripted men before they were sent out of the city. As the war grew on and the situation became more dire, Leopold and Szerda helped smuggle Jews out of the country, gave political dissidents safe places to organize, and even stole military equipment, destroying it and reusing it to support the tunnels. All the while, they took no credit and hid their identities. After the war ended, when they found out that a new Jewish nation had been founded in the Middle East, they traveled overland to join it, providing aid to those made vulnerable by the Arab-Israeli War along the way. By the beginning of 1950, they’d reached Israel, Rabbi Szerda found a new synagogue, and they started making plans on what to do with Leopold’s undying body, how to help people.

And then, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a sentence, Rabbi Szerda dropped dead. The mortician claimed his lungs were filled with mining dust.

With no master and no successor, Leopold was stuck for decades trying to fulfill his last order: Szerda had given him a doll and asked him to find its owner, a girl who had run by the synagogue earlier that day. His search took him all over Israel, then all over the Middle East. Legends began spreading about a hulking figure appearing out of nowhere to lost travelers, pointing to the nearest source of water or the closest settlement. For sixty-five years he kept going alone, growing more and more regretful about his choices, until a Joshua Covitz tracked him down. Covitz, an elderly veteran of the Occult Underground and a Jewish scholar, recognized Leopold for what he was, and after talking with him, he offered to help him complete his last order. With some help from the internet, some underworld contacts, and a blackmailed Mossad agent, they were able to find the doll’s owner, a Muslim grandmother living in Iraq, and return the carefully preserved doll. In addition, Covitz offered to free Leopold from the burden of eternity…by replacing Leopold’s soul in the golem with his own. Leopold would be free to live as a human again until Covitz’s body gave out…so long as he gave Covitz a few particular orders, to be carried out indefinitely with the unceasing strength of a golem.