BoM/TWS Message Forum

This is a direct quote from the old chapter “Of Golems and other Grotesqueries.

"You see, in making the golem the magician must imbue it with a bit of his essentia, and that--"

"Do what with what?" Keith asks.

"Imbue it with essentia," you repeat, and sigh. "Essentia is a metaphysical element in a human being. It's like a piece of him. It's part of what makes you into, well, you. It's not something physical, like DNA, but it is unique to each person, like DNA, and there are ways of getting it out of a person and into something else. There are ways of getting essentia out of each of us, and into things like this.

"That's important to the spell, because it means that the golem is the slave of the person whose essentia has been used to execute the spell. It doesn't matter what mask you put on it--" You pause; there are exceptions; but you pass over them as irrelevant for the moment. "It doesn't matter what mask you put on it, the resulting person will be the slave of whoever's essentia was used to make it. This golem is the slave of Aubrey Blackwell. That means, Cameron, that if we put your mask on it, it wouldn't necessarily obey you, or even like you particularly. It might feel toward you as you feel toward it. It might regard you as an imposter, and seek to do away with you. But however it feels, it would have to obey Aubrey Blackwell."

"So it would have to obey you?" His eyes narrow in anger and fear.

"No, because I am not Aubrey Blackwell. I am impersonating him at the moment--and I can't wait to end the impersonation," you add, for you can tell Keith is about to renew his demand that you quit the mask. "I am Will Prescott, and it is not my essentia in this golem."

You gesture them to follow you back downstairs.

"These are golems too, of a sort. The golem upstairs requires soil from a graveyard. A great deal of soil. The spell that creates these golems, however, requires a living human body and only a little bit of soil. So, yes, these are transformations of our friends. And because they are golems, they contain some of Blackwell's essentia. That is what would make them his slaves, if we were to set masks on them. Even if we put your mask on Caleb here, creating another Cameron Huber, it would be Blackwell's slave."

"Fuck," Cameron says. "He could make an army. He could replace the school. The whole world."

"No, he couldn't. There is a limit. When you put essentia into a thing, you are putting yourself into it, and there is only so much of any one person to go around. There is no neat formula. It depends upon the person, and the spell, and the circumstances, and even upon unknown and unknowable variables. But beyond a certain point, it will simply break down. The spellcaster himself will shatter, and all the pieces will become independent. Not independent people. Rather, they will be the remnants of a person." They look at you quizzically. "It's like if you drop a glass. It destroys the glass, but the pieces remain. You can't put them together again, but each of the pieces is not itself a glass. There are only pieces left."

Cameron looks from one statue to the next. "Are you saying he broke himself?"

"I think that's exactly what happened." You lean back on the edge of the table. "The man is not an idiot, and he knew what he was doing. But he was desperate. He wanted the book, and he also wanted to be rid of all the witnesses who knew about the book. At first he thought he could kill several birds with one stone. By turning Lucy, and James, and Carson, and Sean into golems, he could build himself a supply of golems while also disposing of witnesses. With four golems, one is safe as houses. With five, there is only a negligible risk of disaster. With six, a much greater risk. With seven, a terrible, terrible risk."
You point at the statues, counting them. "He started with the one upstairs. With Lucy and James and Carson, he had four. After capturing Caleb, he had five. He should have stopped there. I'm sure he meant to. But then these two--" You point to Joe and Frank. "--appeared. They had to be disposed of, and given who they were, he could only be safe by turning them into golems."

"I'll ask again, who are they? Why couldn't he just kill them?"

"I told you, they are a species of magician, and death for them wouldn't have been as safe."

"Fuck," Keith gasps slowly.

"I almost pity him," you murmur. "The agony it must have been. Knowing he was running such a terrible risk either way. He caught them, rendering them unconscious. He probably pulled out what little remained of his hair--" You tug at the fringe above your ears "--as he tried to think of another way. But then he made the plunge. He transformed this one--" You point to Frank. "And then he transformed this one." You point to Joe. "And that was the fatal stroke. He broke."

The clocks in their corner tick asynchronously, shattering time with each cli-clack.

"I deduce that he was wearing Sean Mitchell's mask as he worked. Sean revived. Or, rather, a thing that thought of itself as Sean revived. He-- It-- Would have been horrified by what it was doing, by what it 'remembered' itself as doing. And it would have known that there was another person beneath him, inside him. The person who had made him do those things." Your face draws up in pain as you remember Sean, stumbling out of the tunnel; Sean, begging for your help; Sean, falling to his knees, screaming to remove a mask that he was powerless to remove. "If we find Sean, then we will find Blackwell. Or what remains of him."

Seuzz’s wiki says that normal Stellae can have up to 12, and that Glundandrae can have up to 20, but that page hasn’t been updated in 4 years, so something could have changed lorewise to make it the 15 that Nostrum said. I personally remember that in a couple places in both BoM annd TWS itself that directly said Stellae essentia could only be safely divided them into 10 pieces, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the wiki was wrong.