The Monsters Know What They’re Doing

I think it’s intriguing that Sigil, purportedly a neutral hub linking all the aligned Outer Planes, nevertheless has such a fixation on maintaining law and order. I mean, sure, that’s clearly something I would hope for from a crossroads used by powerful entities with views that might be wildly at odds with one another. But when law itself is one of those tenets that are up for dispute … I mean, is there any entity responsible for ensuring that all who pass through Sigil are treated kindly, and that all their needs are met? Or that they all get to engage in violative acts against someone else for their own benefit? Or that they can enjoy freedom from any sort of restriction or imposition whatsoever? I’m not the only one who sees the bias here, right?

Anyway, the Kolyarut is part judge, part detective, part enforcer (as opposed to its cousins, the maruts, which are all enforcer). According to the flavor text in Morte’s Planar Parade, which seems a little confused as to whether there’s just one Kolyarut or many—in the stat block, it’s not even capitalized!—Kolyaruts don’t use their ferocious weaponry to punish, but rather to defend themselves and clear away obstacles to their investigations. Like maruts, they take a very “Don’t start none, won’t be none” attitude.

It’s funny, but everyone I know who’s created a warforged player character, including myself, has chosen to make them a cleric, druid or monk. In the lore of their creation, the warforged were purpose-built to be soldiers. Yet it seems to be a universal impulse—at least, among the kind of people I interact with—to have them turn away from that path and toward one of introspection.

If you’re looking for any of that in the stat blocks of the warforged titan and the warforged colossus, you may as well stop looking, because you’re not going to find it. The titan is a barely sentient brute; the colossus, a barely sentient mega-brute. (more…)