How are metal gamin different?

[Grimcleaver]

In the Fated Almanac, the spell for conjuring gamin lists a whole bunch of subtypes, after which there's a box section that says how metal gamin are something different and that only a handful of people know the secret of producing them. Looking at their art, it's pretty different too--the other types all look like spunky imp/goblin things made of whatever element, whereas metal gamin have an almost stonelike body and metal masks, almost like tikki masks.

So who has the secret of making them? Are they an old Malifaux thing? Are they a Union thing? Associated with the Rider?

I'm just curious. The Fated in our game have blasted a big hole in the slums of Riverside with about fifteen sticks of dynamite and toppled a nearby building into the whole, which in turn collapsed that section of sewer into an even older section. Down there in the dark I plan to have them run into this big Pyramid Head kinda' thing called the Organ Grinder, a condemned Nephilim ogre like Killjoy that's borged out with pressure gauges for eyes and chained to an enormous crank that creates creepy freaking music from an enormous subterranean calliope. I'd like him to control some weird monkey like things, but I'm unsure what I want to go with, so metal gamin are one of the things I'm looking into, because they look kind of odd in a cool way. But I want to know more about them first.

[Sunspotter]

This is one of the malifaux lore things I actually have the answer to!

Metal gamin do have ties to a specific subfaction, more specifically, Mei Feng and the Foundry. They're apparently made of some form of living metal that functions very similarly to organic tissue ,hence why they have smooth bodies and defined musculostructure. It's very heavily implied that only the foundry knows how to make Metal Gamin, and only Mei herself knows how to make Rail Golems (which, i beleive at one point, it's implied that she can make on the fly, but lies to the union about the difficulty in their production in order to exploit the M&SU for resources)

Other gamin are apparently tied to malifaux's inherent magic, which is why the gamin subtype exists. essentially, the way to look at it is that at some point, Mei found the proper "metal" immuto, and has fiercely guarded the secret to it ever since.

Otherwise, as far as the sewers go, good on you. it's always cool to see what sort of insane terrors people come up with for the special hell that is the malifaux city sewers

[tmod]

46 minutes ago, Sunspotter said:

This is one of the malifaux lore things I actually have the answer to!

Metal gamin do have ties to a specific subfaction, more specifically, Mei Feng and the Foundry. They're apparently made of some form of living metal that functions very similarly to organic tissue ,hence why they have smooth bodies and defined musculostructure. It's very heavily implied that only the foundry knows how to make Metal Gamin, and only Mei herself knows how to make Rail Golems (which, i beleive at one point, it's implied that she can make on the fly, but lies to the union about the difficulty in their production in order to exploit the M&SU for resources)

Other gamin are apparently tied to malifaux's inherent magic, which is why the gamin subtype exists. essentially, the way to look at it is that at some point, Mei found the proper "metal" immuto, and has fiercely guarded the secret to it ever since.

Otherwise, as far as the sewers go, good on you. it's always cool to see what sort of insane terrors people come up with for the special hell that is the malifaux city sewers

According to the M2e book Mei Feng discovered both how to make Metal Gamin and Rail Golems. She taught Ramos how to makd Gamin as a way to gain his trust, but lied about the difficulties involved with making Rail Golems in order to maintain her standing with the M&SU while stille retaining a powerful monopoly for herself...

[Ampers&nd]

if you are looking to make something a bit like metal gamin, it's worth looking into the Neverborn 'Geists', as they seem in many ways to be naturally occuring elemental creatures rather than the summoned Gamin of the Arcanists. We know Waldgeists are tree creatures, and Kaltgeists are Ice monsters, all of which just exist without being created so there's no reason there couldn't be Eisengeists, (Iron) roaming the sewers under the industrial district. (or Stehlengeist for steel etc) 

Take the gamins rules and look at a geists rules and see what you can come up with, where they cross over and what sort of creation it would be. I might do it myself as an exercise!

[solkan]

I don't know.  If you just want "weird monkey like things", I'd point out the mechanical dove equivalents in the Dark Carnival box set were just reskinned mechanical doves.

I bring that up to point out that it's okay to make something look different but be equivalent to something which already exists.  And it's easy to explain how a bunch of constructs got made a long time ago, became lost, and got "adopted" by someone/something else.   

[D_acolyte]

I believe that metal gamin and whisky golems are consider different because they are not elemental constructs unlike other gamin and golems.

[Ampers&nd]

did these in my lunch break as you piqued my interest. 

some off the cuff fluff-

An Eisengeist is the living embodiment of the industrialised areas of malifaux city, usually found prowling the sewers and catacombs beneath the largest factories they are amalgamations of discarded scrap and junk that form a ramshackle whole. Usually man sized, they take the shape of both men and beasts in form, and stalk their territories in packs of two or three, always on the look out for more scrap and iron to add to their ever changing bodies. 

A Rust Gamin is the failed attempt to create a Metal Gamin by someone without the proper immuto. Although not as resilient as their more fully formed cousins, the arcanist responsible found them useful guards and created an unknown amount before meeting his demise at the hands of the guild. The Gamin now wander the industrial zones, devouring metal for sustenance and causing untold amounts of damage to factories and railways in the process. Mei Feng has an active bounty out on Rust Gamin within Malifaux city, as they are starting to seriously impede her efforts to enlarge the railways. 

 

<edit> (the range on magnetism should be y18, not y2...)

[Grimcleaver]

Sweet guys! Thanks. I definitely love the idea of eisengeists. That's just fantastic.

As far as the monkeys--I want something with ties to oldMalifaux, Killjoy and (educated guess) probably Titania. I like the idea that they might just be new--reskinned metal dove kinda' things, in this case gargoyles made of metal tentacles (maybe using undead nephilim tots as an armature or not). All the old malifaux constructs we've seen so far seem to be some mix of Kythera style interlocking gears and Doc Ock arms.

Just some musings. What do you guys think?