Shelf Golem
The library assembled it from all the never-returned — or something in the library did.
construct · Challenge rating 5
Still alive. Nobody has ended it yet.
Behavior
The library — or something in it — assembled it from all the never-returned: books, files, records the catalogue wrongly calls resolved. It patrols, citing before it strikes; the citations bind in a jurisdiction nobody remembers joining; the fines are not in money. Returned materials reduce it, item by item, visibly. Silence reads as compliance; compliance accrues.
Appearance
Eight feet of overdue material — lashed book bundles, file boxes, loose records — organized around a wooden cart that has been moving itself longer than anyone has tracked. The upper shelves are legible. The bottom shelf is bound in a script no catalogue recognizes, and the bindings there are not cloth.
Physical description
An eight-foot stacked mass on a self-propelled library cart, four iron wheels announcing it two aisles early. Torso and arms are bound bundles of books and files; a hinged clipboard-arm swings out to stamp citations before any strike. On the bottom shelf the volumes are bound in a pale, finely pored material, and the catalogue has never claimed them.
Weaknesses
- properly returned materials — each one visibly reduces it
- the citation process — it has a resolution track, for those who engage it
Resistances
- weapons — confiscated into its body
- fire — it activates something with a protocol name
- silence — read as compliance; it escalates
Hunt it
Shelf Golem is on the list in Horror Story: Gotta Kill Them All. Study it here, then go and find it in the app.