When we think of immortality, many of us think not of flesh, but of steel. Cold, hard, unfeeling metal will outlast all biological matter. To those not concerned with questions about what is natural, there is much appeal in the eternal artificial.
A Necromaton is an anomaly even among liches, as they are completely and utterly defined by their phylactery. An artificer who turns to lichdom has an arduous task ahead of them: they must make a construct that will house their soul. The process to create these is complex, lengthy, and costly. As a general rule, artificers never settle for anything basic, and knowing that the construct will house their soul can often drive an artificer to add more and more features and capabilities to that automaton, but the requirements for a construct to act as a phylactery for the lich artificer are deceptively simple.
The first one is that the artificer must make the construct themselves. It’s unknown exactly how much of the process can be left to automation, but the artificer must have a hand in the constructs make.
The second one is darker. For a construct to act as a phylactery, it needs a biological component. This is called a soul anchor, and it’s often one of the artificer’s own organs, although bones have been known to work. As much as some artificers wish to rid themselves of the weakness of their flesh, they cannot deny that for their souls to be grafted onto their automaton phylacteries, there needs to be a biological component for the soul to attach itself to.
Once the creation of one of these automatons is completed successfully, it is referred to as a necromaton -- and so is the artificer lich, as they are one and the same. Once the artificer embraces death to turn to lichdom, their soul possesses the constructed phylactery, gaining access to all its features and capabilities. A necromaton’s phylactery is their own mechanical body.
Necromatons understand that replacing their flesh body with one of steel is not enough. It might be harder to destroy a necromaton housing the artificer’s soul, but it isn’t impossible. A necromaton will then create new iterations of itself, more bodies to house their soul in case the one they currently occupy is destroyed, or in case they need different capabilities. A necromaton can do anything they want to do, as long as the artificer can create a body able to do those things. The soul becomes the software that runs through the hardware of the constructed body. Like a spirit possessing a person, the necromaton possesses their own phylacteries at will.
Necromatons are known to create entire armies of automaton phylacteries. These constructs are able to move and act on their own, but they can also be possessed by the necromaton’s soul at any time. These necromantic armies of constructs act as a powerful, unrelenting force against the necromaton’s enemies, but they also act as insurance, since any of the constructs can house the necromaton’s soul if the one they currently inhabit is destroyed.
But, like for any lich, eternal undeath is an ongoing struggle for the necromaton. The soul anchors inside the necromaton’s bodies decay with time, as do the shells themselves. Even steel decays, metals lose their shine, and even if iron is harder than flesh, it can still rust. Necromatons find themselves needing to create and replace their phylacteries regularly, and there’s only so much their old flesh bodies can offer them for soul anchors. Either because of the sheer number of phylacteries a necromaton builds, or because they must replace their bodies with new ones as time goes by, the necromaton must eventually turn to a different source of soul anchors. A living source, a new raw material to use in their construction of new necromatons: and so, the necromaton bends metal and meat, bones and bolts, to create new bodies out of the pieces of their victims in a race to stave off death itself.
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