Life Forged

"It was a way for us to punish the criminals who commited the worst crimes on our society. It was reasonable, if they were going to waste their lives, then we would repurpose them. Living constructs and weapons are incredibly useful. They don't need to be fed, to sleep, nor get sick. The weapons developed their own magical properties. But then we started taking criminals of other kinds, volunteers, and eventually some priests used the process to forcibly volunteer individuals. It became ... unsustainable, and we banned it when we discovered the people did not in truth lose their memories, but regained them over time.
"My sealing was not the intended result."

— Kotzuiyrn, from within the Skarzvard Blade

Life Forging is a lost technique of creating living constructs and weapons. The Adrakian Empire used it as a form of capital punishment until demand for golems and living weapons exceeded the number of individuals whose crimes warranted the severe form of punishment.
Certain powerful individuals began using the process as a way to remove inconvient people or rivals, as the soul would have no memory.
The technique was initially banned by the Adrakian Pantheon when the souls within the constructs and weapons began recovering their memories when it had been believed their memories were wiped away.
Unsatisfied with merely banning the technique, the constructs and weapons began rebelling, demanding they have their lives restored to them from before their transformation.
Saint Antral would eventually take advantage of the rebellions and promised the constructs and weapons that she would either restore them to their previous lives, or set their souls free.

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Antral was not able to fully restore any of the constructs or weapons to live, but she did set several souls free, and others were not because they felt they had a purpose they'd not yet fulfilled. Some she herself had lied to in order to gain their favor, and then trapped them.

The Process

Life Forging is a process generally involving a specific rune engraved into the weapon or construct the soul is supposed to go into, and then either executing the person or using magic to extract the soul through some other mean, using the rune as a lodestone to pull the soul toward the item the rune is engraved into.

Related Items

• Skarzvard's Blade