Basically a Wizard creates a couple of golems made from stone with the purpose of working for a griffin. My main issue is explaining how the golems can understand the griffin. It has some knowledge of human language but wants the golems to understand its own tongue, squawks and screeches. Can you help me? Setting is High Medieval Fantasy Thanks
well from a dnd perspective you could have the golemns inately have speak with animals as a free action, or since the griffin will ultimately be their master the caviot of understanding anything their master says. or you can go even further back and when the wizard was constructing the golemn he could of asked for a druid charm or something to let the golemn understand animal speak at will. now if griffin language is an actual language in your world, like common and elven, then you can have the golemns just inately understand it or all languages to be precise.
Somewhat unrelated to your question, but I would consider not using the word 'golem'. Golems are creatures from Jewish folklore, and have a bunch of religious & cultural significance that is often not respected when pop culture media uses the word to just refer to whatever variety of animated creatures. This is particularly a problem given golems are often protectors in folklore but mindless monsters in pop culture, which is a little too reminiscent of old Eurasian deities being used as the names for Christian demons to not so subtly demonise those religions, especially given now many people might know of the concept of golems but not know they are definitively Jewish in origin. There are plenty of other words you could use for the name of an animated stone creature like gargoyle, elemental, replicant or construct, such that if you just want animated stone creatures and don't want to deal with the implications of using Jewish folklore, it would probably be best to use such an alternate term. If you are going to stick with golem, you're going to want to do a little research and have some Jewish people among your beta readers to make sure you handle it right.
The term "golem" is generally well understood in fantasy. I know it is part of Jewish cultural folklore, but it's been around as a fantasy creature for a long time. Have the griffin stick one of its feathers in the golem's head or something, thus giving it the ability to understand the griffin.
I don't think @Syphoenix's representation of golems would have to adhere to a traditional Jewish understanding of them. People borrow from different folkloric traditions all the time.
were talking high medieval fantasy my friend, Golems in such settings are well known amongst most if not all readers that tend to indulge in this genre of reading. They are typically nothing more than magical constructs of varying materials. here let me grab an excerpt from a dnd source book https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/iron-golem this is just one of many varieties of golem in this setting they are just magical robots for the lack of a better term, that instead of computations rely on magic to function properly. They almost never tie back to the originals from jewish folklore and are their own thing simply borrowing the name. Also after a quick search the influence of dnd is what led to golems now or days being more closely linked to the fantasy setting instead of jewish folk lore. And most readers picking up a fantasy novel wouldn't conflate the two.
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Hat off Golems are traditionally made of clay (when i say traditionally I mean in fantasy not necessarily in any particular mythology) and are 'powered' by a spell or scripture inserted into there heads... in this case the wizard could have included the knowledge of the Griffin language in said spell
TBH 'gargoyle' sounds like a perfectly adequate replacement for 'golem'; if it were me, I would just switch to 'gargoyle' after learning what I did about its appropriated evolution and feel happy to avoid the conversation in my work altogether. I generally agree that we should not worry about how our work is interpreted by others because there is always somebody that will find something offensive... but this feels like such a simple change... such that not changing it would feel like I was actively shunning the opposing thought. Also, it's pretty nice to know about a potential controversy before it has the chance to actually become a controversy.
Given that the wizard is creating the golems for the express purpose of serving the griffin, perhaps they could communicate telepathically, maybe through images. That also has the additional benefit of the griffin being able to issue commands to the golems when they're not face-to-face, which could be used as a plot device.
except that gargoyles are those little stone dudes you see erupting from the sides of buildings and are thus well known to readers to be completely different from what they would understand a golem to be... in my view the better choice if one is choosing to avoid borrowing from mythology in not using golem, is to make up a word.
Fun fact: gargoyle are technically architectural features designed to stop water from running down the side of a building. If they don't have that function and are just decorative, the horrible little stone creatures are called grotesques.
and the name comes from La Gargouille a fearsome dragon in French mythology (the word itself coming from the French word for throat) who terrorised the town of Rouen... which illustrates that many terms in fantasy are borrowed from someones mythology and the only way to avoid them is to invent everything (which is not always desirable) back on topic however in terms of a golem being able to understand a griffin... it is no less inherently unlikely than a golem speaking english, so you could just hand wave it as how they were created... another option would be that the Griffin is able to speak whatever tongue is native to the golems, or to communicate tepathically
Although, the OP didn't specify that the golems themselves could speak, just that they could understand the griffin. I'm nit entirely convinced that the how needs to be explained - I think readers will just accept that it's fantasy, therefore it's magic.
The golems themselves aren't capable of speech. They can make noises like grunts and bellows but that's it.
How about this. While the golems are being created, the wizard puts stray feathers and blood belonging to the griffin inside their heads. This allows them to recognise the griffin as their master and to understand its tongue, body language and orders. However in the event of the golems turning on their original creator, the wizard has a fail-safe code that only he knows which causes the golems to self-destruct. Does that make sense?
thats good but you dont necessarily have to have them self detonate, just falling inert would be less of a waste unless u want to use the kaboom for a later plot point.
It's magic, essentially, and frankly when you have moving stone golems, nobody's going to worry how exactly they can learn griffin's language. You can put in basically anything: a drop of griffin's blood smeared onto (or into) each golem might be your best bet however, as blood is connected to magic in fantasy and mythology both.
Out of curiosity, are these "golems" the typical fantasy type stone creatures? Or is there some flex in what they look like and how they are formed?
In instances where a golem is the typical lump of magic rock lumbering around as commanded, the golem is usually linked to the will of the weilder. The golem lacks any intelligence and is only as good as the spell/magic circle is complex. A golem would be a goid fit for an animal that can survey a battle field from above and issue commands telepathically. Keep in mind that primitive golems, like what you've described, are the equivalent of a person in a vegetative state. Zombie-like in nature, they can only follow simple commands. I hope this helps a little.
