Altar of the Machine

An Altar of the Machine is a squat black monolith filigreed with silvery and multicouloured neon veins that look like circuits to modern viewers. It hums of eerie machinery (think Lou Reed’s Machine Metal Music), making sleep impossible within a mile radius.

The altar comes from a Demiplane of Machines, sandwiched between the Plane of Unlife and the Plane of Metals. An altar is sent imbued with enough energy to break into our reality, then make one of the following machinelife monsters.

Roll 3d6

ROLL	MATERIAL	SHAPE (special ability)	STRENGTH*
1	Silver	Floating Eye (freeze ray & flight)	1 man
2	Gold	Doppleganger (mimic)	2 men
3	Quicksilver	Skeleton (missiles have 50% chance of missing)	4 men
4	Chrome	Hook Horror (leaping ability)	6 men
5	Steel	Golem (deafening handclap)	8 men
6	Crystal	Mek (high speed)	9 men

* Use as Hit Dice for D&D, adjust accordingly for other games.

Silver – Need magic weapons to hit

Gold – Splits into half strength miniatures when hit

Quicksilver – Unharmed by metal weapons

Chrome – Reflects beams and rays

Steel – Attacker must save vs strength or drop melee weapon on a successful hit

Crystal – Blinding ray when fighting in daytime

The created machinelife sets out procuring victims to sacrifice on the altar. Once it has sacrificed a dozen men’s worth of life it can create a new machinelife and both will try to carry out its mission, sacrificing more living creatures and summoning more machinelife to the world until it is overrun.