BoM/TWS Message Forum

I must be missing something, because I don't see the contradiction.

Start with a person.

>> If you remove anima, essentia, and imago, you get the equivalent of a free golem -- a golem that hasn't had essentia added to it.

>> If you remove anima and imago, you get the equivalent of a bound golem, like the Libra shows how to make.

>> Neither of these are animated.

>> So if you remove only anima, you get a bound golem that looks like a person, but it isn't animated. [Just like the above two aren't animated.]

So what happens if you don't remove anything? Well, if you don't remove anything, then you've not done anything, and so you still have the person you started with, who is animated. Right? A person is substantia, essentia, anima, and imago. If you don't remove any of the latter three, you still have a person.

Okay, so if you have a golem, which is substantia, and you add essentia, anima, and imago to it, you get what a person is. You get a person. So it would be animated, and being indistinguishable from a person, it would be able to perform magic.

Basically, with one exception, you need all four elements in order to have a thing that is alive and animated. Remove one of them, and the thing falls into something that resembles a coma. The exception is when a golem (substantia and imago) shares essentia with a magician, and gains locomotion from that connection.

At least, that's the way I interpret what is going on. As I say, I might have missed something that you have seen.

What I've said, though, leads to other questions. What happens if you remove someone's essentia and replace it with some of your own? Or, what happens if you place anima on a golem that has some of your own essentia? Both creatures are indistinguishable from real persons, so which one is "real" and therefore the master? Or is neither one a master of the other? Do they have any degree of influence over each other? What happens when one of them dies?