SAM

SAM, more accurately S.A.M. #19 under the Xinsi Empire's naming convention for warforged, is a Gen 1 warforged barbarian (Path of the Beast) and shipwright.

After about 14 years in service, SAM sailed with the flotilla under General Coviel The Waveborn Ruin against Delin and The Ancient Guardian Hydra in the run-up to The Skyfire. Much of the flotilla capsized and SAM was trapped beneath the waves. He spent 5,482 rotations trapped and in low-power mode to preserve himself. In that time he catalogued sixteen species of ocean-going predator, was chewed on six times, and watched a pod of whales pass east to west roughly every 160 rotations. After 16 years adrift, he was recovered by General Xalner on the maiden voyage of the Bragglands flagship The Rex, which was carrying The Chest Of Great Treasure to Vistas Landing.

Since joining the party SAM has grown more bestial. He is still somewhat naive, but formidable with his mutations (metal fins now ridge his legs) and his range of pole weapons. He takes a particular interest in the resolution of The Nascent Silence and in restoring the soul Luxon.

Campaign 2

• In the library at Luggard Dror SAM worked out that his soul was magically imbued, that the process was broken, and that Mechanus, the divine plane of mechanised souls, was speaking to him. He tracked the lifeless warforged of The Nascent Fields and helped restart The Genesis Machine.
• Posed as "Samuel Griegauros Barbarros Enthousiasmos, the Lone Cosmos Sentinel" of The Efficient Sanitation Devices.
• Stole the Watcher's staff, and took the black-ichor greataxe Gore Master after the arena at Wildharbour.
• Serves Hor, a god of revenge. In Fort Obsidian he took up a revenge posting at the Temple of Hor and broke the legs of the labour boss Valen, tried to unionise the guards, and bought 15% of The Bizarre Bazaar.
• Recognised the tentacled creature at The Wreck of the Covenant as the same kind that sank his ship before the Skyfire.
• Shoshana told him his contract was already broken and his soul forfeit, though its second and third parts were still enforceable. Breaking his contract was one aim of Sunder Infernal Pact. He was the signer of the infernal contract scribed by Torganoth for Dispater (a copy's "SAM23" is a typo for him).
• While unconscious in the Astral Sea, he dreamt of a world of only robots.
• Late in 1034, through a cursed artwork in Duskmere, he walked into Mechanus alone and learned what had happened to its ruler in Regulus, until a marut banished him into the sea off Vistas Landing (SAM in Mechanus).
• At The Siege of Talonkeep he sacrificed himself to destroy the massive robot body that Dhum, agent of Orcus, had built for himself. Ebony revived him with his vestige, at the cost of his own wits.

Why SAM is still Gen 1. When Herentor's Veil sealed the south away, SAM and about a thousand other Gen 1 warforged in the north were cut off from the Soul Luxon in The Nascent Fields, so they never went through the machine's cycle of reforging. About 300 years ago Burzum tore the Luxon out, and the ripple disabled the southern Gen 1s, but it could not pass the Veil. The northern Gen 1s, SAM among them, survived. SAM is centuries old; around 1004 PC is only when he entered Xinsi service.

SAM was one of the warforged the Xinsi Empire found as a dormant machine and had forced into life by the mages of The Sapphire Sepulchre, as a servant of war.