Every minion made by the Gridanian goldsmith (you know the one)

[Cleretic]

So a little roleplaying project I'm working on calls for me to spotlight some of the Gridanian goldsmith that made that weird amount of voidsent-focused minions, who also got an equally weird amount of spotlight in the 6.x quests. Unfortunately, he's got pretty terrible SEO as far as compiling that list--several minions don't mention him as Gridanian, and looking for 'minion' and 'goldsmith' leads to a bunch of false positives thanks to all the crafted minions. So I kind of have to go by eyeballing.

Here's the list I've got compiled based on my own minion collection:

• Puff of Darkness
• Wind-up Echidna
• Wind-up Succubus
• Wind-up Calofisteri (not explicitly said to be him, but he is namedropped)
• Wind-up Scathach (inconclusive but likely)
• Wind-up Barbariccia (inconclusive)

I think it's fairly likely that I've missed a few either by not having them or by just not noticing that was what they might've been hinting at, though--it took me a few different reads of Scathach before I realized that was what they could be hinting at. So I'd appreciate if anyone else can fill in any gaps.

Or just speculate about him, that's fun too.

[SannaR]

Not that I feel this was made by that goldsmith I do find it odd that the Baby Brachiosaur has a reference to goldsmithing. As it was a made by a sky pirate that had apprenticed as a goldsmith. I'm still looking through the rest of my minions. A certain site says I own over 80% so who knows if I won't find more.

Edit: looks like both Wind up Omega-M and F might be made by our goldsmith. The end of F's description says he is said to have abruptly vanished, as if swallowed into the interdimentional rift.

[SannaR]

After finishing going through the rest of my minions only two others mention goldsmithing and a search for beauty as we know our Goldsmith did have a thing for wanting to recreate beautiful objects or people it seems both Wind-up Azymea and Wind-up Halone were both made by a goldsmith that somehow wandered into the phantom realm and then recreated both based on the woman he found. Both don't mention Gridania or if they were made by the same goldsmith.

[SdeSpencer]

Personally i would suspect that the only minions specifically likely to be connected to the goldsmith are the mammet recreations of voidsent, anything else seems out of the wheelhouse. It's worth noting goldsmiths in general are the ones who make mammets generally, so just being a goldsmith isn't really evidence

[Cleretic]

Personally i would suspect that the only minions specifically likely to be connected to the goldsmith are the mammet recreations of voidsent, anything else seems out of the wheelhouse. It's worth noting goldsmiths in general are the ones who make mammets generally, so just being a goldsmith isn't really evidence

The problem there is that's not actually a firm rule. Not every voidsent mammet is described as 'wind-up X' (for example, the Puff of Darkness), and not every voidsent mammet is made by him (for example, Wind-up Golbez). There's the notion that he might've made all the female voidsent mammets, but even that might not be surefire with Barbariccia and, if you count her, Calofisteri.

Not that I feel this was made by that goldsmith I do find it odd that the Baby Brachiosaur has a reference to goldsmithing. As it was a made by a sky pirate that had apprenticed as a goldsmith. I'm still looking through the rest of my minions. A certain site says I own over 80% so who knows if I won't find more.

Edit: looks like both Wind up Omega-M and F might be made by our goldsmith. The end of F's description says he is said to have abruptly vanished, as if swallowed into the interdimentional rift.

While I'd love to believe this one, because it mostly checks out, the problem there is that the Gridanian goldsmith didn't disappear in full; he was executed, as mentioned in a couple descriptions. The Puff of Darkness' confirms it was hanging, if you ever wondered how the Gridanians performed capital punishment.

His body is gone (as per the Puff's description once again), but Omega-F's description describes an Ironworks employee visiting its creator to find out he was missing; if it was our guy, I feel like 'he's dead' would be the more important blocker.

[SdeSpencer]

I don't disagree that it isn't a firm rule, however my point was more about what isn't than what is. there's no real solid evidence that the Gridanian Goldsmith ever did anything unrelated to voidsent, and from lore on him he seemed very fixated on the void

[SannaR]

The problem there is that's not actually a firm rule. Not every voidsent mammet is described as 'wind-up X' (for example, the Puff of Darkness), and not every voidsent mammet is made by him (for example, Wind-up Golbez). There's the notion that he might've made all the female voidsent mammets, but even that might not be surefire with Barbariccia and, if you count her, Calofisteri.



While I'd love to believe this one, because it mostly checks out, the problem there is that the Gridanian goldsmith didn't disappear in full; he was executed, as mentioned in a couple descriptions. The Puff of Darkness' confirms it was hanging, if you ever wondered how the Gridanians performed capital punishment.

His body is gone (as per the Puff's description once again), but Omega-F's description describes an Ironworks employee visiting its creator to find out he was missing; if it was our guy, I feel like 'he's dead' would be the more important blocker.

I don't think he actually disappeared into the rift, but pulled an Estinien. Do we have a timeline of his makings?

[Cleretic]

I don't think he actually disappeared into the rift, but pulled an Estinien. Do we have a timeline of his makings?

Here's the very rough timeline of what we know about the Gridanian goldsmith.

1. Lived in Lapis Manalis, made and maintained the Galatea, in particular the Galatea Magna.
2. Leaves Lapis Manalis to pursue 'beauty'.
3. Meets and becomes infatuated with Lady Amandine, the Haukke Manor boss.
4. Performs a voidsent summoning that gets pretty awkward for everyone involved, in part because he summoned a mindlfayer we met in Zero's Domain.
5. Creates at least some amount of the known mammets. (This may have started before 4.) Thanks to 3, it's a reasonable assumption that the Wind-up Succubus was an early one.
6. Gets arrested, tried and eventually hanged for occult rituals; plausibly the one mentioned at 4. This is when most of the mammets are discovered.
7. The Puff of Darkness is discovered at some later point and other location, leading to exhuming the coffin and finding it empty.

So, he was killed and buried. Or at least, managed a pretty good show of looking like he was killed and buried. So either he faked his death, or overcame it; for most of the game's life the former was the far more likely of these, but with the advent of Lapis Manalis suddenly the latter isn't off the table either. Certainly, Galatea Magna shows he's capable of making something convincing enough for the job.

[Iscah]

Certainly, Galatea Magna shows he's capable of making something convincing enough for the job.

He couldn't have faked his death (or at least his burial) with an automaton copy though, or it would still be in the coffin when they exhumed it.

A bit of a missed opportunity, maybe - it would certainly be a neat twist for that to happen. Though it does give a different vibe of "exceedingly clever" rather than "must have invoked dark arts".

For the empty coffin, if he didn't really get buried and then escape it somehow, it would probably require something like an aetherial illusion-clone that will dissipate into nothing later.

[ChoDerecho]

Alternatively, our goldsmith could have *been* a voidsent who ended up possessing a vessel (the actual living goldsmith who lives in Lapis Manalis- after all, there's plenty of voidsent around a reaper's haven). Having found themselves a mortal vessel in their aether-rich new home, they decide to leave to seek "beauty" (and avoid being discovered by people familiar with the original owner of the body), make the mammets in question while out and about, and are eventually arrested for their occult acts (trying to contact friends back home, perhaps?). Being "slain", their host body discorporates as it's voidsent consumes it for energy to make the trip home, leaving an empty coffin behind.