Homonculus

Homonculi are a type of artificial Other created by Alchemists.<ref>Lore Schools
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Material - Alchemy
Produces draughts and potions, among other (generally temporary/consumable) items. Alchemists have incredible versatility, with the ability to create life (homonculi), alter it, heal, destroy even things that cannot typically be destroyed, and otherwise do things at the extreme reach of other schools and practices. The catch is that alchemy, which delves deeper into the search for answers than nearly any other practice, oft sets a high bar for the pre-existing researches already done and for materials used. - Pact Dice: The Practice - Wbow Version </ref> Apparently easy enough for even a casual dabbler to consider making them.<ref>“Yeah, the Duchamps have a lot of practitioners.  Equates to an awful lot of homonculi, apparently,” I said.

“I believe you on that count,” Rose said.  “Ty thought about making some a week or so ago.  But my point is, I hope you can understand if I say I’m not about to turn down help.” - Excerpt from Execution 13.1</ref>

Descriptions

They carry a scent of bad meat,<ref name=":0">“It smells like bad meat,” Green Eyes said.

The thing’s ear twitched. Its head turned, quicker eliciting a grinding noise, like the roll of a tire over gravel, yet audible from two hundred feet or so away.
[...]
“It-” Green Eyes tried, testing, her voice even quieter. When it didn’t react, she whispered, “Smells like the little things back at the house.”

Homunculus? - Excerpt from Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref> but whatever they're made from is not true flesh, inedible even to carnivores.<ref name=":1">Green Eyes lunged, and caught the gargoyle-thing that was chasing Evan out of the air.  She landed in a snowbank with a bit of a puff of snow, before shaking her head like a dog might, killing it.

Evan settled on my shoulder, very obviously breathing hard.

“Couldn’t-” he started.

“Breathe.”

“Could- couldn’t turn.  Or he’d get me.  Used my Evan-mojo, dodge. Kept having to fly away.  Saw a chance, space in trees, big enough for me.  Not him.  Turned, flew here.  Thank you, thank you.  Good mermaid.”

“Bleugh,” Green Eyes said, dropping the gargoyle.  “It’s not meat.”
[...]
“Do you get it?” Evan asked, “Because I’ve flown over this town a lot, and I still almost didn’t get it, especially being distracted by the gargoyle things.”

“Things, plural?” I asked.  Perched at my shoulder, he used a wing to point. They  were flocking.  Them and something larger. - Excerpt from Execution 13.3</ref> They bleed like any other creature, however.<ref>The fabric of the sweatshirt had been wool, but stuff of the Drains and the Abyss and the blood of a number of homunculi and other creatures caked it, long since dried and frozen. - Excerpt from Duress 12.7</ref><ref name=":4" />

Duchamp Homonculi

Uniform in appearance, half the size of an ordinary person, pale, bald and spindly, with fingers like a spider’s legs and no noses or ears to speak of. Their mouths are wide and crowded with teeth, their teeth and fingernails mismatched. Some were diseased and cavity-ridden to the point you could see through them, the rest were so featureless that it almost suggested there was nothing to them but tooth and nail.<ref name=":5">The first arrivals had already showed up at the landing on the staircase where I’d dispatched the clock man. Too uniform in appearance to be goblins, they were half the size of an ordinary person, pale, hairless and spindly, with fingers like a spider’s legs and no noses or ears to speak of.  Their mouths were wide and crowded with teeth. Their teeth and fingernails looked like they’d been collected from people who’d lost theirs.  Diseased, cavity-ridden to the point I could see through some, torn, splintered, crusted with plaque or fungus…

The rest of them were so featureless that it almost suggested there was nothing to them but tooth and nail. They seemed fairly craven, shying away as Eva’s eye fell on them.  Mustering up the courage as more crawled up from downstairs. - Excerpt from Duress 12.2</ref>

Fragile enough to be easily fought off by a human, but dangerous in large numbers against a distracted opponent.<ref name=":6">I wasn’t sure what the story was with the little guys, but they weren’t fighters.  I plunged into and through the water, to appear in their midst.  Four seconds of action, not with any style, but raw brute strength, both hands on the Hyena, slashing at center mass.

Six to eight of them, reduced to twitching bits of gore and blood in the water.

They hadn’t put up much of a fight, but there were a good number of them, and the sheer amount of foot traffic in the hallway downstairs suggested there were more on the way.  If one of the little guys got to someone like Tiff, Ty, Alexis or one of the Thorburns, I was betting they would lose the fight with the human, but from the look of those teeth and nails, the human would get sick pretty fucking fast.  That wasn’t getting into the damage those mouths could do, biting out a pound of flesh.
[...]
The little toothy bastards were climbing over the barricade – a dresser and two chairs piled against the stairs.  Eva was dealing with them much as I had.  Almost effortlessly.
[...]
I emerged, grabbing one of the weedy little tooth-and-claw creatures by the throat, and struggled forward, shaking off others as they scratched and bit me.  My focus was on the mountain man.

Still holding the toothy motherfucker, I slammed it mouth-first into the space where the mountain man’s thigh met his buttock.  Teeth sank into muscle that stood out like steel cable, and the force of the hit dislocated the little guy’s jaw.

The rest were clustering on me, each no more than twenty pounds, but there were enough of them that I was weighed down.

I let myself fall, moving out to the nearest reflection.  The creatures fell away as I disappeared.
[...]
Behind the automaton, another group of Others gathered.  The small toothy motherfuckers were heading upstairs, climbing up the railing to head for Ellie, Andy, and Evan.

Fuck.

“Those tiny fuckers!” I shouted.

Eva spoke without taking her eyes off the mountain man.  “Homonculi from Sandra’s extended circle.  Anyone who loses a fight to one deserves to die.”

Homonculi.  Right. - Excerpt from Duress 12.2</ref><ref name=":7">Without even looking, Callan barreled into the left arm of the clockwork man.
The arm didn’t budge.  Metal, held firm by resistance, like a piece of the building. Had we been more coordinated, maybe Ty, Tiff, and Alexis might have been able to ease up the pressure and stop trying to push the doors closed, giving the clockwork man less bookcase to leverage himself against, but we weren’t, and they couldn’t.  If they eased up, there was nothing to stop him from simply striding inside, the remaining Others following.

Callan sprawled at the automaton’s feet, and one of the homonculi seized the opportunity to bite deep into his thigh.

More of the homonculi swarmed him, burying him beneath their collective mass.
[...]
She took the lead, grabbing the chair by the desk.  Holding it by the backrest, she swung it at a homonculus, killing the thing.
[...]
In a courtroom or business meeting, she would have been a tyrant.  Now she was the second tallest person in the room next to Callan, who was in the process of losing a few feet of height to tooth and claw, and probably the heaviest.
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Callan was still struggling as he was eaten alive by both the toxin and the homonculi.
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More homonculi slipped into the room. Kathryn swung the chair, striking two, and the remainder backed away, unwilling to venture further.
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It said a lot about just how shitty the homonculi were in a fight that Ty, Alexis and Tiff were fending them off pretty damn well with periodic kicks, while still holding the bookcase-doors in place.
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I was also aware that there were a few homonculi lurking about.  One or two that had apparently collapsed as Kathy had hit them with chairs or one of my friends had kicked them were gone now.  Slipping away while our collective attention was elsewhere. - Excerpt from Duress 12.3</ref>

Their teeth and claws were nasty and seemingly poisonous.<ref name=":6" /><ref name=":7" />

Smart enough to avoid threats that have taken out their comrades and to feign unconsciousness so they can slip away.<ref name=":7" /> Also smart enough to fear a Djinn or Witch Hunter.<ref>The Djinn turned his back, walking away.  It was going to come back, most likely, and it was going to act.

Fuck.

Big and bad enough that the brainless little homunculi were afraid to approach while it was taking point. - Excerpt from Duress 12.5</ref><ref name=":5" />

Gargoyle

A type of homunculus that mixes stone with calloused ossified flesh.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">She moved with glacial slowness, scaling the side of the house.

If I looked, I could see some of the homunculus.  Its flesh looked like it was ninety percent callus, the worst sort of callus that appeared on the feet, as dirt and sweat colored it yellow and gray. Being homeless, working for a farmer, living at Carl’s commune, I’d had chances to build up some pretty gruesome calluses.

But it went a step beyond.  Large patches of its flesh had almost ossified, or calcified, or something. It, in simple terms, looked as tough as dammit.

Makes me think of those biopunk movies, I thought.

Green Eyes reached the roof.  Helped in being silent and unnoticed by Evan’s presence.

As she moved through the snow, though, a lump of snow fell from the roof.  A miniature avalanche, much like the one I’d created earlier.

Green Eyes pounced on the gargoyle, setting her teeth into its neck. Her tail scraped and stripped flesh from one wing, rendering it to tatters, and one layer of flesh from the thing’s side.  She made a screeching noise, and the thing howled at her, in return. - Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref> Carved stone hair, glowing eyes, wings, and a veriety of natural weapons (horns, claws, spikes down its spine.)<ref name=":3">A gargoyle.

More animal than person, it had a jutting jaw and hair that was carved out of stone. Its eyes glowed. It had horns, claws, and wings, with spikes down its spine.

It was perched on the edge of the roof, above the back door where Duchamps were filing into the house. Its head swept from one side to another, moving like a security camera might. Except this security camera was attached to something the size of a small car. - Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref> They can serve as extremely agile flying minions<ref name=":1" /> or rooftop sentinels.<ref name=":3" />

Although they may look armoured, Green Eyes was able to flay even a larger gargoyle apart with ease.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":4">Green Eyes and the gargoyle fell from the roof, in a heap.  She was covered in blood, and I had no idea how much of it was hers. - Excerpt from Execution 13.8</ref>

They can be as large as a small car,<ref name=":3" /> or small enough for Green Eyes to catch in her mouth.<ref name=":8">I could see Ty at the end of the hall.

Three dead things that might have been gargoyles or winged goblins lay beside him.  He was unaware of me as he swung his hammer to finish crucifying one, affixing it to a picture frame by slamming a nail through its wrist and wing.  He rose, pressing the picture frame against the window, gargoyle sticking out- Excerpt from Duress 12.1</ref>

Like the other homunculi, they seem to have been mass-manufactured.<ref name=":1" />

Tyler was able to repel them using the corpses of their bretheren, via the principle of like repelling like.<ref name=":8" /><ref>“I put a diagram on the window,” Ty said.  “There’s stuff out there.”

“Of course there is,” Eva said.  “But maybe that stuff is easier to deal with than this stuff.”

“The diagram, that the crucified bat thing?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I figured like repels like, so… what better to scare off the gargoyle-bats than a dead gargoyle bat?  I was improvising.”

“I don’t see any gargoyle-bats,” Tiff said.  “Maybe it worked.” - Excerpt from Duress 12.2</ref>

Homunculus-Bird

A magpie with a caricatured human face instead of a beak, able to act as a mouthpiece for it's owner to hold remote conversations. Created and utilized by the Briar Girl;<ref>“Briar-”

A bird landed in front of me, a storm of wings and feathers.

Black and white, instead of a beak, it had a very human face on a tall head, pale, with features reminiscent of one of the statues on Easter Island.  Exaggerated, stern, any eyes hidden beneath the shadows of a heavy brow.

“Thank you for answering,” I said.

“What are you doing, calling me?” the thing asked, speaking in her voice.

“I want to deal,” I said.  “I know what you want, you know what I want.  We’re going to talk sooner or later, so let’s talk.”

“Follow the homunculus,” she replied.  The bird-thing turned to prepare to fly away.
[...]
I trudged through the snow, while the homunculus-bird circled back to keep me in sight, allowing me to follow.  The
[...]
Rose continued, “The homunculus, I recognize that word.  Manufactured life.  You made it.  A lot of these Others are tools, aren’t they?  Hand crafted Others?  They’re weapons as much as that hatchet is.” - Excerpt from Breach 3.1 </ref> it's unclear whether she used alchemy or some other method.

References

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