I stayed up until like 7 in the morning and in my mildly sleep deprived state I wrote a skeleton of an outline for a Dungeon Meshi - Project Hail Mary AU about Rocky and Adrian being Golems with two paragraphs and a shit ton of bullet points bc i couldn't be bothered to make anything coherent apparently so heres the entire draft copy & pasted Lmao
Rocky and Adrien are personal clay golems that are family heirlooms to the Grace family, they are leathery in texture but not quite fully dry to keep themselves together, they watch the party when we sleep because they only require a few hours of rest to replenish water and Mana, they take turns doing this one at a time and will watch each other 'sleep' to make sure they're not both left venerable during their rest.
Rocky and Adrian get severely damaged during a fight and Simon usees knowledge ganed from seeing Senchi with the golems he cares for to help Ryland and Colt repair them with a dencer soil content and Plants to reinforce their structure, extending their rest periods and increasing their maintenance level in exchange for the ability to grow food on the backs of their golem companions in the resource scarse dungeon.
•they run uncomfortably hot before the addition of the plants bc of all the mana running in them to keep them going, the plants cool them down and they use up some of the excess mana to feed the herbs and also the little bit of moss fuzz makes them less rigid and rough to the touch so its better for cuddles.
• They are more like herb gardens than the veggie garden Senchi has going on, they don't have time to replant and wait for harvest so they have nutritional and mana rich herbs they fertilize with blood and bonemeal from monsters they kill.
• they are so old that they've developed fully rounded personalities and started whistling with the holes that were caved in ther carapaces (by who? The maker? Each other? Nobody knows!) To communicate, vary important they don't end up as pets to the party, they are fully fledged members that have their own agendas, personalities and personal belongings. (( idk what the actual lore is to support or oppose this but in my head this is a combinded cause of Them being so old and well cared for; Golems are usually made with a short lived purpose to protect something and they fall apart eventually without regular management, nobody rlly wants to repair a pile of dirt they when they can just make a new one so Golems don't usually get as old as Adrian and Rocky are, and the second cause is the way the family treats them have boundaries and agency, anyone who knows the Grace's know Rocky and Adrian are members of the family and always has been, they would be roughly equivalent to Rylands weird greatx6 uncles in some form, not just family guard dogs.
•" all monsters are dangerous, you can't domesticate them" - Still kinda following the rule here!! Rocky and Adrian can still apex ambush predators, Golems are magical bound to protect their charges and Rocky and Adrian were made to protect the Grace family (secret blood magic influence?), only Ryland and Colt are the only ones truly safe from them deciding you're being too hostile to their charges and dealing with it as they see fit, even if Their charges don't like the method they use :( Colt and Ryland only own them due to inheritence, they can't control them bc they didn't create them.
• ? Ryland repairing them with plants possibly causing him to gain mild influence on Adrian and Rocky as a secondary creator ? Still not pets or fully domestic but they'll listen to reason a little more and their protective insincts extend to Rylands chosen family like Simon. ?
• Rylands inherented Rocky? Colt inherited Adrian? Rocky as the one they bring inside dungeons? Adrian as the one they keep at home to protect the house?
• Rylands Long-term goal beings to learn how to make new Golems like Rocky and Adrian so he can help them have pebbles? Pebbles small and little while their still gaining their sentience and Grace adds layers to them as they get older and develop their personalities more instead of coming out fully baked like Rocky and Adrian did?
This was simply tittled Wip in my phone with absolutely no other context so you know I was hunching over my phone in bed going 'write that down! Write that down!' to every mildly interesting thought.