The Wandering Hero

Welxx has a long history with Golemancy. He won a Snaff Prize for it, led a krewe that made him famous doing it, and had his entire life ruined by it for a little bit! When WKL Labs finally tore apart and got dissolved, he could have let that send him on a downward spiral. For a while he did. When he was recovering, he began to view it as a chance to start working on new technology instead of mass-produced consumer models.

Now free of his obligations and sitting on top of a Gnashblade-esque fortune to work with, he rolled up his sleeves.

So where did Rocco come from? Two places mostly. He's an idea from when Welxx was an apprentice but was shelved due to a lack of funding. He was disappointed by the lack of overlap between the works of his two greatest inspirations - Oola and Snaff. In seeking to fuse their golematic styles, he hoped to find his own voice in the craft.

Thus, the WLX line of golems was born. Bespoke, custom-ordered machines for the adroit asuran academic who knows exactly what they want their golems to do. No two are alike. There are other WLX models that have been produced and sold, but Rocco is and always will be for Welxx and Welxx alone.

Rocco's official name is WLX-LC-01 and his project title is 'Living Construct.' Sirocco came about as a code name that then turned into shorthand and stuck.

He works by combining two principles; Oola's control schema and power systems using necromancy as a baseline, and Snaff's creative material choices. Sandy from the Edge of Destiny novel was a huge inspiration here.

Volcanic sand with a high iron content provides the form for most of the 'body.' It's malleable, easily sourced, and allows for a flexible shape. Rocco can go completely solid one moment and flow like water the next. The only limits are his own mass and Welxx's imagination.

Life force provides power and control. Specifically, Welxx's own life force. Mournstone crystals attuned to him are ground up and distributed throughout the body to cause an interaction with the sand.

These parts receive control signals from a number of cube-nodes, which themselves are paired to a set of subdermal implants running from Welxx's head down his spine and arms.

These transmit life force from Welxx's own reserves into Rocco's body. Welxx always retains enough to keep him alive and healthy, but any excess he absorbs is immediately shunted into Rocco. No other source will do, it all has to flow through Welxx as the focal point.

This has the knock-on effect of making it so Welxx can't use most necromancy without Rocco, but he never bothered learning more than what he needed to pull this off anyway. He's not really bothered by it.

This makes him the world's worst necromancer! Kinda by default, but that counts right?

It also makes Rocco singularly controlled by Welxx. He can't be hijacked, compromised, or de-powered by any traditional means.

There are no golems like him and there never will be again. Welxx can't reproduce this format without performing several invasive brain scans and mapping neural nets, and he can't attune to any other band of Life force than his own. There's only one Rocco and the technology that drives him is a closely-guarded secret.

Rocco isn't just a dumb mass of sand either. His 'operating system' is an effective copy of Welxx's consciousness, constantly updated as new stimuli and information flows between golem and pilot.

He's tends to speak and act on Welxx's subconscious thoughts when he's active. He doesn't speak much, but chimes in on occasion when Welxx feels more at ease. Given that Welxx is almost always anxious about something, that means Rocco's a golem of few words.

Welxx always keeps at least a little bit of Rocco on-hand wherever he goes. He's even given individual control nodes to friends that can act as a kind of snapshot of Rocco's mind at the time it was separated off, able to converse as if it were the real thing. Whenever they meet again, it connects to the main body to 'catch up.'

He also has a sense of what Welxx wants or needs before Welxx himself knows. It's not uncommon for him to transform into a chair that Welxx takes a seat in without thinking, or into a stepladder when something's out of reach. He even starts looking for food if Welxx gets hungry.