What were your warforged goals?

[nickl_2000]

For those that have played a Warforged, what was it's goals? What was it trying to accomplish with it's life?

[Contrast]

They were created as an assistant and companion by an artificer/wizard who vanished in the months prior to the Mourning. Afterward no-one was particularly interested in trying to investigate or discuss the disappearance of one person and they were just assumed to be one of the many dead. The PC didn't believe that and spent their time trying to track down old contacts of theirs or forays into the Mournlands to try and find any clues.

More broadly, they were content to simply make themselves and their friends comfortable and try and help the world recover from a time of war. They didn't have any particular interest in the idea of warforged as an independent people/culture and actively sought to oppose other warforged with nationalistic or violent tendencies.

[Naanomi]

We have one who was built for a purpose but never used (he was literally built to run a specific magi-tek cannon that never got built itself); and lot of his story is really trying to find a purpose beyond its own ‘failed reason for existence’... all while fighting the urge to solve all problems by blowing them up as he was programmed to do

[Telwar]

Mine isn't quite sure. He is about 10 years old, and his primary function was to serve as a bodyguard/batman for a Cyran naval captain. He got really good at punching people in the throat for his captain.

After the Mourning, the captain went all Heart of Darkness in Q'barra, and Furrow wound up with a deed to 40 acres in Valenar that he rapidly discovered was not going to be honored, so he hitched up with a cattle drive and is now going through Curse of Strahd. Along the way, he got converted from a 14th-level monk to a 1st-level cleric of the Silver Flame (8th now).

So I guess he's trying to figure out what he wants to do. Keeping this adventuring party alive seems to keep him busy for now.

He does also want to live forever, in order to spite a rakshasha that his party inadvertently freed. They did extract an oath that he would not harm them or anyone else while any of the party still lived. But that's a side effect.

[nickl_2000]

There are great, thank you everyone who has put things in there. I'm looking for inspiration and wrapping my mind around how a Warforged really thinks.

[da newt]

I think a big part of it depends on how warforged in your world are created.

If the 'soul' that inhabits the constructed body is also created new when the Warforged is built, then they can begin with a blank slate, and progress like any other living creature (but I do think it would be fun for the soul to start just like a human baby and need to grow up to learn rather than starting like a psuedo adult). I also like to mess with the existential - "Am I really alive?" "Am I a person or a thing?" "Do I have free will?" "Am I property?" etc.

If the 'soul' that get's put into the machine needs to already exist and be found and bound to the new body - that opens up a ton of RP possibilities. What/who was the soul before? Was it forced into this arrangement or did it volunteer? Why? etc. I find this option to be much more RP interesting and it allows for more emotional motivations.

Or, are they just made up of some simple computer-like code? A few directives and operating procedures, nothing more - then with time and a bit of AI self learning, they can become more and more 'human' as they grow?

[togapika]

Trying to prove to people that he wasn't a warforged, but in fact a gnome stuck in a powersuit of his own design

[Danielqueue1]

Escape the artificers who wanted do "decomission" it after it failed its design goals. Then, explore and see the world and its wonders. After finding out they were powered by living people's souls, they decided to find a more efficient process. After turning evil due to plot occurrences, they decided to research ways of creating more souls to use (instead of the good aligned not-use-souls-at-all option)

Ended up deciding that if you put 2 compatable meatbags with souls together you eventually wind up with 3. If the process could be made more efficient (such as removing the "meatbag" part) they could have an unending supply.

Character was politely handed over to the DM and became a villain.

[Pex]

Currently playing one now. He's trying to figure out if he has a soul. He knows and accepts he's alive, but a soul is another question. He was artificially made which is why he's not sure. He has emotions and is not trying to become human.

[Phhase]

I'm currently playing a warforged variant "named" Nobody. He's an absolute unit of iron, piss, and vinegar. He was originally built by a mad scientist as an assistant. The scientist treated him much less like a person and more a tool, and observing the difference between how he was treated and how the scientist's colleagues were treated has made Nobody rather contemptuous of organics. To him, they are all merely pretending toward goodness and altruism, and in truth are all selfish and greedy. The scientist died due to one of his experiments one day (It was, in fact, NOT Nobody's fault), and Nobody took over his lab. Looking through the scientist's notes, the notes on how he had been created were lost, but he did find a secret schema, written in code. Since his creator had a habit of saying things like "I AM A GOD!" (as they do), Nobody assumes it is a method of Apotheosis, and he travels to gather the ingredients for it as well as to find someone who can decipher the code. Why? Because, as the only one of his kind in a world built by the gods for a race he disdains, he is incredibly lonely. He just wants kids, in the end. Additionally, he has some sympathy and kinship with the Dark elves, since in this setting they are something of a marginalized "untouchable" underclass to the elves, so he appreciates that they too, know what it's like to be outcast.

[nickl_2000]

Okay, the idea that just came to my mind just got very dark. The PC was build of bone and metal to begin with and is trying to get the bones build the rest of his body out of bone and then a regeneration spell cast on him to make him truly humanoid.

The harvesting of bones from dead creatures (or hunting creatures for specific bones) gets very CE very quickly.

[samcifer]

I played an artificer/paladin who worshipped Baphomet, but never really did much with that. At the end of the campaign I became a Unicron-like god.

My main idea for a wf is one who became a wizard and is travelling in search of the secrets as to how the worforged race was created so they can reproduce and not go extinct as a race.

[Daracaex]

I played a Warforged gish on several occasions (swordmage in 4e, Paladin/Sorc in 5e). First incarnation believed his purpose was to protect the people of a civilization that no longer existed, and decided that duty would carry over to the people who still live in the area. Second incarnation was similar but replace a country with the material plane, as he took the Oath of the Watcher to defend against extra-planar threats. In both instances, he was in reality built as a prison for a dangerous elemental primordial spirit which was the unknowing source of his magical powers. I had the character know nothing about this, just handing the information to the DM and telling them I was open to whatever they decided to do with it.