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Description
When I began thinking of maps and storylines for the Judah section of my D&D game set in 526 BCE, I knew off the bat I wanted to build a dungeon based off of the acid trip that is the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is the youngest book of the Hebrew Bible, being written sometime in the 2nd century BCE. During this point in history, the Jews were living under the oppression of the Selucid king Antiochus IV, who had the High Priest Onias III executed and the Temple to Yahweh shut down. This is most evident in the infamous Seventy Weeks of Years prophecy, which like all prophecies made in hindsight conveniently came true to the date, specifically 167 BCE, when a pig was sacrificed to Zeus in the Temple. If you know anything about Jewish culture, nothing could be a more horrid abomination, and it's one of the major events that led directly into the Maccabean Revolt. A fascinating story in its own right, and one which is the foundation of the holiday of Hanukkah, it's sadly beyond the scope of this blurb, so we'll save that for another day.

Internally, the Book of Daniel is set during the Babylonian period, specifically 603 BCE. The story goes that the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II, awoke in a fright from a terrible nightmare. He envisioned a giant statue with a head made of gold, arms made of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of a mixture of iron and clay. At the end of the dream, a big dinosaur-killer of a rock comes screaming out of the sky and smashes the statue like the foot from the Monty Python intro. The only one who was able to interpret the dream was a Jewish servant in Nebuchadnezzar's court named Daniel, who explained that each part of the statue represented four successive kingdoms which would rule Judah before finally being crushed by the authority of God. It's a fairly obvious metaphor for the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and lastly the Greeks, with the rock representing the Maccabees. A fun fact to go along with this metaphor: the namesake of the Revolt in 167 BCE was Judas Maccabeus. "Maccabeus" is not a proper name, but rather his title. It literally means "the Hammer", because 99% of being a rebel commander is having a badass nickname for the dickheads in charge to put on wanted posters.

Design notes, this is one I mostly designed whole cloth, which was honestly kind of difficult. Mechanical beings are ones I still struggle with. Obviously in the story itself, it's just a statue, but I wanted to turn it into a dungeon boss, so I had to design it more like a robot. When I think of ancient robots, my mind usually drifts to the incredible robots of the medieval tinkerer Ismail al-Jazari, or from a more mythological point of view, the automaton Talos from Greek legend. Usually though, reference images I pull up in my search usually either completely oversimplify the design and hide the mechanics under a layer of unnecessary stuff, or they go the opposite direction and overemphasize the robotics to where it's basically a sci-fi mech with a bronze tint. I didn't want to go for either of these, so instead I opted to look into bronze sculptures and try to divide the segments in such a way that made the final design look movable, albeit with difficulty as the parts kinda scrape against each other. I don't know, is "tin man" a more accurate way to describe it? Not sure, but I like how it came out in the end. Normally I specialize in all sorts of colors and crazy designs but I also find the simplistic premises satisfying. Sometimes four colors and simple shapes is all you need.

Description
When I began thinking of maps and storylines for the Judah section of my D&D game set in 526 BCE, I knew off the bat I wanted to build a dungeon based off of the acid trip that is the Book of Daniel. The Book of Daniel is the youngest book of the Hebrew Bible, being written sometime in the 2nd century BCE. During this point in history, the Jews were living under the oppression of the Selucid king Antiochus IV, who had the High Priest Onias III executed and the Temple to Yahweh shut down. This is most evident in the infamous Seventy Weeks of Years prophecy, which like all prophecies made in hindsight conveniently came true to the date, specifically 167 BCE, when a pig was sacrificed to Zeus in the Temple. If you know anything about Jewish culture, nothing could be a more horrid abomination, and it's one of the major events that led directly into the Maccabean Revolt. A fascinating story in its own right, and one which is the foundation of the holiday of Hanukkah, it's sadly beyond the scope of this blurb, so we'll save that for another day.

Internally, the Book of Daniel is set during the Babylonian period, specifically 603 BCE. The story goes that the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II, awoke in a fright from a terrible nightmare. He envisioned a giant statue with a head made of gold, arms made of silver, thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of a mixture of iron and clay. At the end of the dream, a big dinosaur-killer of a rock comes screaming out of the sky and smashes the statue like the foot from the Monty Python intro. The only one who was able to interpret the dream was a Jewish servant in Nebuchadnezzar's court named Daniel, who explained that each part of the statue represented four successive kingdoms which would rule Judah before finally being crushed by the authority of God. It's a fairly obvious metaphor for the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and lastly the Greeks, with the rock representing the Maccabees. A fun fact to go along with this metaphor: the namesake of the Revolt in 167 BCE was Judas Maccabeus. "Maccabeus" is not a proper name, but rather his title. It literally means "the Hammer", because 99% of being a rebel commander is having a badass nickname for the dickheads in charge to put on wanted posters.

Design notes, this is one I mostly designed whole cloth, which was honestly kind of difficult. Mechanical beings are ones I still struggle with. Obviously in the story itself, it's just a statue, but I wanted to turn it into a dungeon boss, so I had to design it more like a robot. When I think of ancient robots, my mind usually drifts to the incredible robots of the medieval tinkerer Ismail al-Jazari, or from a more mythological point of view, the automaton Talos from Greek legend. Usually though, reference images I pull up in my search usually either completely oversimplify the design and hide the mechanics under a layer of unnecessary stuff, or they go the opposite direction and overemphasize the robotics to where it's basically a sci-fi mech with a bronze tint. I didn't want to go for either of these, so instead I opted to look into bronze sculptures and try to divide the segments in such a way that made the final design look movable, albeit with difficulty as the parts kinda scrape against each other. I don't know, is "tin man" a more accurate way to describe it? Not sure, but I like how it came out in the end. Normally I specialize in all sorts of colors and crazy designs but I also find the simplistic premises satisfying. Sometimes four colors and simple shapes is all you need.