Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: For today’s postings, I’ve selected a number of lore texts that all share a common function: they answer questions asked to me by people on Discord, at one point or another. This final piece expands on an element briefly mentioned in a different piece of lore, trying to answer the question of what the Dvorak Golem is.
The Dvorak Golem is nothing else but a nightmarish tangle of ethical issues.[3][7][15][16]
The Golem is often attributed to the work of Anton Dvorak, but that isn’t entirely true. Their most likely actual creator is the entity known as The Branch That Bears The Fruit Of All Trees[1][2][3], an Elben Genomancer who worked with Dvorak on this project, operating on stem cells extracted from Dvorak’s body. The Golem is a genetically modified human, and one likely in possession of a human mind despite the physical alterations inflicted on their body.
So that is the position we should start from:
They are human.
From there, the issues can be split in two, their creation and their treatment as a living human being.
The first is a complicated subject without a clear and easy answer. It can be argued that Dvorak had an incomplete understanding of the processes employed by the Elb Genomancers he worked with. According to Dvorak’s journals, he was convinced that the Golem would be a “soulless existence” that would be “an extension of himself”. Yet, they were no such thing. The Golem possesses a completely autonomous mind and its own presence in the Dreamlands, which has been judged to be equivalent to a 15-year-old child (despite the Golem being 33 to 37 years old at the time of the evaluations) by multiple independent researchers.[6][17][18]
However, the treatment of the Golem as a sentient, sapient being truly illuminated the depth of the issue. To begin with, we should note that we only refer to them as “the Golem” because Anton Dvorak never gave them the courtesy of a name. Instead, they were treated as property, experimented on, and ultimately, met their end due to the callous treatment.[6][7][17][18]
In the first chapter of this dive into Dvorak’s project, we will examine the specific forms of arcane and ontological technology employed in their conception.
In the second chapter, we’ll retell the story of their life as precisely as it can be reconstructed from Dvorak’s journals and eyewitness accounts.
In the third chapter, we’ll discuss the moral issues behind the creation of sentient/sapient beings.
Finally, we will present our own guidelines that we believe should be adopted as the standard for such projects.
Our goal is not to stifle the pursuit of knowledge but to ensure this pursuit does not turn us away from moral and ethical paths by which our understanding of the Cosmos may be expanded. We should not become the monsters that we fear.
Esoteric Musings... 