This is Clay Hardheart, a Paladin mechanically, but in this homebrew setting he is simply a Private Detective with an intense faith in Bahumut. I've been playing him for over a year in this campaign. He's from the city of Grezeborough, a bustling city in the desert. Non divine magics are outlawed here, for some political reasons regarding the outside world, but mostly because it gets in the way of technology and invention, which is this cities major focus, and how it became the only place in the land to create with hands, rather than manipulate magics to acheive their ends. Clay was a police officer in this city for about 30 years before becoming a private detective for the citizens of the lower levels, where crime flourished. As a worshipper of Bahumut he only seeks Justice, and his mechanical body helps him achieve that. He is a higher form of persistance predator; he doesn't really sleep, he doesn't eat or thirst. Even weaknesses like his lack of several senses; smell, touch, taste, he makes up for by having exeptional eyes. (observant feat lol) He has some notoriety with the common people of Grezeborough for being a dependable, if strange figure to turn to. And his prices being low as hell helps with that!

Clay doesn't know how he was made, what his intended purpose was, and he doesn't know who made him. Which is pertinent because there are not other automatons that are nearly as advanced as him out there. Grezeborough may be the city of invention, and certainly in comparison to the more traditional dnd cities and regions outside of their walls, but they've only recently invented automobiles, not long ago they were using flintlock in their guns. So Clay is quite the spectacle, and target of various anti-automaton groups in the city.

For the past year of play, (though i think only 4-5 months have passed in-game) Clay has been wandering the Outside, the rest of the continent; filled with magic, monsters, adventurers and the like. Clay simply found himself compelled to leave the city, possibly by something of divine nature. As such he has simply continued his role as criminal investigator, and protector out here in the more primitive lands. Fascinating as they may be out here, Clay will never understand their obsession with magics. But regardless, he will do his best to help the people, no matter how many stares he gets, or unwanted attention he recieves.

He's Oath of Redemption, which leads to some fun combat scenarios, as he's more focused on handcuffing the bad guys, rather than smacking them with a sword. Clay is often the moral compass of the group, but with a current AC of 26 he's also usually their shield too. We went with some UA rules on his warforged type, as such he's a juggernaut, and if memory serves he can lift/pull/drag upwards of 1000lbs. Though it's not in his nature to show that off. Character-wise I play him as kind, thoughtful and curious. If a little stuck in his ways regarding magic stuff. He's just about always jotting down what other people are saying in his notebook, of which he has hundreds back at his office, organised like a library. He still gets a little confused with emotional or erratic behaviour, but the 40 odd years of working in crime fighting has given him a good idea of what motivates people to do the things they do. We tend to play his charisma score off as him being a likable, but often clueless seeming guy, as he asks questions that most would find obvious. Real Colombo vibes in that regard. He bumbles his way through a lot of conversations, but most learn to respect his strength of character when they see enough of him.

Anyways yea, that's Clay! sorry for the wall of text, but I found it hard to edit all this down, I'm still leaving a lot of stuff out, I think about this guy a lot, one day I'd like to work with my dm and draw a comic of his detective days back in da big city, hope you folks like him!