shem

vanilla knows three prayers — iron, snow, copper — and answers them the moment the pumpkin lands. the shem is for everything else. two pieces of paper make the slip, one deliberate glyph on it; build a vanilla golem pattern out of any solid block, cap it with a carved pumpkin, and touch the word to the head. what wakes wears what you built it from — brick with its mortar lines, deepslate with its grain, glowstone lit from inside — and its eyes stay the word's, not the body's.

each bodyplan keeps its vanilla soul. the T-shaped plan is an iron golem to every line of code that asks: it defends the village, holds the old grudge against zombies, cracks as it's hurt. the one-block plan is a copper golem underneath — the busy little sorter, pressing its buttons — though a body of brick never gains a patina it didn't earn. and the person-shaped plan (two stacked blocks), which never had a vanilla soul, is given loyalty instead: it remembers who spoke the word, and follows them on foot, at a respectful few paces — a statue walks; it does not blink.

only the material mends the body: bricks repair a brick golem, deepslate a deepslate one, and an iron ingot has no business in any of it. true iron, snow, and copper builds still wake by vanilla's own hand, untouched — the word is only ever for what vanilla shrugs at.

and the fourth plan is a beast of burden: eleven blocks — four legs, a broad 3-1-3 back, the pumpkin hung on its brow — woken into a mount. it carries two riders (the first holds the reins; the second rides pillion), steps a full block in stride, and moves at a camel's patient plod — cargo and long roads, not gallops (the pace is a config knob), and keeps a chest's worth of cargo in its flanks — crouch and touch its side to open it. the cargo spills honestly if it falls, because cargo was never part of the body.