My Lords Commandant,

Attached to this message is part of a stolen report from the Tanis Imperium regarding their infernal walking machines. Your servant’s agent was unable to acquire the full report, but nevertheless its content is significant.

...a construct’s “name” has three parts to it, and while long, the parts themselves are laughably simple to figure out. The first is notated “Number from Another Number,” or perhaps “Number from Other Number and Yet Another Number.” The first Number serves as an identifier of sorts, akin to the name of a real person, like our current Seneschal, Duchan Mannaghen. The second and third, and no doubt fourth, fifth, sixth and so on, are the “surname” of the construct. Markus from Then and Yllys, for instance, if I were to give a human analogy.

The second part is even more intuitive than the first, as it is merely the moniker we, as their masters, append to them to distinguish between units. “Servant” for instance, or “Smith” or “Worker.” Any noble’s staff have, no doubt, given such names to whichever constructs they interact with most often.

The third and final part of a name is a sort of title, and is the only one I’m aware of that may change. This part of a name is only adopted by a construct after considerable experience in performing a certain task. As such, only constructs that are probably approaching their replacement date have three names. A merchant’s construct told to sort her non-breakable merchandise, for instance, will adopt a name such as “Organizer of the Bookshelves” after having “sorted” the approximate contents of a library upon its fool head before being replaced for a newer, less incompetent version.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I feel the need to mention that during my research into this topic, I ran across several rumors of a fourth part in construct naming schemes, but encountered no evidence to support it. Indeed, I doubt any such evidence actually exists, as the fourth part was explicitly stated to be a name the metallic hulk chooses for itself. The notion is absurd, almost as ridiculous as them having their own language. The Forgemaster herself disproved that little bit of nonsense, explaining that the exotic patterns on her personal golems, as she called them, were nothing more than decorations.

Practical decorations, it turned out, as the latest experiments have started to return results. The Conclave of Autonomous-Worker Engineers has started to report a non-trivial increase to construct dexterity, strength, task understanding and spatial awareness in the latest tournament. The Forgemaster’s personal work outperformed a large number of the Conclave’s submissions across the board, to much political upset. The conclave is set to award her a new forge as a result, so long as she sells them...

This Forgemaster of theirs is a political red mantis, appearing from nowhere and overturning years of planning. Your servant strongly recommends targeting her for subversion or assassination, and has begun to move tools in place to acquire more information. Your servant’s agents in the Conclave will provide specific details about the nature of the Forgemaster’s improvements in two weeks, which will coincide nicely with Sparrow’s estimated time to insertion of a team into the Archives.

Awaiting Orders,

Sceptic