Homunculi

Homunculi are man-made beings created when physical materials (elemental magic) are given animalistic or humanoid form, life (healing magic), and free will (psychic/mind magic)--though how "free" their will really is depends on the person who makes them. Each step in this process requires mastery of its related magical field, and the magics intertwine in many places, so it is a mystery how three or more people could ever coordinate their efforts well enough to create one (made worse by the fact that creation involves all four elements of the elemental branch, when Mukala are only capable of using one element per person). Even The Prismodians--the only family known to be capable of all three magical disciplines--are rarely strong enough in all three fields to do it, and they are then limited by their one-element-per-practitioner bloodline.

The only person in history who is known to have come close is Emperor Donovan the Mad, who during his Reign of Terror created golems out of fire capable of acting on their own. Even he, however, could never come close to the fine-tuning required for homunculi. It is speculated that the Deathmage may use homunculi-like methods when reanimating corpses, except that his undead armies notably lack free will and are made from materials that were once living instead of out of wholecloth like homunculi.

For all the mystery and speculation, homunculi are proven to exist. There are a number of homunculi shaped like large aquatic animals that have been found off the eastern coast of Pele, and smaller ones caught and studied by the scholars at the University of Obsidian. However, no one knows where they come from, why the exist, or who made them. It is one of the great mysteries of the current age.