Creature seed: Cadatons.

Cadatons – Google Docs

Cadatons

 

Modern necromancers make these by taking 3D printer feedstock that’s been premixed with gravedust and powdered human bone, then printing out a complete humanoid skeleton that is about the size and weight of an empty 17 ounce plastic soda bottle.  Why?  Because that’s light enough — and specially treated enough — to allow your standard disembodied spirit to inhabit one indefinitely.  Assuming that the joints and whatnot were printed and put together properly, the Cadaton can even move — very, very slowly — under its own power.

But it’s not going to move under its own power, thanks to it being the modern era. Cadatons are typically heavily modified with battery-powered motors, hydraulic systems, remote cameras, poisoned claws, ballistic hair weave armor, one-shot syringes, mobile curses, corruption amplifiers, the Yellow Sign, anti-prayer wheels, red mercury capacitors, and anything else that your average modern necromancer might want a small, typically malevolent, and sentient automaton to have.  Ethical necromancers (oddly, most of them are hipsters) instead trick their cadatons out as either mobile dolls / action figures, or else modify the original 3D printing recipe to print out skeletons of cats.  Taxidermy can do so much, these days.
Yeah, sure, these are still ethical necromancers. They’re not killing anybody, after all.  And they even ethically sourced their powdered human bone feedstock! That’s not easy, but some people think that it’s worth it, you know?