Elementals

Kindling · December 08, 2011, 06:38:11 AM

My setting, Dark Silver (it's nice that it has a definite name now) has always had demons as a pretty central part of it. It's also got two deities, the God and the Goddess, who are interpreted in various different ways by different cultures and sects. I'm now thinking I want a third "outsider" type force in the setting, to fill a kind of halfway point between demons and deities.
Demons used to be very active in the world, and are now becoming active again, they're pretty much Evil with a capital Bloodshed, and mighty heroes can and probably will encounter them, fight them, and destroy their physical forms, banishing them back to the Beyond. They are only worshipped by the most gibberingly mental of apocalypse-cultists.
The deities, however, are very very distant, if indeed they are any more than human constructs, are ambiguously motivated, as there are many different traditions of worship/reverence regarding them, and no one will ever be meeting or fighting them. They are worshipped by most people in the setting.
So my third order of outsider-types, which I'm thinking of calling elementals, are basically non-evil demons. That's not to say they're all lovely, Dark Silver being the somewhat unpleasant place that it is, but they're more... natural, primal, that kind of thing. They give me an opportunity to have weird cults and lost, primitive tribes worshipping things that can be summoned or manifest for the heroes to actually face, but which aren't cthulhu/tyranid looking outer horrors that will immediately try to kill them in the nastiest way possible, just because. You never know, maybe they could actually end up bargaining with elementals.
They're probably, on average, going to beat demons in a stand-up duel, but there are less of them overall. You might see an elemental or maybe even a handful manifesting at a time, but never a horde of them in the way the Shebbeth-Tekk used to run around the world in the bad old days.
I'm also thinking I want the elementals to be less, well, elemental, than might traditionally be the case. Rather than an earth elemental or a fire elemental, you might have a wolf elemental or a storm elemental. The idea of having animal elementals sets up a nice conflict, as well, as I've also got an idea for a type of lesser demon that manifests by possessing animals, essentially creating "dire" animals, and I can imagine that the bear elemental (for example) would be pretty pissed off at them for possessing and corrupting bears.
I was wondering if anyone has any other suggestions for interesting, non-traditional, kinds of elemental? Or, obviously, just any feedback on the idea in general.

Kalontas · December 08, 2011, 07:13:50 AM

You're basically talking about primal spirits, like in 4e D&D, which were inspired by shamanistic beliefs. Those primal spirits can have any shapes or form associated with nature - be it an animal, plant or a natural formation (like a mountain or river).

Ninja D! · December 08, 2011, 07:20:50 AM

Basically, you're shooting for a general spirit sort of thing with these elementals? That's the impression that I'm getting from this, anyway. Even if they're not exactly traditional "elementals", I think the word still fits well enough. You just might want to make the difference clear to anyone going into the setting to prevent confusion. Now for questions;

Would there be multiple of any given type of elemental or only a single one? I'm wondering if there would be only a single wolf elemental that would be like the god of wolves or if there could, in theory, be an entire pack of wolf elementals together.

If these elementals aren't just your typical spirits or elementals but they can be summoned, where do they come from / spend their down time? Is it the same place as where demons come from?

Do they only come into the world when summoned or can they come and go as they please? If it's the latter, why do they come when they are summoned?

How directly opposed to demons would elementals be? If there is an elemental that pretty much is the wolf god and demons start infecting all of his wolves, what keeps them from turning the world into a warzone over it?

Do the elementals or the demons know the 'truth' about the God or the Goddess or are they in the same situation as everyone else? Do they worship they deities?

Superfluous Crow · December 08, 2011, 07:25:12 AM

First, elemental might have a bit too many connotations for what I think you are attempting.
Some questions (mainly on the animal elementals):
would there be more of each type of elemental or are they essentially singular entities? i.e. there is one bear elemental; the quintessential prototype Mother of All Bears.
Are these things just classic "spirit animals"? Or conglomerate entities of paws, teeth and muzzles, prowling the forest with their lesser kin? Or are they just atypical instances of their associated animal (white deer etc)?

An idea:
To set them up as the opposites of the demons, you could make them slumbering, intangible, pervasive spirits of creation. Primal and powerful, yet lacking the volition and bloodthirst of the demons.
Assuming they don't have to be summoned and exist in the material world, I can imagine them having helped shape the earth, the hills, and the mountains at the beginning of history and now resting until disturbed.
Instead of your players coming across a single wolf elemental in the forest, imagine the entire forest coming alive around them; instead of fighting an incarnation of nature they are fighting nature itself - the environment.
Grasping vines, uprooting trees, animals whipped into a frenzy, a bear formed of rock and fungi - lots of options. This might also make it more reasonable for tribes and the like to worship the spirits.

O Senhor Leetz · December 08, 2011, 08:03:38 AM

Elementals could work, but I don't feel the inherent "balance" between demons and elementals as I do between the demons and the divine. What about replacing the elementals with rogue demons and fallen divas (I'm not sure if you have good equivilant to the demons, so...). They would be hated by both the good and bad, but they would be strong allies as well, so they are courted by both sides. These rogue demons/divas could have portfolios like you were looking for the elementals to have: natural things, animals, etc.

Kindling · December 08, 2011, 08:16:42 AM

Quote from: Ninja D!
Basically, you're shooting for a general spirit sort of thing with these elementals? That's the impression that I'm getting from this, anyway. Even if they're not exactly traditional "elementals", I think the word still fits well enough. You just might want to make the difference clear to anyone going into the setting to prevent confusion. Now for questions;

Quote from: Superfluous Crow
First, elemental might have a bit too many connotations for what I think you are attempting.

Yeah, I've always liked the name elemental, but never been too taken by the "big man made out of fire" image. Yes, they are essentially nature spirits, which for me, is kind of how elementals should be, really.

Quote from: Ninja D!
Would there be multiple of any given type of elemental or only a single one? I'm wondering if there would be only a single wolf elemental that would be like the god of wolves or if there could, in theory, be an entire pack of wolf elementals together.

Quote from: Superfluous Crow
Some questions (mainly on the animal elementals):
would there be more of each type of elemental or are they essentially singular entities? i.e. there is one bear elemental; the quintessential prototype Mother of All Bears.

I imagine there would either be one of each, or one of each in each region. So, when in the Grimdowns, for example, all crows come under the domain of crow elemental X, while in Sylvarnum they belong to crow elemental Y. I'm not sure which I'm going to choose, and it may even vary so that there might be one glacier elemental for the whole world, a dozen different fox elementals and two mountain elementals, one for each major mountain range (or whatever).

Quote from: Ninja D!
If these elementals aren't just your typical spirits or elementals but they can be summoned, where do they come from / spend their down time? Is it the same place as where demons come from?
Do they only come into the world when summoned or can they come and go as they please? If it's the latter, why do they come when they are summoned?

Quote from: Superfluous Crow
An idea:
To set them up as the opposites of the demons, you could make them slumbering, intangible, pervasive spirits of creation. Primal and powerful, yet lacking the volition and bloodthirst of the demons.
Assuming they don't have to be summoned and exist in the material world, I can imagine them having helped shape the earth, the hills, and the mountains at the beginning of history and now resting until disturbed.

Basically, what Crow said, although I'll iron out the details later.

Quote from: Ninja D!
How directly opposed to demons would elementals be? If there is an elemental that pretty much is the wolf god and demons start infecting all of his wolves, what keeps them from turning the world into a warzone over it?

Nothing keeps them from turning the world into a warzone over it. This will start to happen as my campaign progresses.

Quote from: Ninja D!Do the elementals or the demons know the 'truth' about the God or the Goddess or are they in the same situation as everyone else? Do they worship they deities?

The demons definitely don't worship anything (except maybe themselves, in a way). As for the elementals, I'm not sure, I can imagine that they might at least acknowledge the deities, if not exactly worshipping them.

Quote from: Superfluous Crow
Are these things just classic "spirit animals"? Or conglomerate entities of paws, teeth and muzzles, prowling the forest with their lesser kin? Or are they just atypical instances of their associated animal (white deer etc)?

Instead of your players coming across a single wolf elemental in the forest, imagine the entire forest coming alive around them; instead of fighting an incarnation of nature they are fighting nature itself - the environment.
Grasping vines, uprooting trees, animals whipped into a frenzy, a bear formed of rock and fungi - lots of options. This might also make it more reasonable for tribes and the like to worship the spirits.

The way I imagine it there are a lot of different ways they can manifest themselves. So, a/the wolf elemental, for example, might be encountered as just a particularly archetypal ur-wolf, a pack of giant, golden-furred wolves that speak with a single voice and move with a single purpose, telepathic communication emanating from a tribe's crudely carved wolf-totem, or a number of other things.

Quote from: Señor Leetz
Elementals could work, but I don't feel the inherent "balance" between demons and elementals as I do between the demons and the divine. What about replacing the elementals with rogue demons and fallen divas (I'm not sure if you have good equivilant to the demons, so...). They would be hated by both the good and bad, but they would be strong allies as well, so they are courted by both sides. These rogue demons/divas could have portfolios like you were looking for the elementals to have: natural things, animals, etc.

There are no good demons, and no "opposite" to them, sort of like in Warhammer there are Chaos Gods and demons that follow them, but no real Gods of Law per se, and no outsider-type servants of Law. And the idea of rogue demons supposes that the demons work together, or have some kind of hierarchy/order that they can rebel against, which isn't the case over all. The Shebbeth-Tekk, the demon army summoned by Akraska Tath-Kra in ancient times, might have an internal hierarchy, and have once had a degree of loyalty to Akraska, for example, but demonkind as a whole is as likely to fight amongst itself as it is to attack others. I get your idea, and I think it's a cool one, I just don't like it in this particular context, really.

O Senhor Leetz · December 08, 2011, 08:26:00 AM

Fair enough, just a thought. How current is your older threads about this setting considering the name change? Same thing different names, or are you chaning things? I'll have to read up on it when I can.

Kindling · December 08, 2011, 08:27:25 AM

Human cultures and politics have changed a bit, but everything about ancient history and demons and stuff still holds true.

O Senhor Leetz · December 08, 2011, 08:34:35 AM

I just reasd what you had, and it has a very Diablo-vibe, which I mean in the best way.

Also, copper-witches and fire-crowns are great names.

Superfluous Crow · December 08, 2011, 08:42:26 AM

I am completely enamored with the idea of Crow Elementals :D
And I'll have to disagree with Leetz for once. I know I referred to the elementals as an "opposed force" myself, but I feel like this setting would do much better without any kind of forced moral conflict. Demons and elementals are, in essence, neither good nor evil, they don't represent any cosmic force, they just Are.
It is only through humans that demons have been made Evil and elementals have been given meaning.
Without knowing too much about the world of Dark Silver, I think such a world of pure, brutal existence suits the tone of the setting much better than the classic stylized cosmic good/evil dichotomy of D&D and high fantasy.

Kindling · December 08, 2011, 08:54:59 AM

Crow, yes. A thousand times yes. I haven't even posted a proper setting thread for this yet, but you have already grasped the feel of it and put it into better words than I could :D

Ninja D! · December 08, 2011, 09:18:18 AM

That sounds pretty neat. Also, anything comparable to Diablo but thought through further probably deserves a look.

Xathan · December 08, 2011, 10:21:42 AM

I love the idea. 100% love it and want MOAR. My only quibble: I'd advise against calling them elementals. Avatars, Archons, Exemplars, embodiments...something other, sine elementals is one of those with so much baggage that giving them a uniae to setting name would probably cause less confusion about them.

Post dark silver soon please. I want this setting bad.

Lmns Crn · December 08, 2011, 10:59:13 AM

This is looking awesome.

For some supplementary reading, you could check out some sources related to Japanese mythology and Shintoism, where pretty much everything (from household objects to mountains and storms) is personified by a spirit, and the gods are just the biggest and most important of these spirits. Obviously you're going for a starkly different cultural feel, but this might give you some ideas on what to do with your nature-spirits and how to "scale them up," for when (if) you want to talk about elementals that are essentially godlike in stature.

Anyway.

I really dig what you're doing here, giving agency to factions within the natural world. Do mortals make pacts with nature by contacting these alien personification-of-nature types of elementals? I think you could get really creepy really quickly if you wanted to go down that road, talking about what weird payment such spirits would demand and what unexpectedly creepy twists you might find in the aid that comes from such incomprehensible, foreign sorts of minds.

Steerpike · December 08, 2011, 12:39:16 PM

Personally, I like the name elemental. Doesn't bother me.

I love the idea of non-traditional elementals, too. Your approach reminds me of Bas-Lag's elementals (the prosmae - flesh elementals that look like masses of muscles and skin, come to mind).

Some ideas for weird elementals:

Ash Elemental, or Ember Elemental - A body of burnt wood still glowing with smouldering heat as if from a lightning strike or forest fire. Breathes smoke as a breath weapon, vomits cinders, bleeds flame. Killed if immersed in water, becoming lifeless wood. Perpetually enraged and irritable; destructive and hate-filled. Lairs in forest-areas it has decimated.

Slaughter Elemental, or Wound Elemental - consumes mangled bodies to add to its own mass. Specific appearance would be up to you, of course, but I'm thinking a kind of pulpy mass of lacerated flesh bristling with arrows and broken weapons that leaves a slick of congealing blood wherever it slithers; daggers and shards of bone for teeth, broken shields for scales, a mass of broken limbs to haul itself around. Often found wandering battlefields. Surrounded by a halo of flies (is this Iron Heroes? If so, Distraction saves could work for this).

Cave Elemental - a lumbering cro-magnon ogre-thing of lichen-covered stone, fungus, stalactite-claws, and ore, with precious stones for eyes and a body that constantly weeps and drips water. When it exhales it creates a cloud of darkness, the black essence of a deep cavern. Old and alien and wise; docile unless provoked. Dislikes light.

Marsh Elemental, or Fen/Bog Elemental - a slick, toad-skinned monstrosity always surrounded by a mass of fog. Its eyes are marsh-fires, glimmering will o' the wisps. A great mosquito proboscis bristles from its foul visage. Vegetation has symbiotically grown into its flesh - tendrils and creepers it can use like tentacles to lash at prey. Its blood is water, its hair a morass of hag-like weeds.

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