The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: Xathan Dovahkiin
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.

I'm partial to Djinn as a name for that niche. There's ememental-ness and spirituality, but less of the hard and fast classical elements baggage. Though given the animal "elementals" it might be easier to just call them spirits.

Otherwise, I'm liking the overall concept.

Would elementals develop from the state of the world? Or the other way around? For example, would new kinds of elementals arise from the site of a horrific tragedy? Would they necessarily assume the same boundaries for things we do? Or could there be a "most of the organs in your torso, plus one arm and a bit of air and dirt" elemental (weirdly specific I know)? Or maybe "some of a mountain and all the animals and forest on it" elementals?

I can't answer for Kindling but I don't think Djinn fits with the Norse/Celtic/Teutonic/British thing his setting has going on.  Too exotic.

Some more "weird" elemental possibilities:

Flotsam Elemental, or Shipwreck Elemental - A body of driftwood, shattered ship-parts, tattered sailcloth, and crab-eaten flesh and bones; coral horns and seaweed hair; crabs scurrying across its body.  Wanders beaches broodingly.  Ribcage sometimes contains treasure.  Possibly can exhale stormwinds as a breath weapon.

Tundra Elemental - A hybrid of bear, walrus, mammoth, and wolf, bigger than the mind can hold and able to summon blizzards: powerfully tusked, behemothically fanged, monstrously clawed, generously blubbered.  Where it walks water freezes and weapons become brittle with cold.  Can be both ferocious and placid.

Plains Elemental - An equine-shaped thing of grass and wind, shy and fleeting, gentle-souled.  Vulnerable to fire.  Possibly, when angered, it reshapes itself into a huge bull-formed monstrosity.

Blight Elemental - Where it moves, plants wither and die, animals keel over, flesh putrefies, water clouds, the earth itself is poisoned.  Reeks of decay.  As for its shape - perhaps a hideous mixture of fly, vulture, fungus, and rotting corpse.  A lonely creature.

Dust, glass, mist, sand, smoke, and bark elementals.

EDIT: Check out Polycarp's Aras Tay for ideas.  Very Princess Mononoke.

Quote from: Steerpike
I can't answer for Kindling but I don't think Djinn fits with the Norse/Celtic/Teutonic/British thing his setting has going on.  Too exotic.

I'm going to have to agree with SP too, Djinn is good, but in this setting seems out of place.

Quote from: Steerpike
Flotsam Elemental, or Shipwreck Elemental - A body of driftwood, shattered ship-parts, tattered sailcloth, and crab-eaten flesh and bones; coral horns and seaweed hair; crabs scurrying across its body.  Wanders beaches broodingly.  Ribcage sometimes contains treasure.  Possibly can exhale stormwinds as a breath weapon.

May I steal this idea of Arga?

As far as I'm concerned, yes.  But maybe Kindling should have "first dibs"  :P.

Dib me up! But why can't we both use it? I'm sure they'd be different enough in context for it not to be a problem. And yeah, SP and Leetz are right, Djinn does not suit the setting at all really. Maybe if they specifically appeared in the Great Desert to the southeast, but that's more of a peripheral, vaguely defined as "the place Momokans come from," than a true part of the setting, anyway. And "spirit" has always seemed too vague, to general to me as a name. Could especially be a problem if I'm running this setting with Savage Worlds (as I plan to), as one of the primary Attributes is called Spirit. Would be a kind of like "Suddenly a giant Owl Constitution swoops overhead!" if playing DnD :P

Yeah I might have to steal Slaughter/Wound Elementals for CE as well.  I sort of have something like them already called a Cruor Golem, but that's a little different...

Nice thread

On an idea similar to the flotsam guy: battlefield "elemental" - an animated creature composed of broken shields, weapons and pieces of armor or battlements, and occasionally bones and pieces of flesh of the fallen soldiers.

Why not call them genies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn#Etymology_and_definitions

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_%28mythology%29

In my own setting, I divide spirits into three categories, characterized by their attitudes toward mortals: (benevolent) angels, (malevolent) demons, and (ambivalent) genies. Fairies, totems, elementals, and other such entities are all genies under this schema.

I think genie and djinn has too much "Middle East" flavor baggage to work in Dark Silver, which is northerny, dark, and barbaric.

Quote from: KalontasOn an idea similar to the flotsam guy: battlefield "elemental" - an animated creature composed of broken shields, weapons and pieces of armor or battlements, and occasionally bones and pieces of flesh of the fallen soldiers.

I think you might have missed this one (last post on the previous page) Kalontas:

Quote from: SteerpikeSlaughter 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).

Yeah, those ideas were probably done more often than we think or notice (for one, I think I recall a Draugr being composed of similar stuff in Witcher 2). Also, "wound" doesn't sound very evocative of that image.

Gore Elemental, Cruor Elemental, or Battlefield Elemental could also work as names.  Or Carnage Elemental, Atrocity Elemental... basically anything that pushes the boundary of what an "element" is.  The word "elemental" usually suggests "nature" but it can just as easily suggest the "essence" of something, like an idea or an action or concept, or place.  In the Cadaverous Earth, for example, I have Obscenity Elementals (Obscenementals), which are blasphemous curses and perversion given unholy corporeal form through profanity-witchcraft (and oh boy, the party is going to *hate* fighting them).  The Aristotelian framework has been wholeheartedly abandoned/twisted/turned on its head.

I haven't played Witcher 2 but looking it up, you're right, they're similar concepts - though the version I was envisioning would have more of a corpsey/fleshy quality (the Witcher one looks to be mostly armour).  Something more like the big monsters in the Crusades section of Jericho (see 6:30 onwards) combined with something like this and this.

You could also have elementals that deal with aspects of humanity and civilization: Paper Elemental, Law Elemental, Greed Elemental, or Sewage Elemental come to mind.

An Execution Elemental or Torture Elemental with a body of gallows-wood and mutilated flesh, an array of limbs terminating in blades, axes, and saws, and a hanging cage with a shrieking spirit trapped within for a head.  Held together with blood-mortar, crucifixion nails, and lashed strips of sinew.  A little like this thing in places.

...or not...

Might be more of a golem/construct.

EDIT: check it.