Elementals
The city is connected to the elemental plane(s) (scholars disagree over whether it's a bunch of separate planes or a single one that merges from one element to the next), so some intelligent elementals do come over and do stuff. I want to try and present them in a unique fashion, though.
- Fire elementals have to encase themselves in metal shells (generally taking the form of black armor) to survive. If the shell breaks, their flame expands too rapidly and they tend to lose chunks of themselves to the environment. It takes a very strong will and a lot of effort for a fire elemental to not explode in a ball of flame if exposed to the open air.
- Water elementals are fluid shapeshifters. They'll often take a humanoid form to deal with other races, but the parts that they aren't concentrating on always devolve into shapeless pools of liquid. They can attempt to drown opponents, but since this involves shoving part of their flesh down the opponent's throat, it tends to damage them, too.
- Earth elementals move through solid stone and hard earth effortlessly, but can only come out into the open by tearing themselves a body from their current environment. Since they hate damaging earth and stone, they are always reluctant to do this and would rather communicate by making swirly patterns on the surface of the stone that they're currently inhabiting. They hate quarrying, demolition and earthquakes and other things that smash up that pristine rock. They can make devestating spies and assassins vs folks who live in stone buildings, though. And they're great for construction because they'll flow through stonework repairing tiny cracks and flaws.
- The elemental language consists entirely of swirls and ripples and is really hard for non-shapeshifters to copy (although illusion magic could do it). Fire elementals tend to learn a spoken tongue, since they can't expose much of their flesh without hurting themselves.
It would be cute if one of the four elements were missing or shifted... The implication being that they
used to have a connection to Menagerie but it shifted to a different part of the elemental plane or was cut off entirely. So I may say that there aren't any Air elementals or replace them with some other kind of critter, like Lava, Ash or whatnot. But just having them be absent would be fine.
Posted by Kiz at November 3, 2004 10:23 AM