Interlude – The Magic Elements Explained!

The elements!

We can see the 8 basic elements forming a circle around the edge – Fire, Dark, Earth, Wood, Water, Light, Wind, and Metal.

Around those, we see Inferno, Void, Mountain, Forest, Ocean, Brilliance, Gale, and Mantle. These are all “Intensifications” of the basic elements. In other words, Inferno is when Fire meets Fire, Gale is when Wind meets Winds.

How do you get these elements? The USUAL rules (Which Elaine promptly violates) is to have one, or both, of the elements in a Class, then do something relating to that element, while also doing things related to that element’s domain. I like blacksmiths for example.

A blacksmith might have a Metal and/or a Fire class. This alone won’t be enough for him to get offered a Mithril class, or something similar. They’d need to work with Mithril, and not just a bit. After all that, with other mysterious criteria, they might be offered a Mithril class.

Sometimes, you can just get offered an element out of the blue, like Elaine was. Those are rare.

Jumping “sideways” from one basic element to another happens all the time. It’s nothing noteworthy. However, it’s extremely rare for an element to evolve to a secondary element it has no affiliation with. Dark will basically never turn into Mist, and it’ll never turn into something that contains an opposing element – for example, a Dark class can’t turn into Mirage, because Mirage is an evolution off of Light. This doesn’t apply to starter elements.

A bit confusing. Let me explain some more secondary elements, and it’ll become clear.

Fire + Earth is probably the easiest example. They merge, and become Lava, since Lava requires both, but it’s greater than Fire and Earth. Lavamancer!

My attempts at posting Excel tables in here have failed a ton, so instead of a pretty chart, it’s going to be manual typing. Hurray.

There was an order to this originally that got mauled horribly. Without further ado:

Dark + Dark = Void. Think standard void mages. Please note that this is almost purely destructive, and a different element from Spatial, which we’ve seen offered on the [World Traveler] class. Almost pure destruction.

Dark + Earth = Gravity. Fairly standard making things heavy, making things lighter, and increasing forces. Artemis was a Gravity mage in a few early drafts!

Dark + Fire = Pyronox. Teased in chapter 4, they’re dark flames that burn with purification. It takes the concept of “Cleansing” and “Destruction” that’s both in Darkness and Fire, and brings it to life. I think I can do some really neat things with this.

Dark + Metal = Spatial. It’s a bit more abstract how I got here. The darkness of space, the technology and shiny reflectiveness of metal. All the standard spatial magic goes here.

Dark + Water = Ice. Water forms the base, and Dark sucks the heat out to create Ice magic.

Dark + Wind = Miasma. “Bad” Air. Closely related to, but different from Mist and Poison.

Dark + Wood = Decay. Part of the circle of life, something that Wood deals with a lot. The end of it is Decay, breaking down current life, preparing for new life.

Earth + Earth = Mountain. An intensification of Earth. Bigger. Stronger. Heavier.

Earth + Metal = Gemstones. Attuning stones to grab and store skills, which is the same as grabbing and storing magic. Elaine’s Diamond was the result of a Gemstone mage “attuning” it so it could store skills. I have many plans for this. More of an artisinal alignment, although it’s possible to use in a fight.

Earth + Wood = Erosion. If Decay handled living things, Erosion handles structures. Both Earth and Wood can erode things – earth through earthquakes big and small, and wood through trees growing through things.

Fire + Earth = Lava. See above!

Fire + Fire = Inferno. Fire burns. Inferno consumes.

Fire + Metal = Magic Metal*. And by this, it’s an abstraction – there are dozens of tiny elemental variations in here. Mithril. Adamantium. It’s the ability to work and shape that material directly, although there’s an inability to conjure up the material. Regular Metal-aligned people can’t work magic material with skills – it inherently resists. Useful property when making armor, PITA when trying to work it.

Fire + Water = Steam. Not my most brilliant moment. To be fair, it can’t be done with either element alone, but it just feels bleh. A slightly more brilliant moment was when I tried to use Geothermal as an alternate element, catering to mer-folk and other creatures that live under water, but I’m not quite sure if I’m following through with that idea. What does geothermal even DO that water alone can’t?