I enjoyed this one way more than I thought I would and wound up going long.
Elementals
Primal - Vengeful - Myopic
Defense: Protection 1 (Nonmagic Harm), Immune to their own Element(zero effect)
Theme: Relentless forces of nature, spurned on by imbalance in the world.
Elementals are spirits of the wild. In a perfect world, they would live in harmonious balance, a threat to none. But this world is not perfect- we take more than is needed, we destroy, we bring chaos. Elementals seek to right imbalances in the world as best as they can, however they are wild, primal things and lack great understanding. So their judgements are often destructive and widespread.
Mystics also favor elementals as servitors, conjuring them up to serve simple tasks. In most cases this is seen as perfectly fine and natural- like using a river to turn a water wheel. An elemental completes its task and returns whence it came from. But an imbalance can be created when a mystic repeatedly draws from the same source or keeps an elemental bound in perpetuity.
Digging this so far. One of the few creatures to get outright immunity but this is not a case where you can fight fire with fire. It also makes me chuckle thinking about throwing the party against a metal elemental and watching the fighter lose their shit. But we've got a few different pictures here: elementals as natural spirits, as calamity, and as servants. There is a good amount of diversity here.
Questions:
- Elementals are often conjured as servitors. How are they utilized in the settlement?
- What rituals does the community perform to try and keep the elements appeased?
- Which elementals are most active in the region? What do you believe to be the cause?
- What act is forbidden as it's certain to cause an elemental to rise in anger?
Moves
- Surge through a barrier
- Smash into your foes, scattering them
- Sense and seek out the source of your ire
- Command your element as a weapon
- Absorb your element to heal (restore ticks equal to room spent)
Not too much to say about the moves. I like the questions a lot because they establish the setting so much.
Tactics
While elementals can be singular creations, they also tend to operate on the same basic assumptions. Some imbalance will force them to act, restoring some sort of order drives them, so it's vital to know what the elemental's goal is when playing them. It is also important to understand that they serve a specific element, not nature as a whole. A flame elemental could bring greater chaos in trying to restore order as it sees it should be. Their wrath could burn down a forest which in turn summons an earth elemental. It is easy to create a vicious cycle. This is important because even if the players may seek to restore balance to nature, the elemental will only care about their own cause, not the ecosystem as a whole.
When it comes to meting out their justice, elementals are incredibly simple. Surge forth and destroy. They are made of grand and primal matter, the machinations of man mean little to them. This means players can attract their attention, leading them away from other targets by getting their focus. An elemental is a tough fight and actually destroying one is a harsh task. If harmed enough, an elemental might flee back to the earth and bide their time, growing in power.
With time and understanding, players can even seek to appease the elementals. A ritual to restore that destroyed forest with new growth would halt an earth elemental. But in some cases appeasement simply isn't possible. In those cases, an elemental must be fought, banished, or captured. The last one will be of interest to many mystics (The Sage in particular) as a bound elemental is a powerful source of energy.
Variants
Traditionally elementals are composed of fire, earth, air, or water, but you can design them to be made of any singular phenomenon. Storm and Metal elementals are obvious choices. But you could create something very unique and terrifying with a Magic Elemental. It's alright to get abstract with these things so long as you can answer what its drives and protections will be.
More ancient elementals can exist for imbalances that could never be healed or that were bound by magic for too long. This can give them time to grow more complex and develop personhood. They retain their drive, but can now pursue it in different ways. These ancients make wonderful Overlords.
A lot of my personal inspiration here comes from Swamp Thing. Where you have the natural forces of the Green, Red, and Black constantly war with each other. The only thing keeping them in check is if one gets too strong the other two team up against them. But the natural world of plants isn't kind and good- if it could it would kill every animal and grow unending. Mononoke is my other big inspiration, if it wasn't obvious. Nature isn't monolithic, its different groups seeking dominion, who get fucking vengeful. It's also something where, even if you defeat the elementals, it doesn't mean the imbalance is healed and everything goes back to normal. In the overlord advice section for elementals one of the options I was gonna highlight making a site of a great calamity that is just constantly throwing out elementals blindly trying to fix something it can't understand. The variants section is really just me providing an allowance to the GM, saying go off.