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Elements

Page history last edited by toshi.m 11 years, 9 months ago Saved with comment

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Elements

 


 

See also: Complete List of Elements, Elemental Classification System

 

Introduction

Given that the saga is "The Elemenstor Saga" and the defining characteristic of Elemenstors is the fact that they use arcane powers to manipulate elements; It should go without saying that Elements play an important role in the world of Battal. The nature and definition of Elements is outside that of our real world, or even the elemental schemes of ancient greek, chinese, or middle ages earth cultures (as is often the case with "Elemental Magic" in "Fantasy Worlds"). Instead the Elemental world of Battal is wrought with the care, complexity, and ingenuity that defines the very series itself. The Elements define the world view of the population as well as the workings of this world's systems (Physiks) and is core to many fans enjoyment of the series.

 

There are eight elements (though some make the case for nine, and still others for ten). The original four elements (Earth, Air, Water, and Fire) are self-explanatory-they make up the fiber of being in all people, and all matter is composed of a mixture of the four. There is also a "better" Element associated with Water, that being Ice. Of course, whether Ice is actually better than Water tends to hinge on what kind of Elemenstor you are. The Brotherhood of the Unliquid Water has an obvious preference, whereas most Fire Elemenstors claim never to have seen Ice used in a battle.

 

The secondary four elements build upon the original four, composing the soul and life force of existence. Life and Death is a constant struggle for control, allowing growth or withering in living things. In similar fashion, Stream and Carry are the competing forces in non-living items, dueling for control. Many elemenstors object to their being categorised as "secondary" as their nature is totally orthogonal to the "primary" elements and thus they are in no way below them. The speculative "element" of Heart is hotly debated, and is included here for completeness.

 

Beyond the secondary elements there are also tertiary and Quarternary Elements, although they are seldom spoken of as such. Tertiary elements are generally refered to by a sub catagory such as Biological Elements. Some argue that the proper places of Ice, White Water, and Heart are as tertiary elements.

 

See also The Elemental Wheel

 

Primary Elements

 

  • Earth (represented as Hazel in the CCG)
  • Air (represented as Cyan in the CCG)
  • Water (represented as Blue in the CCG)
  • Fire (represented as Red in the CCG)
  • Heart (Debated)

 

Secondary Elements

 

  • Life (represented as Green in the CCG)
  • Death (represented as Black in the CCG)
  • Stream (represented as White in the CCG)
  • Carry (represented as Yellow in the CCG)

 

Note: there is some question as to whether "Element" is the best word to describe the Secondaries, as they are more akin to Forces. Still, the eight elements have been called as such since the debut of ELotH, so the nomenclature will probably stick. We very politely tell the Semantics Nazis who want to change tradition to go sit on the 100 Swords of Sepathok.

 

Ur-Elements

 

 

The Ur-Elements are a somewhat more complex concept than the modern Primary Elements, as they encompass not only the predecessor of a modern Element, but also the creation of certain Races, a place in which these Races lived, and other characteristics. See The Four Vales.

 

Ur-Ur-Elements

 

 

These Ur-ur or primal elements as they have been referred to are representations of the substance that all other elements and existence exists in. They are powerful in the extreme and unusable by all but the most extremely Epic or powerful beings, the Hierarchs. Some say that the Hierarchs themselves are ruled by Timenes and Epic, swimming in them as meatballs swim in a bowl of alphabet soup.

 

Dark Elemenstation Facets

 

Also worth mentioning, though not quite elements in and of themselves, are the facets of Dark Elemenstation:

 

 

These are not to be confused with two well known techniques of Dark Elemenstation, Wrack and Witherance.

 

Elementals and Dark Spirits

 

All of these forces have living embodiments which can be summoned by an Elemenstor, but which also have their own free wills and can be encountered on any of the planes of the Elmether. The four basic elements manifest as Elementals, the Dark Elements manifest as Dark Spirits.

 

Other Elements

Additionally, being that the world of the Elemenstor Saga is heavily element based, there are a variety of elements that make up the Battal pseudo-scientific/elemental/magical and common view of the world.

 

In the set of Tertiary Elements there are groupings of Biological Elements (both humoric and non-humoric), the so-called "Non-Malleable Elements" (according to The Holy Sisters of the Sacred Sink), and several other groupings.

 

Additionally there are a whole set of Quarternary Elements, which are numerous and varied.

 

Here is where most of the lesser elements introduced by the Wizbits Elemenstor Battle CCG fit into the Elemental Pantheon. Elementals of type Sight, Follow, Quest, Torn, Sub-torn, Focus, Emotion, Emotion Modifier, Supertorn, Supertorn Double, Design Equip, and many others were largely dumped into the Quarternary element category by other Elemenstor works such as radio, animation, novelizations, and pen & paper rpg. Sometimes the terms are still used in character dialog as a nod to the collected terminology, but often they are merely throw-away statements to appease the rabid CCG fans.

 

Not Elements In The Purest Sense, But Close Enough To Be Listed Here

 

Although not elements in the purest sense of the word, there are nonetheless certain materials which occur only on Battal due to the presence of Elemenstation. These two quasi- or pseudo-elements should never be confused with each other.

 

 

Terminology

 

With 252-271 elements (exact number is subject to debate) each with a unique relationship to each other and various groups classifying things differently keeping track of the proper terminology can be complex.

 

Most basically elements are divided into levels, each level deriving from the last. Rspectively these are Ur-Ur, Ur, Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quaternary. Oftentimes a level name will be used to refer to a juxtapostion between elements, for example: to say that an element is secondary to a secondary means it's a tertiary, to say it's ur-ur to a tertiary means it's a primary, to say it's quaternary to a ur-ur means it's a secondary.

 

Within levels the most important distinction is it's proximity. Elements are either Inner, Inner Middling, "Outer Middling", or Outer. Proximity is determined by a mathmatical formula, "Psynorick's discreet quantum inverse trigomatric function" in relation to it's postion in the octahedric hyperprism hypothesis. However since few except the High Mathematician Psychic are able to understand this formula people tend to simply look it up and take the book's word. (See the Theory of Specialist Relations.) For tertiary and quaternary elements a useful rule to remember is that three primary codons make an inner, two primary and one secondary make an inner middling, one primary and two secondary make a outer middling, and three secondary make a outer.

 

For further information on an octrahedrically-based classification system, please refer to the Elemental Classifation Chart.

 

Comments (2)

Anonymous said

at 9:31 pm on Feb 13, 2006

I'm not sure that the tertiary elements listed here are the ones that fit in with the octahedric hyperprism hypothesis (and associated theories).

Anonymous said

at 7:29 am on Feb 14, 2006

The list is merely incomplete. These are only subsets of all the tertiaries, the Biologicals and Non-Malleables. And even then, there's a few missing.

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