Back to Elements

Elemental Classification System

also refer to the Complete List.

Introduction

As any devoted fan of the ELotH and its various incarnations knows, the importance of Elements cannot be underestimated... and there's really a whole lot of them and they're hard to keep track of. As such, their classification is quite a tricky thing to manage. This is one two-dimensional representation of the hyperprismic derivations of the various types of elements.

Please note that this system only tracks inner and outer elements. This is to say nothing of the inner middling and outer middling elements, of which there are very, very many.

Organization of the Elements

As everyone knows (or should), there are five main Elemental Types:

• Primary
  • Primary elments are points of the Primary Prism (such as Air, AAA)
  • Primary elements are always considered to be "face" (exterior) prism elements.
• Secondary
  • Secondary elments are points of the Secondary Prism (such as Blood, BBB)
  • Secondary elements are always considered to be "face" (exterior) prism elements.
• Tertiary
  • Tertiariy Elements are lines drawn between the aforementioned points of a prism. Though they have an independent and intrinsic nature, they are still strongly tied to their associated Primary or Secondary Element.
  • Depending upon the prism, they are classified as either Prime Tertiaries(if they are defined by relationship to the Primary Elements) or Ancillary Tertiaries (in the case of Secondary Elements)
  • Tertiary elements may also be further differentiated as to whether they are a "face" (such as Lightning, AAW, which is the line of the prism drawn between Air and Water) or "interior" (such as Dust, AAE, which is the line of the prism drawn between Air and Earth) element
• Quarternary
  • Quarternary Elements do not exist independently, as do the Primary Elements and their octahedric hypercongruent counterparts, the Secondary Elements.
  • Quarternary Elements are triangular planes of the hyperprism, with the points of the triangle being the three elements of their codon.
  • Quarternary elements may also be further differentiated as to whether they are a "face" (UnWA, Black Ice, can be thought of as the face of the prism formed by the three points of its codon, and is there fore a "Primary Face Quarternary) or "interior" (EAF, Ash, a "Prime Interior Quarternary) element.
• Quinternary
  • Quinternary elements are not a part of this system because no self-respecting Elemenstor has anything to do with them. Those that utilise these elements tend to have their own theories about how they fit into the grand scheme of things. These theories are invariably retarded.

Classification

All elements are classified (and some would argue constituted) by a three-element codon.

In this system, all Elements are composed of three of the six Primary (for the Primary Quarternaries) or Secondary (for the Secondary Quarternaries) Elements. These units are called the Prixon, Doxon, and Trixon. Primary or Secondary Elements are "Pure" and thus all elements of the codon are identical. Elements containing two identical elements in the codon are Tertiary. And finally, those with a codon that contains no identical elements is a Quarternary.

What follows are several tables of the elements derived from both Primary and Secondary hyperprisms. Please refer to the pictoral chart at the end in order to achieve maximum confusion.

Primary Prism Elements

The Unspeakxta

The Unearxta / The Earunxta

The Unairxta / The Aeirunxta

The Unfirxta / The Fierunxta

The Unwexta / The Wetunxta

Earxta

Eairxta / Aeirearxta

Eafixta / Fiearxta

Ewexta / Wearxta

Earulnxta / Unlearxta

Aeirxta

Aeirfixta / Fiaeirxta

Aeirwexta / Waeirxta

Aeirunlxta / Unlaeirxta

Firxta

Firwexta / Wexfirxta

Firunlxta / Unflixta

Wexta

Weunlxta / Unwelxta

Unlixta

Secondary Prism Elements

The Liftxta

The Carrixta

2-Dimensional Elemental Chart

Below is a chart illustrating one layout of the combinations. Note that colors of Element groups match according to their hyperprismic congruence.

• Earth = E
• Air = A
• Water = W
• Fire = F
• Heart = H
• Life = L
• Death = D
• Stream = S
• Carry = C
• Blood = B
• Unlight = Un
• The Unspeakable = Us

Source Material

Taken from chapter 8 of Bjorn Z. Madsen's seminal 1998 work, "Fictional Grand Unifying Theories", the same publication that gave us the octahedric hyperprism hypothesis

Discussion

Summary of the Revised Elemental Classification

I don't believe that a revised chart was ever drawn up, but here is the theory:

Elements actually are defined by coordinates in four dimensional space, which makes the definition of primary and secondary elements much more straight forward. Primary elements are a point (all coordinates being the same), secondary elements exist in the first three coordinates of a primary element, and the fourth coordinate being the secondary element, therefor secondary elements are lines. Tertiary elements have three different coordinates and are defined as planes, and quarternary consist of four unique elements (all primary or secondary) and define hyperplanes. For most quarternary elements the fourth point (called the clinch) is unspeakable and is not mentioned in its description.

Quinary elements have four unique elements but one or more of them may be some combination of Blood, Heart, or Unlight and are considered non-canon.

Under this system Water is W,W,W,W and Life is W,W,W,L.

Notes

The conversion of the original chart would probably be pretty simple because for primary elements you just repeat the element, for seconary you prepend a primary element, for tertiary you repeat the dominant element, and for quarternary you add Us.