Elementals

Elementals are esoteric beings found throughout Helevos. In various cultures they have been called spirits, daimons, eridai or jinna. In their natural state they are invisible, drawing energy from the natural environment and have limited interaction with the physical world. Millennia ago humans learned to harness elementals and instruct them to perform seemingly miraculous tasks, calling this “magic” or thaumaturgy. In their natural state their power is limited, but in certain circumstances they can grow to great size, power and complexity, becoming what humans call deital spirits, or gods.

In thaumaturgical textbooks, elementals are called thaumicules, since “elemental” is considered a vulgar folk term referring to nature spirits inhabiting earth, air, fire and water. Thaumaturges generally refer to elementals as a source, being the means necessary for their magic.

In the Rasia style of thaumaturgy, magisters and call elemental familiar their prime source, or prime.

The ancient Godmen called elementals the Eridai, meaning “of the words”, Erida being the fundamental language used by thaumaturges to communicate with elementals.

The idea of “elementals” is very ancient, tied to Thalsic and Aralsic folk religion which saw spirits inhabiting rivers and the sea, rock and soil, fire and lightning, wind and storm. Other types of spirit also inhabited the soul of mankind and the red blooded animals, the last type inhabiting virid creatures.

Throughout history elementals have been classified in a variety of ways but this is in a sense inaccurate. There are no subspecies of elementals since they all share the same structure, but they can adopt various roles, behaviours and feeding strategies depending on influences in their environment. Observers throughout history have divided them into classifications based on this, often part of an underlying philosophy of magic. This is the origin of the different “styles” of magic.

The Iskean culture of ancient Traithe, now referred to as the Taigan Style of magic, elementals were simply divided into two classes: the esserat and the deivat.

Initially the only distinction was the esserat were elementals that had been trained and harnessed by practioners for useful purposes, whilst the deivat were wild eridai in their natural state. After the Taigan masters created the mun-esserat (god-spirits or deitals) to serve particular purposes, a cultural tradition developed that esserat are the good spirits which aid humanity, whilst the deivat are pernicious beings of the wild places that play tricks and cause harm. This belief was integral to the ancient culture of northeast Anásthiasplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigAnásthias

Anásthias [a-NAS-thee-ass / ænæsθiːæs], or [an-ass-THEE-as] is an equatorial island continent, heart of the Civilised World. The north straddles the equator and is hot and humid, while most of the equatorial centre is an upland plateau with fertile river valleys, and stretches of arid plains and desert in the shadow of the mountains. The south is temperate but more wild, separated from the civilisations of the north by the almost impassable Harthera, particularly in the religion of Emanuné, and still persists in folkloreplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigFolklore

Folklore

This is in a series of articles about oral traditions, tales, folk practices, and folklore.

topics cult1 to this day.

The Rasian Style, also called thaumaturgy, was the inheritance of millennia of magickal practice in the Natorn Archipelago, revised and refrained over many centuries at the Grand Academy of Rasia, once the foremost magickal school of the modern era.

In the Natorn Archipelago there was a traditional belief in the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. Since some elementals are found bound to the earth or certain magnetic rocks, some in water, some which follow lightning storms, and the rest which circulate freely, elementals were classified by these four “elements”. Each type also has a symbol associated with them which implies what they are each used for. These emblems also form the four suits in modern card games.

1. Silf (the Hand) for air and wind (also sylph, silth or simply spirit)
2. Shak (the Sword) for fire and lightning (also lamada, sakada or firebirds)
3. Undeen (the Cup) for water and sea (also udine, nondeen or water sprites)
4. Nohn (the Stone) for earth and land (also none, noen or numen)

There is no anatomical difference between the four, the difference being that the latter latter three are bound to certain physical phenomena, whereas the first are simple unbound elementals. The bound types absorb part of the physical medium into their physical shell, and are therefore able to become larger and more powerful. Taken in order, silfs are the least powerful of the four, and nohns the greatest. However, silfs are the easiest to summon and communicate with, whereas it is almost impossible for a magister to directly instruct a nohn, since they are almost always deep underground. Therefore, silfs are commonly used as a conduit to control and instruct the more powerful elementals.

Magisters refer to elementals as “sources”, as they are the source of thaumaturgical power.

Elementals are thought of as incorporeal beings, since they are mostly transparent in a passive state, barely visible as a cloud of dust motes. In fact elementals have little mass but a complex structure, consisting of central core of standing wave structures, surrounded by concentric layers of magnetic fields, sustained in a medium of metallic ions.

In structure elementals resemble an organic cell, although they are upwards of a metre across. The core is the smallest and most dense area, consisting of the creature's memory, where calculations occur and instructions are processed. Surrounding this core is a series of magnetic layers, called tegumen or shells. Shells contain structures called magnetophores, which extract electromagnetic energy from the planet's intense magnetic field, store it within the shell itself, and are capable of converting that energy into heat, light, electrical discharge or mechanical force. Silfs and shaks have lighter cores and stronger magnetophores which allow them to move freely in air, while undines and nohns combine solid matter into their shell structure, so that while undines can float freely in water, nohns are rooted to one spot.

Elementals can convert their shell layers into useful structures. The palpus is the innermost shell surrounding the core, used for sensing movement and vibration, enabling them to both see and hear. Maniple shells can be used to interact with the physical environment.

Elementals vary greatly in shape and size. Typically nohns are the largest and certainly most powerful, though as their internal structure contains more solid matter, they can be contained in a denser area. Silfs and shaks vary between half a metre to three metres or more in diameter particularly whilst feeding, but can become much smaller when bound to a physical object, or when interacting with physical objects.

All elementals reproduce asexually. They grow by absorbing energy through their magnetophores, growing a new shell layer as more energy is absorbed. Each type has a limit to the number of shells its core can control, typically seven shells for a silf or up to fifty for a nohn. Once it reaches its limit, the elemental converts its innermost shell into a duplicate secondary core, consuming another shell to complete the process. This second core migrates to the outer body, drawing half of the remaining shells with it to create a new, identical entity.

Thaumaturges and philosophers have for millennia debated whether elementals have any consciousness, let alone intelligence. Although they have a central core which processes information, retains memories and can autonomously carry out a variety of tasks, the core of a simple elemental is barely as complex as that of an insect. More complex elementals, such as the deitals or primes that have been in contact with a magister for a very long time, can seemingly exhibit signs of intelligence and even quirks of personality. Followers of religions, folk magic and shamanic practicioners in particular dispute this, saying that elementals all have unique facets. The masters of Rasia however declared that these were all emergent properties, mimicking behaviour that they had been exposed to, rather than conscious thought, and that anything to the contrary was mere wishful thinking. Some philosophers countered that this saying that magicians wish to view elementals merely as mechanical tools to be used and discarded at will, rather than as living beings which should be accorded respect.