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Yet More Primordials

September 21, 2011 /

It seems that I need to generate a pdf for all the primordials posts. With that in mind, I'll briefly mention earth and air primordials before moving on to different types.

The earth and air primordials share an ability to become incorporeal. The earth primordial uses this ability to move through solid earth. The air primordial lives as an incorporeal creature taking solid form only when feeding.

Incorporeal beings should not need to eat solid food. The Earth Primordial eats magic, specifically sucking the +3 off a sword +3.  They are also magic resistant, a successful roll indicates that they consumed the spell hurled at them gaining a number of hit points or Constitution from it. Regardless of spell level or effect, an earth primordial receives 1d4 hit points from each magic item drained. There is no upper limit of hit points, after doubling its beginning hit dice, it will simply grow larger.

For GMs that stat monsters, they gain Constitution when feeding and lose it at the rate of one point a week. All spells provide a single point increase to their CON score. In the same way, regardless of plus, an earth primordial gains a single CON point by completely removing the magical effects from a magical weapon.

Yes, it would be an epic encounter if/when an earth primordial gains an artifact. The earth primordial would never drain an artifact, but will be provided an endless supply of food and a super-high CON score/hit points.

The land where Earth Primordials dwell features large landmasses broken up by small oceans. Much of the land resembles the Russian taiga complete with a rich diversity of wildlife and sentient races.

In their home plane, the Earth Primordials are scavengers constantly hunting for magic, usually left behind by unsuspecting travelers. Earth Primordials prefer the rich magicks available on the Prime Material Plane, but are seldom summoned. To get by on their home plane, many of compelled to travel to higher elevations. It seems that trees and other plant life are able to draw magic from the plane itself. It takes several fruit/acorns/pints from these plants to sustain an Earth Primordial, but there is just enough to keep the population alive.

Air primordials can feed from any corporeal creature draining a point of CON to sustain themselves. They enjoy a pastoral culture preferring to keep livestock to sustain themselves. Unless starving, an air primordial prefers to take one or two CON points at a feeding waiting for the CON damage to heal before feeding again. Since they require the equivalent of 4 points of Constitution a day, the herds of livestock normally number from 12 to 20 animals of various types.

Air Primordials practice a form of magic that promotes healing, divination and indirect attacks. (For GMs, consider them Clerics using the Priest's spell list.) They can also sacrifice a point of their own Constitution to heal other creatures once per day.

The plane of Air Primordials is filled will countless floating islands swirling in a multi-colored sky. The clarity of the atmosphere varying according to the season as well as the color of the sky. Air Primordials keep their herds these floating islands.

Culturally, the Air Primordials are not concerned with possessions as they have no real need for material things. They do not build houses or other structures. They lead an aesthetic life filled with contemplation. They have no enemies on the Primordial Plane of Air as they only the only sentient species there. There are other forms of the Air Primordials that are encountered, but all share the same characteristics. Humans on the Prime Material Plane call these other forms Fog Primordial and Smoke Primordial. Aside from a slight change in color in corporeal form, there is no statistical difference.

So, there's Earth and Air. Next time, I hope to really do something that is not Ptolemaic or Wu Xing.

And Now the Water Primordials

September 16, 2011 /

After the two Fire Primordial posts, I figured a water primordial was in order. Before diving into that, though, there are two things to keep in mind:

  • Every plane has a primordial on it, not just so-called Elemental planes.
  • The Prime Material Plane's primordials are not humans or elves.

Having said that, let's look at what we need for a creature composed mostly of water or a liquid-substance-similar-to-water. To keep its shape on the Prime Material, the air pressure here must be higher than the atmospheric/water pressure in its home plane. The higher pressure on the Prime Material plane would help the Water Primordial to have a defined shape while traveling here. The ability to keep their shape here would make the Plane of Water Primordials more like a world of mist instead of a vast limitless ocean.

For the Water Primordial to move comfortably while here, the creature must be incredibly strong. I say that because the water elemental can move close to normal human rate.

Let's say that this Water Primordial is more like an amoeba instead of a cohesive body of water. I imagine that this means that they eat by absorbing its victims into its body. Taking advantage of their great strength, we can say that they might crush their prey (like a boa constrictor) before absorbing it into their bodies for digestion.

To make them more gruesome, maybe the water primordial eats like some species of starfish. They vomit out their digestive organs into the victim and digest the victim from the inside-out.

Odd that the Fire Primordial is a tea-drinking vegetarian and the Water Primordial is a carnivore. For what it is worth, I used to be a tea-drinking vegetarian, then a tea-drinking omnivore for many years before becoming a non-tea drinking omnivore.

Being translucent, seeing a Water Primordial is bound to be a harrowing experience. In fact, I imagine that they would be confused for undead quite often while they are here. Taking advantage of this, one of the strategies Water Primordials have devised in order to survive is a fake undead attack. Those that have fed more recently walk slowly in front of the others yet to feed. While intelligent prey re-double their efforts to deal with a perceived undead attack, the hungrier Water Primordials can get close enough to attack.

Water Primordials suffer great damage from contact with salt. In fact, their extreme reaction to Fire Primordials is mostly due to the sodium chlorate in their system. However, sentient species on the Prime Material have found other things to fend off would-be Water Primordials. The most common is regular table salt. Water Primordials can swim in fresh water, but cannot survive short visits into an ocean. Other substances found include a reddish mineral found former seabeds that have dried up and certain kinds of weathered volcanic rock. However, the most effective defense utilizes a common foodstuff, dried rice. As little as one cup of rice is enough to make a Water Primordial reconsider an attack.

Again, it's important to me to find an everyday material that would allow normal people some meager protection against any powerful creature. I come from a world-building perspective that the craftiness and intelligence of a sentient species should lead to innovative defenses that do not necessarily rely on magic. Think about it, if a high-level mage creates a super-weapon or mysterious substance to wipe out a certain menace, the town leaders or villagers are beholden upon the mage to continue to protect them. Humans generally cannot live with a situation like that for long periods of time, especially if they are paying for that protection.

When it comes to a rival race on the Plane of Water Primordials, I imagine a race of creatures that live on the various floating islands on the plane. They would use stone and leather weaponry and armor in order to avoid the expense of dealing with rust. These weapons would not be slashing or piercing weapons, but hammers. I want to give them a distance weapon, shaped like a round plate, that when thrown, lands flat on a target. In other words, instead of disc slicing through, it would be more like a belly-flop in a pool. The side with the largest surface area strikes the target.

I would imagine these rivals would eat the exotic floating/flying fish native to the plane. I also imagine that they could cultivate some plants and fruit bearing trees in a limited quantity.

So now, another poll about the name of The Plane of the Water Primordials.

[poll id="2"]

Where Primordials Reside

September 14, 2011 /

I like Mahjal currently for the name of where the Fire Primordials reside. Something in me wants to pronounce it MAH-zhal.

I digress.

In describing Mahjal or The Primordial Plane of Fire, it's important to flesh out some of the details of the place. For one, it is not a place composed primarily of fire. One of the races living there is composed of fire, not everything else. In fact, it should be different from the biblical Gehenna or even the Greek idea of Hades.

In the last post, we established that the Fire Primordials eat a native plant rich in sodium chlorate to sustain themselves. They would not necessarily need a lot of water, but could make use of salt water to make "tea". Maybe the native plant grows on great salt lakes like lillypads on ponds. Great rafts of these plants could form in the oceans, drifting around the seas. (Imagine the party having to quest to the Plodding Island of Farouz.)

It was also established that there was less atmospheric oxygen in Mahjal than here. It doesn't necessarily mean *no* oxygen. I imagine it has an atmosphere with the oxygen content found at around 10,000 feet above sea level. I also imagine it might have a higher CO2 concentration than here as well. Maybe we can add varying amounts of other gases like neon and helium. Why neon and helium? It will come up later.

With all the light and heat generated by some of the inhabitants, I imagine that the place is darker, like twilight most of the time. With that, plants won't get most of their food from photosynthesis, so lush fields of grass may exist, but they won't be green. Let's say that the plant colors are darker, maybe dark green, purple or a navy blue. With lower light conditions, other animals will have larger eyes, making a spooky place feel even more spooky. With the lack of light in some places, I imagine a few creatures will take advantage of the neon in the air to produce their own light (but not heat).

To account for the proliferation of Fire Primordials, I imagine that great salt glaciers came down from the colder regions, creating a vast network of salt springs and lakes. Every lake and spring isn't salty, just more than here.

The presence of salt glaciers implies very cold areas, fairly probable for a place with a dim sun (pardon the pun) and/or thicker atmosphere. Just to be different, planets on this plane may rotate on an extreme angle like Uranus. Maybe the great cold areas are found East and West instead of North and South.

All this is great, but what else could be there?

Sodium is a very important element on this plane. Whereas the control of water can create and destroy empires in our history, the control of salt or sodium should do the same here. After all, a sodium compound keeps one of the sentient species alive in the form of sodium chlorate. With so much talk of salt, I would imagine that use of salt in magic would be common. There's nahcolite that could be used as a semi-precious gem or a component of Mahjal's own psionic disciplines.

Still, there's no other species for the Fire Primordials to contend with. Let's put an intelligent people as a rival called the Karnakel. They live in the plains of vegetation mentioned earlier. They live in communities similar to the smaller medieval villages. Karnakel houses are structures similar to the traditional Navajo hogan and some of the newer versions built after the railroads came. Houses are hexagonal or octagonal and made from the ground, stone, nahcolite and other materials.

To be rivals, let's make the Karnakel less aggressive and more artisan than the Fire Primordials. For example, they have more agriculture, stone-working, magic expertise and domesticated animals. Speaking of domesticated animals, the animals used for transportation and building need to be stronger than a horse and possibly shorter. Just to be weird, they could have tails like a platypus and rounder heads like a hippopotamus.

Physically, the Karnakel would have big eyes due to the low light. They would also be a bit shorter and broader. Working with stone implies a greater physical strength. Part of their broadness comes from the large lungs they require to breathe. Unlike the Fire Primordials, the Karnakel do not eat sodium chlorate to stay alive - they exist in a similar fashion to humans on our world. I imagine that they have cultivated plants high in sugar to consume - one of the side benefits being that these sweet plants are a poison to the Fire Primordials.

Now let's bring in the Teleportation Crystals. The crystals stand about seven feet tall and four feet wide. That act as one way gates from one location to another. Walking through one gate will teleport you to the next gate.

Little pieces of the gate act as keys. Pressing the keys to your forehead will teleport you to that gate.

As an aside, I could imagine a Karnakel being directionally confused on the Prime Material plane. Getting used to a sun that rises in the east instead of the north would be a big deal. Then again, the converse would be true of a party of human adventurers with a map of the Plodding Island of Farouz...

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