Elementals

Elementals are incarnations of the building blocks of the material world, pseudo-sentient collections of power.

Description

Elementals are Spirits, immortal soul-stuff attuned to the forces that make up the elements of the material world.
Unlike most other spirits, elementals have little to no individuality by themselves. They are all just fragments of the larger force which they embody, they split and merge as they please.
Elementals are simplistic, they have no set shape, no higher intelligence, they speak no language and they have no memory or plans for the future. They do however have personalities of a sort, and they can feel emotions.

Lesser elementals:
Lesser lementals are motes of energy constantly present in the mortal world, everywhere their associated element is present. They are normally invisible, but can be seen by the use of spells or training. They are very simplistic and childlike, they laugh and play, moving along their element and playing with it to spend their time.

Greater elementals:
Greater elementals are usually only present in places of elemental power or summoned by mages. While they are still not intelligent by any means they are less playful and whimsical than lesser elementals and much more powerful and deliberate.

Elder elementals:
Elder elementals are collections of large amounts of elemental energy, usually only brought about by great rituals. These beings are like forces of nature made manifest. They have a severe countenance, they are slow to rouse but also difficult to stop once they are set on a course of action, much like incarnations of the forces they are made of.

Favored summons:

Elementals are some of the favorite spirits to be summoned by magic users of any affiliation. They are decently powerful, immune to most mundane weapons and easy to control, though they are inadequate for any complex tasks and need constant supervision.

Elementals however hate being summoned and bound in spells, they will try to break fee at the earliest oppurtunity.
It is possible to summon them without them fighting back, but this requires the spirit's consent and thus is usually only done by druids or occultists.
The effort to summon greater and greater elementals increases as their power increases, as does the difficulty of controlling them.
If the summoner loses control, the elemental usually rampages through the mortal realms as its manifestation rapidly dissolves.

Most summoners restrict themselves to the common elements of air, water, earth and fire, though other elements absolutely exist, though they are much harder to summon. Examples include lightning elementals, metal elementals, light elementals and more.

Examples

• Air elementals are insubstantial and aloof, quick to appear and disappear like the wind. They hold on to their emotions for the least amount of time, and are the most evasive.
• Earth elementals are slow and enduring, they care little for even the ravages of time. They sleep eternity away without a care in the world. They are the most difficult to rouse but also take the longest to calm down again. Even then, they do everything slowly.
• Water elementals are present in every ocean and every puddle. They are carried along with the water, riding the waves and playing in the turbulence of riverbeds.
• Fire elementals are passionate, energetic things, drawn towards whatever they find interesting, doing as they please until their passions wane and something else grabs their interest.
• Light elementals are the most insubstantial spirits to grasp or see, and the fastest by far. Ephemeral and feather-light, they rarely do anything at all and some scholars even doubt that they really exist.
• Lightning elementals are the most transient elementals, suddenly there and suddenly not. They are fast and furious, energetic and frantic. They cannot stand still, act immediately upon any whim and forget about it immediately afterwards.

Appearance:

Elementals usually are just colelctions of their assigned element. FIre elementals look like pillars of flame, earth elementals like a mound of earth, water elementals like an animate river.

They also share the characteristics of their element. Wind elementals are fast but weak while earth elementals are slow but tough