Nagas and water weirds

An interesting coincidence I noticed were some similarities between the d20 monsters nagas and weirds.

The d20 naga are magical human-headed serpentine immortals loosely based on the naga in Vedic myth. They have a number of different variants in different d20 books, including 3pp like Creature Collection, Rokugan, and Monsters of the Mind. I have no idea what their fluff is, but apparently they associate with astrology.

The weirds are a family of generally serpentine elementals whose capabilities have varied widely across the d20 editions. Originally introduced in pre-d20 as the water weird, they were expanded under the d20 era through Monster Manual II, Dragon magazine and Tome of Horrors. The expansions included additional elemental variants and semi-humanoid oracles (playing off the etymology of weird).

Is there a connection between the naga’s astrology and the weird’s weirdness? I think a lot of d20 have a general problem with blandness, so condensing monster families to make a more interesting result always strikes me as a good thing.

I’ll probably post a more detailed ecology in the future.

Ecology of fire salamanders

Salamanders are the prototypical fire elemental, having been codified by Paracelsus in his writings on elementals. Contrary to the fairly limited depiction they get in D&D, I imagine salamander folks as being quite variable in appearance and lifestyle. Although commonly depicted as being serpentine centaurs, I think they should come in a variety of anatomical configurations including lizard centaurs, draconic centaurs and humanoids.

Mandragora, mandrake, man-dragon?

According to Wiktionary, one definition of mandrake or mandragora is "a kind of tiny dragon immune to fire." Ostensibly this is because mandrake may be falsely analyzed as a compound of man and drake. Wiktionary provides no source for this definition so I used Google Books to find where this etymology came from...

Species names for the four elements?

The concept of elementals seems to have been invented by the famed alchemist Paracelsus. There were four elementals, one for each element: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders. (Paracelsus seems to have invented the concept of gnomes.) In D&D, these subtleties were discarded. Instead of unique names, elementals were referred to as air elementals, earth elementals, etc. Furthermore, the original names are recycled for other creatures in the game.

Revising the elemental fauna to be interesting

Let's face it, elementals are boring. When Paracelsus first devised the idea of elementals, he considered them to be analogous to humans and other animals except with elemental affinity and no souls. When Hans Christian Anderson wrote The Little Mermaid, he was referencing Paracelsus when he wrote that mermaids had no souls unless they married a human. This was expanded by later philosophers and fantasy writers, as The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters attests in its entry on elementals. That book states that "Purely amorphous and non-animate representations of elementals are, however, fairly rare" (206), D&D notwithstanding...

Resolving the paradoxes afflicting elementals

The MM entry on "elementals" is riddled with contradictions and plot hooks that go nowhere. In this post, I will examine those mistakes and provide solutions.

Ecology of elemental verms, weirds and wyrds

Weirds, also called wyrds and verms, are elementals characterized by their serpentine forms, dependence upon pools of their element, and being in touch with fate itself. Weirds come in the classical elements of air, earth, fire and water, as well as esoteric substances like acid, blood, frost, fungus, ice, lava, lightning, magma, mud, ooze, smoke and snow.

Planar flora and fauna (using the Fire Plane as an example)

The D&D rules are weird and geocentric. If you tried to run a campaign entirely on the elemental plane of fire, you would run into problems with various spells and class features that target specific types because by the rules as written every living thing on the elemental plane of fire should be typed as an elemental. Inspired by Planescape and The Traveler's Guide to the Elemental Plane of Fire, I would suggest a few changes using the elemental plane of fire as an example.

Elementals primer

What are elementals? Generally speaking¹, elementals are masses of base matter animated by a possessing demon, spirit, undead or other entity. They may be broadly divided into two groups: wights² and works³. Wights are the prototypical amorphous and homogenous elemental, which are the "elementals" presented in 13 True Ways. Works are elementals that have been somehow shaped into a more or less fixed form with unique traits.

Beyond air, earth, fire and water, there is also the fifth element and variants of these five. The fifth element, or quintessence, encompasses lots of weird things and will not be discussed here. Variants of the classical four elements include lightning, smoke, mud, lava, ice, vapor and so forth. There isn't any difference between these and mixtures of different pure elements because they are platonic ideals unconnected with real world science.

13th Age Monthly Volume 1 introduced the Spirit type. Sometimes the distinction between elementals and spirits and constructs may be ambiguous. As stated above, an elemental is a dual entity consisting of an animating force such as a spirit and a body composed of normally inanimate matter. Whether the animating force is a demon, specter or nature spirit will determine their behavior and motivation. The most common elementals are animated by nature spirits and are responsible for causing physical phenomena like earthquakes, morning dew and frost on windows.

Constructs and elementals are similar because their bodies are composed of base matter and both have animating spirits bound into them, and in some cases constructs may animate spontaneously or self-replicate or display a metabolism. The key (and perhaps only) distinction is that a construct's body is always a recognizable artifice⁴, hence "construct." So-called "junk elementals" arising from scrap yards would therefore qualify as constructs rather than elementals even though likely animated by a nature spirit or ghost.

Contrary to popular belief, the elemental planes are not inhabited primarily or mostly by elementals. The elemental planes are inhabited by flora and fauna no less diverse than that of the tellurian.

Endnotes

1. As an adjective "elemental" may refer to anything related to the elemental planes and their elements, such as the giants and various beasts which inhabit them.
2. The word "wight" means "a person of a specified kind, especially one regarded as unfortunate" or "a spirit, ghost, or other supernatural being." The undead of that name are properly known as mortwights or literally "dead people."
3. This is derived by analogy from the dictionary words earthwork, firework and waterworks.
4. This is similar to the distinction between a flesh golem and a zombie.