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[WillowLuman]

((Well, you can't just declare everything's a subtype of something and leave it at that, because some things just don't make sense. For instance, I note we've got both Ice AND Water as main elements. Little things like, poison, or food, or medicine are highly specific, and something that's poisonous for one thing can be food and/or medicine for another. If every little thing has an elemental somewhere, it may be best to say that these subcategories are related to one or more main categories, but not strictly part of any single category.))

[Dermonster]

((Ice is more like the concept of cold than specifically frozen water. Ice is just more catchy than Cold.))

[WillowLuman]

((If I had organized the elements, I'd have had the 2 overarching forces be something like Entropy and Energy or something, though I suppose you could liken Order to Entropy and Chaos to Energy. Death, Cold, and Time would be Entropic/Orderly, Life, Fire, and Lightning would be Energetic/Chaotic, etc., with some neutral and all having a few aspects of either side.

As such, the 8 elements seem fairly arbitrary, so it's a bit dissatisfying to say "These are the primal forces of the universe! End of discussion!" rather than explaining how they are fundamental.))

[Dermonster]

((Void kickstarted the universe by removing his elements presence, thus letting there be Something, which became Order. Order, upon his creation, nigh immediately split off Chaos, and the innate conflict between the two split off the Eight. Nobody except Void is fundamental. You'll notice that even though Time is insane and Space is in a coma the clocks still run alright and walking down the street isn't a non-elucidian nightmare. They can be killed. Void is fundamental because without him to remove the Nothing that everything will eventually become, there would be no more new universes, so he's only fundamental in a 'Holy shit it's really important you keep doing that' sort of way.))

[WillowLuman]

((That still makes the Big Eight entirely arbitrary, though.))

[Dermonster]

((I will admit I'm not entirely sure what you mean by arbitrary or what about them it is.))

[Furtuka]

((What makes them so important, whats their specific definitions, what role do they play in the cosmology and creation myth, what subtypes belong to which and why, how do they interact with the magic system?))

[WillowLuman]

(Basically, why are those 8 the big ones, and not some other set of elements/concepts? We've got the 4 classics, but also some weird ones like metal and lightning, which usually wind up as subcategories or combinations. The word "elements" implies something fundamental, that other stuff is based on/made of, after all.)

[Dermonster]

((Oh. Uh. They were the first and greatest, split off by Chaos and Order themselves. It's the big eight plus the injured space/time twins. They don't appear in creation myths, except the one in that chasm. I thought I mentioned that nobody is really sure if they exist, and even then only in rumors (The spirits are silent on such matters). They were the progenitors of every other elemental, and were responsible for their spread. If they made a contract, their human would become a walking harbinger of that specific type, an army killer on the scale of the Time storm, but they wouldn't do that.

Basically they're 'important' solely because they were there at the start, and they created all the other ones, and they were the best. Does that make any sense? I'm a little distracted at the moment, and can't think about it too closely.))


Actually, is anyone going to do anything with this? I don't really want to argue over it if it's not ever going to see the light of day.

[WillowLuman]

((So it's not that the universe is compose of, on a fundamental level, Ice, Water, and Metal, etc, but rather that the representative beings of those things happened to be the first to split off from their parents? Okay, that works. It's not that those are the fundamental elements from which everything is made, it's just that the beings in charge of them got here first and are therefore more powerful. All I needed was an explanation.))

[Armok]

So basically the 8 elements are more historical/social groupings than metaphysical ones? As in, it's only something everyone agrees on, not something objective about how the magic works, like a government or a culture.

[WillowLuman]

Or more like since those 8 are the oldest and most established (and therefore most powerful), magical contracts get based around them.

[Dermonster]

It's a sort of Social/Meta-biological grouping, I think.

[darkpaladin109]

There exists a race of cookie people that fly around on magical cups of milk spawning cookies on doorsteps of good children.

[GiglameshDespair]

There exists a race of cookie people that fly around on magical cups of milk spawning cookies on doorsteps of good children.

No.