Light and dark still exist although they are changed to creation and destruction and tied directly into the morality system. Was nature a specialty in past games? It's not in shadow magic. Ether way, it's gone.
I cannot remember what element made "forests" it could have been Life.
Also Creation? Odd given that Light has actually been one of the more aggressive elements and Death one of the more passive ones.
A couple days old, but your statement has given me visions of a setting where just that is true: life (the antagonist) is creative, aggressive, constantly producing, expanding, much agency, energetic. The protagonist is death, the antithesis of life, but dependent on it. As polar opposite, death cannot actively take action. Life can exist without death, but death cannot exist without life.
Sort of a "death is good" kind of aesop, except not in a stereotypically evil kind of way, or even a kind of "it's just a job" sort of whimsical portrayals that a comedic bent would take (for example, Reaper Man and all in the Discworld universe, or the short-lived Dead Like Me show), or an example of the occasional "I'm immortal but want to die" that comes up from time to time (which often still approaches in a pro-life way, "live if you can, but death ends pain"). Just as a way to examine the concept not as a destructive force, but also without romanticizing or anthropomorphizing it.
Done right, I'm sure it would be just the sort of thing that literary/philosophy nerds (whether self- or professionally-trained) like myself would spaz over. Of course, I couldn't write any such thing. Usually, the best of that sort of treatise on esoteric themes comes not from actively trying to create it, but from the after-action analysis by literary 'experts' (often much to the chagrin of the authors themselves, as readers ascribe allegory to the work that the author did not intend).
Anyway, carry on.
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Topic: Age of Wonders III - Patch 1.09 is Available (Read 37881 times)