Elemental Mages

Elemental magic is the most common form of Magic in Hysal. It is widely regarded as an integral part of the natural world and has been known about and practiced since the dawn of time. This magic is practised by elemental mages, humans who have the innate ablity to create and control the 8 natural elements that make up the world.

Abilities

Elemental mages come in 8 different types: Light, Fire, Air/Wind, Water/tide, Metal/Ferro, Stone, Ice, and Darkness/Shadow. All of these elements possess unique propreties that their wielders have to accomodate to. This has lead to the creation of numerous specialized abilities unique to their elements. However, despite these important differences, a partern can clearly be seen between all of the different elements mana content and consuption, by which they can be divided into two different categories. These are: Energized Elements, and Innert Elements. The main difference between both elemental groups, is the way mages create and control them.

Energized Elements

The energized elemental group includes the following elements:

• Light
• Fire
• Air
• Water

These elements naturaly contain a large amount of Wild Mana energy. This mana is important for mages, as they can use it to replenish their mana cores. However, the presence of such a big quantity of wild mana makes them harder to control them in nature, requiering a lot of their own mana to get them under their control. For mages of this type, creating those elements from their own internal mana is far easier, especialy when syphoning wild mana from a natural source to their own elemental material. In fact, the easiest element to both create and control is air/wind, followed by water. Fire and Light both require enormous amounts of mana to generate, and fire is notoriously hard to control and reign in.

Innert Elements

The innert element group includes the following elements:

• Metal
• Stone
• Ice
• Shadow

These elements do not generaly contain significant quantities of Wild Mana within them, and in some cases, have none at all. Therefore, they cannot be reliably be used by mages of those types to refill their cores, thus making them harder to create as well. This is made worse by the fact that these elements tend to be solids, which requires even more mana to create than for other elements. This often results in brittle and easily broken material. Only years of experience and training allows them to create solid products. However, the severe lack of mana in those elements when present in nature makes them far easier to control for mages than energized elements, since the mage only needs a small amount of mana to take control of a large quantity of material.

Constraints

The quantity and type of material a mage wants to create and control directly affect the amount of mana they have to use. A large amount of Energized elemental material will be much harder to control than a small quantity of innert elemental material. Mages can tap into the mana naturaly present in Energized elements to make it easier to control, but at the cost of depleting the material's own mana content, leading to changes in the material, such as dimming light, weaker flames, colder and calmer water and wind. Taking too much of it can lead to the destruction of the material, but also can be very dangerous to the mage as it can trigger a dangerous phenomenon known as Mana Burning.

Basic Information

Anatomy

Eye Colour

Over the course of their long lives, the eyes of some mages will shift colours. The more they use their abilities, the more the colour shifts away from their original tint, and towards one that is specificaly related to their element type. The speed of this process depends on the strenght of their magic abillties and how much they use them. However, it generaly takes many years for any real noticable changes to occur.

Ear Shape

Both elemental mages and regular humans are born with ears that are the same shape. However, as mages grow up, and their elemental abilities grow in tandem, their ears will begin to change in shape. Over the course of their childhood and until the end of puberty, the ears will grow longer and develop into a noticable point. The size difference from human ears varies per individuals, ranging from barely noticible, to very prominent. This difference is largely dependant on the level of natural mana they possess. This means that there's a direct corrolation between the shape of a mage's ears, and how strong they are.

Internal Anatomy

Mana Core

Mages are born with a small special organ just above the heart, called a core. These cores are connected with the mage's soul which allows it generate mana and retain it. The mage can also absorb wild mana called Nexurium into it by tapping into the mana of an elemental source, such as a river, the wind, a torch light or even the sun itself, as long as said element contains sufficient wild mana.

Mana generation

Unlike Soulbound Mages, who's souls are connected to The Etherial plane and the near infinite mana energy it holds, elemental mages are not. This means that they are limited in the quantity of mana they can generate and use. Instead, their cores are their primary source of mana, storing and converting the body's energy into Mana. If the soul's connection to the mana core is severed, the body will cease to produce or absorb mana, as the core will die and not regenerate, preventing them from doing magic.

Core regeneration

However, if the core is physicaly damaged, but the soul connection remains, it is able to regenerate at a rapid speed, possibly in less than a week. In fact, much like broken bones, it tends to regenerate stronger than it was previously, able to produce and absorb larger quantities of Mana. Removing the organ completly from one's body leads to the generation of a new core, which takes a few weeks to a month. This process can be repeated forever as long as the soul remains intact.

Genetics and Reproduction

Natural births

The gestation period for Elemental mages is the same as humans: Around 9 months. Children born from two elemental mages parents have a 100% chance of being an Elemental mage themselves. If both parents are of the same elemental type, they have a change of inheriting stronger abilities of that same side, whereas if their parents are not the same elemental type, they have a 50% chance of inheriting either one. If only one of the parents is an elemental mage, then the likelyhood that the child becomes one drops to 25%, while if one of the parent is instead a soulbound mage, then they have a 80% change of being a elemental mage and 20% of being a soulbound mage.

"Miraculous" Births

Very rarely, a elemental mage child is born from two human parents. This is commonly seen as a good omen for the family and the child in most cultures as many religions deem these births to be divine miracles and gifts. From a more rational thinking, many scholars hypothesise that having a elemental mage in the family might influence the emergance of those powers further down the family tree. However, this doesn't explain why their elemental type seems to not always correlate with those of their ancestors. A similar, but much more impactful phenomenon, known as Etherial Proliferation, also affects human births within Soulbound mage communities, and much like is the case with Elemental mages, it is unknown why or how it works.

Growth Rate & Stages

Biological

Elemental mages grow up at the same rate as a normal human and acheive adulthood at 16 years of age in the vast majority of cultures in Enaskia, Arros and Osian. The rapid growth of their magic power, which starts around 12 years old, also affects their physical appearance. Theirs ears and eyes go through changes that distinguishes them from humans. These changes occur over the course of decades but the most noticible period happens between age 14 to 20. Some cultures argue that mages truly do not acheive adulthood until these changes are complete, but most reject that reasoning. Crucialy, past the age of 30, mages are known to age slower, allowing them to live on average about 20 years longer than normal humans.

Magical

Signs of magical ability can emerge as soon as a week after birth, but it generaly takes a year or two before the first signs are observed. However, their magic abilities truly begins to manifest itself during early puberty. Female elemental mages usualy manifest their abilities sooner than male elemental mages. In both case, their powers steadely becomes stronger during their teenage year, until around 15 years old, where the rate of growth increases a lot until age 20. It then slows down until around age 25, before plateauing, forming their baseling strength, which they will have until about 70 years old, where it will begin to steadely decline until death.

Dietary Needs and Habits

Much like regular humans, Elemental mages eat various kinds of food, and do not avoid any particular food in relation to their magic abilities. The only difference in their diatary needs manifests in the aftermath of using their abilities, as doing so generaly requires a lot of their energy, which they need to replenish by eating more than they normaly would.

Types of Elemental Mages

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Humans

Genetic Descendants

• Archmages

Lifespan

Around 90 years

Related Organizations

• Good Children's House
• Kingdom of Kherokomia
• The Mage Academy of Palynor
• The Wall Watchers

Related Myths

• Potion of Magic
• The Source of the Golcai

Related Technologies

• Talismans

Unique Elemental interactions

Some types of elemental mages are able to interact with the Wild Mana of another element, namely ice mages, Tide/water mages, Ferro/Metal mages and Earth/Stone mages. Ice and water mages can use mana of the other element, as can Stone and Metal.

Ice and Water

In the first pair, ice mages have the advantage. This is because ice has nearly no mana within itself, meaning that normaly, Ice mages would need to use their own mana to control and create ice. However, they are able to use the mana within water to create ice, or to move existing ice. Water mages are also able to move ice, but have to use their own mana or mana from a water source to do it. They cannot create ice with their mana, nor can ice mages create water.

Stone and Metal

Finaly, Ferromages and Stonemages can also interact with each other's element. Hot and/or melted metal and stone contain mana that both types of mage can use, although it is slightly easier for stone mages to use mana from metal than the other way around, for unknown reasons. However, unlike water mages who are able to control ice to some extent, neither stone or metal mages can control or create each other's element.

Culture and Civilisation

Major Organisation

In most countries which contain a substantial elemental mage population, they tend to stick together, and form organisations like guilds to either advocate and/or protect their rights. Many Mercenary Guilds exist throughout the world, where members's services are bought by clients. Magic academies, large schools where Mages come to train their abilities and learn about them can be found in most large cities in Hysal, with the most famous of them being The Mage Academy of Palynor. While countries or other independant territories ruled exclusively by Elemental mages are a much rarer sight than those ruled by Soulbound mage, they do exist. The most famous of those are the kindgom of Duredan, in central Mahador as well as the Realm of the Four Nations, located in northern Viuzhul.

Interspecies Relations

Humans-E.Mages
Elemental mages are widely appreciated by the world's human population and most human-majority countries have a sizable portion of mage population. Many in both groups say that they have a sort of symbiotic relationship. However, despite these warm relationships, elemental mages also tend to keep to themselves, not as clans or even independant countries like Soulbound Mages, but instead in Guilds. As for personal relationships, most humans do not discriminate towards mage partners, but some elemental mages do discriminate against human partners, mainly do to culture and religious reasons.
Soulbound Mages-E.Mages
Despite both being called "mages" by humans, they are very different from each other, and thanks to the rather bad reputation of soulmages in most of the world, some elemental mages tend to not associate themselves with them. However, in both Arros and Osian, it is common to see groups, like guilds and clans, to contain both types of mages working together. As for personal relationship, most elemental mages do not partner with soulbound mages, mainly because they usualy do not live together in the same communities. Also, some places do have cultural and religious norms that forces them to proritize partnering with other elemental mages over Soulbound Mages.