Elemental Lore

[Jenkar]

A recent competition got me thinking : we never had a very defined Lore for elements. So here i go : post what you think should be next, and when i come to it (chronogically), i will try to make a piece of lore on it.
Expect around 3-4 paragraph a small wall of text per request.

Done so far : Devourer, Crusader, Nature of Cards, Elemental VS Elemental combat, Quanta representation by elementals.
Requested : Antlion, Malignant Cell,Aflatoxin, Ash.

[Onizuka]

Devourer

[Bhlewos]

Crusader. Only "human" in the whole game (so far), he has to be special.

[Higurashi]

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,12688

[Pineapple]

Elemental vs. Elemental battles, whether "decks" with "cards" are used, (like magical cards that summon sky-scraping Pillars), or if it's more like Pokemon TCG and Pokemon anime, where you just summon a Ruby Dragon and it starts attacking your opponent and ignoring your opponents' creatures. Also, how Elementals define quanta, whether they can measure the number, or if they just know they have "not enough" or "more than enough."

[Jenkar]

Devourer :
"Cyjek was a very unhappy elemental. Very young, he had felt the call of Darkness, and, since the ideals of that element fit with his own ideals, he rapidly mastered the techniques of this magick. However, Cyjek had a major problem : he consistently failed at drawing quanta from his surroundings. He had the inner power, but, without major outside help (a moonless night, the deepest points in caves) he was only able to summon parasites. While those could be helpful, he knew that they were not sufficient to reach an interesting amout of power. And he was unhappy not to be able to untap the potential he had.

But he continued believing, and soon was rewarded by inspiration : "Vampires drain health. What if i were to create a creature that would not drain health, of which i have no care, but quanta?" And he busied himself. He consulted creatures of other elements, stole or mindtricked them into giving the secrets of their quanta, the way it was handled, how it was produced, and more importantly, how it was moved. Finally, he went into the deepest grotto he knew of, and started drawing miasma. But instead of shaping it in a creature he knew, he gave it his knowledge, its aim. And the creature formed itself, in a thin, small worm. He studied it, produced some more, and went outside with them.

 It was daylight, and he felt his small power withering to dust. But then the small creatures started sucking at the light, and soon, he felt the power accumulating in them, ready for use. He had to use it, produce something big, powerful - he summoned an obsidian dragon. Soon, with the power of his pets, the devourers, he became the first denier in the land."

Much bigger than i expected. Enjoy/Destroy. Next : Crusader.

Higu : excellent link.
Patch : that will come after crusader. You're basicly making two requests, which will both be fulfilled.

[Jenkar]

Crusader :
"Ajen always had been known as the best swordsman. A pure Light elemental, he fought for great causes that touched his heart. But what he enjoyed most was the actual wielding of weapon, a contact with another soul that united them, if not in form, in purpose. Yet he felt that he had reached his limits, that the symbiosis between him and his weapons could never become greater. And it frightned him greatly. He did not understand the limit, could not understand why he could not be one with them.

He searched through all his training, all his experience. He nearly had given up when he saw an old note of the first year of his training : "The cards summon the creatures, permanent or spells from miasma. Every summon is made of miasma. But elementals are not made of miasma, they are made of quanta. This is the main reason it is not possible to summon an elemental..."

A different structure. Ajen was abashed. Now that he knew his limit, he knew he could not remedy to it. Sinking into himself, he started doing a thing supposed impossible : he used his own substance to modify the miasma around him, and conglomerated it in a creature. As the creature took form, his substance faded in the effort. And his soul was ripped away, the fighter's insticts being the only mind transfered.

When Ajen's friends, worrying about his disapearance, came in his study, they saw the crusader. He stood, stoïc. After searching desesperatly for their friend, the elementals finally concluded that he must have been ripped by the energies of creation. After weeping for his death, they considered his creation. Obviously, he was a fighter, waiting for an order. But what? One of them said : "Show us why our friend gave his life to make you.". He extended his hand, pointing towards the weapons rack. Tentatively, the one who had spoken gave him a farhenheit - and was immediatly surprised by the change of his hand into a weapon. A long red sword now sprouted out of his wrist.

After multiple studies, Light elementals made more copies of him, and tested exhaustively the copy of weapons. They were especially surprised that the crusaders could not, under any circumstance, touch a morning glory, which had been Ajen's favorite weapon."

[ZephyrPhantom]

The Old Wiki also has some fragments of fan lore, if you're interested.
Fan Based Storyline (http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/Fan_Based_Storyline)
Card Storylines (http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/Fan_Based_Side_Stories)

My Request :
Antlion. It's one of the most underlooked Earth creatures from my PoV, so I feel it could use some love.

[Jenkar]

Nature of Cards :
"-When being trained into becoming professional, many students ask : are the summons contained in the cards?
The answer, of course, is no. The creatures live in the countryside, and the objects, most of the time, exist outside of the card.
The cards simply are a way to summon. Imagine that you're building a road, you need a construction plan to know what you're doing.
When summoning, it's the same thing. The card holds reminders, in case you have a memory hole, of what it is. But it also holds, in its image, the construction plan of the summon.
For creatures, and some permanents (weapon and shield come to mind), the "building" is in three parts : first, you gather the miasma, the raw substance that every non-elemental is made of. Next, you shape it according to the plan with the quanta. Thirdly, you need to find a soul for the card. You will be considered able to duel when you can summon the same soul whenever you build something.
For other permanents, and spells, only the first two parts are needed.

-But, out of duels, we can summon things without cards! I've seen dad doing it!

-It is true. The reason is, in duels, or other activities demanding large quantities of miasma over a relatively short amount of time, you can create miasmic incongruities. These can potentially be fatal, which is why we use cards, which allow us to manipulate  with an extreme precision the miasma, thus reducing to zero any risk of incongruity."

@ZBlader : I strongly dislike the first one. Several incongruities, such as elemental ennemities, are not kept. Meh. Second one isn't bad though.

[Bloodshadow]

I hate the fan-based storylines in the old wiki, because of multiple reasons that I'm too lazy to type out right now.

It's being kept a secret right now, but our Elements fanfic, 12 Realms (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,20059.0.html), has the most developed Elements lore ever. We spent more than a few months constructing that world and trying to make sense of it. More of the lore will be revealed as we post more chapters.

[Jenkar]

Duels (Elemental vs Elemental (PVP in game))
"The rules of duel are not ones we decide. Keep that in mind, if you wish to participate into duels, you must understand that those laws are natural, and that we only strive to understand how they work. It is also very important to remember the following thing : when a duel starts, miasma automatically gathers around the two duelists. This is probably the cause of duel specific rules.

The first rule of a duel is that the numbers of cards a duelist can have in a deck is limited, both with a lower and higher limit. The reasons for this law are unclear, but people who have tried to pass over or under the limit have met a very quick and unclean end. It is probably linked with the following rule, since the machines we use manage to imitate false gods also manage to imitate this.

The second rule is that you may not have more than 6 cards of the same kind in your deck. If you have too many, the residues of miasma that are the characteristic problem of each card would gather and potentially destroy the card. The false gods manage to stop the miasma gathering to some extent, and some enormous machines we made manage to do the same. However, even those techniques are limited, and only Paradox has ever managed to wield 16 cards in his deck with impunity.

A common question about the summons is why creatures don't consider the opponent's creatures (save for some abilities or spells). The reason is that the creatures know that they're in a duel, and thus, completely stop considering their usual Life habits, to only consider one thing : us.

It must be added, although this is not very well known, that the creatures summoned through duels differ through one thing : their miasma. It's potency, it's reality, has been reduced by the cards so that the monster would obey the summoner, and be much less of a real threat to the other player. You cannot die, or be more than scrathed, in a duel.

This brings up another point. Life points. Life points are the way we determine who won or lost a duel. Those are deducted automatically when a monster hits you, and when they reach zero, the "winner" sign shows itself. You can always check your life points by looking at the ground, they show up as a green bar.

Last thing you should remember : respect the summons. Even though it doesn't change a thing in the combat, those are souls which are, for a time, displaced just for your use. The least you can do is respect them."

Blood, i'll read your link in detail soon. Thanks!

[Jenkar]

Quanta representation :
"Quanta and miasma have both been forever inhabiting the universe when the world appeared in the middle of the miasma. It was composed of dense, very dense miasma, and it was solid. Both quanta and miasma concentrated around the world, mindlessly. As they closed in, they started to mingle, forming the elements. As the raw quanta changed to be elemental, it started to affect the fabric of the world. Many natural laws were born, but most importantly, it started shaping the world, giving it more than just shape, but substance too. Eventually, the portions with more miasma than quanta started making the substance, creatures and permanents being born, while the more quantic part started making Elementals.

Millenias after, while the miasma still was generating creatures and permanents, the Elementals began to understand their nature. Slowly, they discovered that they could change, stop being pure quanta and instead become aligned elementals. Rapidly, the number of pure Elementals diminished, till they disapeared. Only then did the Elementals see that they could not change their nature once it was chosen. There the Bazar appeared. It was a strange place, filled with strange objects and even stranger personns. These personns, however, were very clear : for a consistent sum of electrum, it would change Elementals. They also sold the first cards, and thus the first duels began.

With the first cards, the Elementals started to understand that quanta was a whole lot more than just themselves, that it was energy in the purest state. They understood, for example, how pillars worked, why they burnt an elemental, but soothed another. They also understood what Miasma was, and how, with their natural attunement to quanta, they could shape them, even without cards. They tried duels without card, and learnt (at their cost) all the rules of a duel. They also started to understand that quanta was not something they could count, the quantities always too great or too little. Besides, they didn't need to, due to their intuitive apreciation of it.

One day, a Darkness elemental, pure in the power of his kind, challenged a bazzar maintener. The creature, after a moment of thought, agreed and brought up a deck. After a very tough match, the bazar creature lost, and thus had to give the secret of mark change, as well of quanta, to the elemental. He immediatly dispersed the news, and soon, everyone could change his inner heart for free. Few did, however, and even rare were those who did it in other circumstances that duels."

Now workin' on : Antlion.