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Color: Blue
Sin: Greed
Virtue: Nurturing
Nature and Applications: Though it's commonly referred to as the water element, this is a bit of a misnomer. The school of water includes every liquid substance in the temperature range where water is liquid. Like earth and air, water users retain their control over these substances should they change state; ice and vapor are still within their realm.
Water is the overbearing parent of the elements. It believes its influence is the best, and therefore wants to spread it everywhere. Control is very important to water, though once it has control, it doesn't necessarily exercise it. It clings to the other physical elements, but though it may accompany them everywhere, it rarely intervenes. It's content as long as the option is there, and only takes that option if the option is in danger of being taken away. It doesn't need attention, it doesn't need heeding, it doesn't need any sort of acknowledgement of its presence; it simply needs to be there.
When used offensively, water is entropy. It fights wars of attrition, erodes defenses, infiltrates and destroys from within. Like the element itself, it's hard to harm a water mage because it doesn't try to resist opposing forces. They simply flow out of the way, harnessing the enemy's momentum to strike where the opponent is weak They subvert the strong by condensing water into their eyes, ears, nose and mouth, slowly depriving them of their senses and making every breath a struggle. They cripple the quick by ruining their footing, making any surface either too slick or soft for acrobatics. Subtlety is not sacred, however; if sufficient pools are available, wizards can divert rivers to smother their foes, use underground deposits to create quicksand or sinkholes, or even stir a lake into an inland tsunami, given enough time.
They aren't helpless in dry environments either; in fact, they may be more dangerous, as they are more inclined to resort to underhanded resources like poison, drugs, or corrosive fluids.
There are easily as many constructive uses as their are destructive ones. Many sorcerers have made a fortune off droughts by locating underground wells or causing a cloud to rain prematurely. They can propel a ship to its port in record time, and they take all the challenge out of fishing. It's even rumored that a master can create a palace out of a glacier.
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I really want to escape the 'water means frost' trap when it comes to magic. I know it's not universal, but it seems like most uses of water as an element in combat mean frostbolts or pointy ice shards or whathaveyou. While such things are feasible in Arbiter - where ice is already present, at least - the act of changing temperature doesn't belong to the school of water. Without it, though, we need to rethink how it's used, and that's partially where the poison/acid/nitro glycerin/liquidsthatain'twater usage comes into play.
I think it was Stevo who first mentioned microwaves, either him or Bryan, and I think it's a brilliant idea too. Going way back to the 'what is magic' post, it's possible that 'to live is to be a wizard,' or in other words, you can't control the elements of another person's body because they're already controlling them, but that doesn't stop anybody from vibrating the water in the atmosphere around somebody. Steam the guy in his armor! This eliminates the possibility of Avatar's "blood-bending", unless you're using a corpse's blood, but I haven't decided if I'm ever going to be that graphic in this series. I'm not writing for kids specifically, but maybe I don't want to exclude them?
That said, while they can't control blood that's already being controlled, there's nothing to stop them from 'communicating' with it. Perhaps they can read people's blood pressure and heartbeat and the like to know whether they're lying or agitated, similar to how an electric mage might catch glimpses of people's thoughts.
Water is a really versatile element, and it might be easy to make it too good. So I might need to make it clear that a river can't just rise up off the ground and then slap somebody standing nearby like a whip. If a wizard is changing a river's course, it's slower, he's modifying the flow far upstream so it slowly cuts a new path until it carves out enough of the shore to swallow whoever they're fighting.
It's really tempting to imagine it like Pokemon's water type or Avatar's water bending, but I gotta keep it from getting excessive. Water doesn't have enough structural integrity to support water, so I don't want it rising in the shape of a snake out of a still lake or something like that. It can't just come spouting endlessly out of a turtle's mouth because he's water type, either. I want it to be more limited and sneaky. Water can't flow uphill because Santa's magic, water flows uphill by using the ground's sponginess to choose which soil gets to absorb it, and it sponges its way up the hill by a train of absorption through the soil.
Y'know, rules, even if they slap real-world rules in the face. If ya wanna crush somebody under the weight of a lake, it doesn't just suddenly rise up into a crest and fall on the guy. You gotta spin it around in the lake until it builds up the momentum to splash over the rim. I'm willing to ignore physics enough to say water forms a current because water moves itself (where real-life currents are obviously a complicated product of the spinning of the earth), but not enough to pretend it can defy gravity and float on the air.
It's all about balancing real physics and the whimsy and "cool factor" of magic again. We can't have Korra wave her hand to have a jet of water shoot from the pool and knock a guy off the diving board, but maybe a water mage can stick his canteen into a stream and have the water pack itself in there so tight that he can shoot somebody with it the next time he takes the lid off.
Then there's ice and vapor. Without the built in freeze mechanic other franchises like to include (they'd need to be a hybrid to freeze or evaporate), we can have a water mage have ice creep over itself across the ground and then freeze its way up somebody's leg if they're too slow getting away from it, have steam move in a cloud to cook anyone it catches. Maybe we can even have ice act like the frostbolts and ice-shrapnel we're used to by having a big chunk of it crack itself, and then squeeze the resulting chips or shards in such a way that they fly out and puncture somebody.
So, what other ways can we picture water being used? What mechanics might we contrive to make it do what we want it to? Who has done it well, and who provides the best examples of what NOT to do? What kind of synergy are you seeing with the other elements we've seen so far, or even the ones coming up?
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