Insolent Dirt: the Earth Element

We move from a contender for the title of 'most exotic' to, perhaps, the most familiar (and maybe even boring?) of the elements. Still, somebody's gotta be the straight man, right? I mean, could the Aqua Teens work without Frylock?

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Color: Yellow
Sin: Pride
Virtue: Integrity

  Nature and Applications: Earth holds dominion over most of the terrestrial solids. If it's not wood, bone, stalk, or flesh, then it is likely one of the minerals or metals of the earth element. These substances are often known for their rigidity, a trait that reflects the earth's strong sense of identity. It craves respect, which is why it so often shapes itself into the mountains humans associate with reverence.

  Where other wizards seem to command their elements, earth mages must make humble suggestions, ask for favors, or beg for help in order to achieve the results they desire. Boulders can crumble into dust to clear paths, desert dunes might shift and harden to become shelter, and iron can volunteer to forge the proper bonds and shape itself to become a warrior's steel.

  Earth sorcery is fundamentally about shape, at least when it's used exclusively. Novices can make fields plow themselves in a day, intermediates can open sinkholes or bridge a canyon, and masters can have a mountain carve itself into a palace.

  There is much a clever specialist can accomplish on their own, and there are obvious synergies to be had with the other elements. Earth can be shaped to help water reach places it would struggle to on its own, and metal is essential for the generation and transmission of electricity. Should sufficient heat be achieved, magma allows for even more versatility in an earth magician's arsenal. Like water and air, control of the earth is not lost once a substance changes state.

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Pretty straightforward so far, and I don't feel a ton of need to reinvent the wheel on this one. I would like to expand on the kinds of things we've seen rocks and dirt do in previous fantasy, but it can retain that earthy flavor. If ya don't like it, nobody forced ya to put it in your mouth...

Plus, I mean, I could tap into that ginormous Edward Elric fangirl demographic on the weapon possibilities alone. I mean, that's what they see in him, right?

What do you mean by that "You don't understand what women want!" comment? Isn't this gif his entire appeal?

Jokes aside, there's still a lot of room for innovation here. I mean, a whole lot of that Periodic Table of Elements is made up of stuff that falls into the 'earth' category. Are there any fun reactions (of the naturally-occurring elements, preferably) you'd like to see used? Maybe some of them metals that make those special fire extinguishers necessary? Further, I feel like I haven't given as much thought to inter-element activity on this one, how might we combine earth with some of the other elements? I've got a cool idea for a sword that also takes on the properties of electricity, and when ya swing it, it can strike like lightning, simultaneously slicing and shocking. A pretty high-level artifact, though, and one that needs to be charged...

The Ultimate Layabout: the Dark Element

A return to the eight-week formula. I wanted to give ya'll a longer break, but I'm shaking up my work schedule, and with how temperamental I am about these things, I suppose it's a miracle I even stayed on task.

Darkness is (obviously) on the opposite end of the spectrum from the light element. Like light, it will often be misunderstood as being a literal manifestation of morality (light is good and dark is evil), but both will actually be morally neutral. However, my current impressions are that this won't be super-relevant anyway, because darkness is a hard club to get in to, largely because my dark element is supposed to encompass some of the things we don't understand about real-world physics.

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Color: Black
Sin: Sloth
Virtue: Patience

  Nature and Applications: Darkness is such an obscure element that many scholars are unaware it even exists. A majority of magic communities don't acknowledge it in their records, either because of its dangerous nature or because they're simply oblivious to its existence.

  It has, by far, the smallest representation of earthbound elements, but as darkness is the purest of the physical magics, it is also the most prevalent throughout the universe. The fact that the world exists in a minority of the universe - where darkness isn't dominant - has led many to believe it is an enemy to life. This is a misunderstanding, however; life makes use of the dark element as it does any other, though the doses are so much smaller that they are essentially imperceptible.

  Darkness got its name from the absence of light, but the element itself is rarely the reason for an actual lack of light. Darkness is so-called because its status as the purest physical magic causes it to be hyper-absorbent. None of the energy elements can escape its gravity; light, heat, electricity, and even life will be permanently captured by any darkness these elements are exposed to. If that energy is ever released, it will only be because the darkness permitted it.

  This makes the darkness very difficult to study. Since all light is absorbed, it cannot be seen, and since physical contact with any perceptible amount can be lethal, it is difficult to determine whether it is solid, liquid, gas, or some new, unknown state of matter. The best way to study it is by studying its effect on its surroundings, which has made progress understandably slow.

  What is known is that it retains all the energy it constantly absorbs and its capacity seems massively disproportionate to its concentration; it can retain exponentially more than a piece of earth of the same size. The few who claim to be able to communicate with the darkness say it has little interest in absorbing all the energy it does; that the energy actually seeks the darkness like a shelter. Whatever the case, it can make use of this energy to alter its position in space. If the universe were drawings on a page, then darkness is able to fold the page enough to make the face touch itself, travelling to a new spot on the paper by folding the universe so that its starting point is touching its destination.

  As darkness is a lazy element, it is reluctant to even communicate. If a sorcerer can manage it, however, they can harness its insane density to strengthen other materials or enhance their conductivity. Intermediate users can make use of its space-"folding" properties to travel vast distances in an instant - though if they expend too much energy from the darkness in themselves, it will consume too much of their heat, electricity, light, or life to survive the trip.

  Masters can temporarily fold larger quantities into the world from the void beyond. Collections the size of a fist will exert more gravity on their surroundings than the entire planet, causing unsecured people and objects to "fall" towards the darkness. Further, if they touch the substance, their energies will be siphoned and whichever body part touched the darkness will be mangled by the force of its gravity.

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So if ya hadn't guessed, darkness is a cheap and liberal interpretation of dark matter - so-called because we don't really know what it is, we just know there must be some type of matter out there we haven't been able to classify. The known elements don't exist in enough quantities to be exerting enough gravity for the universe to be doin' what it's doin', so dark matter is the 'x' they use to make the unified theory of physics work until they figure out exactly what it is. At least, that's how it was explained to me.

Because it's fiction and fantasy and magic, I felt like I have the privilege of assigning properties to it, and some of the common perceptions regarding black holes and warp drive and wormholes and whatnot seemed like natural properties to assign. Plus, since it's the least-understood element, we can introduce new applications as we go. Fun!

How have other writers handled darkness in fiction? Most of the time, it seems so abstract; it's always tied to demons and evil and corruption. It's hard to imagine how darkness could really harm a person in combat. Like, shadowbolts in Warcraft obviously cause damage, but what kind of pain do you feel when it hits you? I won't lie, the way I'm using it has been influenced by things like the Dark Dark fruit in One Piece, but writing has always been a derivative thing. Drawing influence from other people is fine, so who else has used darkness in a way that makes some degree of sense? What properties was it assigned, how did sorcerers use it other than to make good people do bad things, from whence was it sourced (if we don't include the underworld or Hell)? Most importantly, how would you interpret it as an element; what properties would you assign, in my position?

On Beginnings

We takin' a break from the elements today. They're startin' to go all prima donna on me.

On the topic of writing, the most common question is probably "where do we start?" In my explorations, I've come to the conclusion that the answer isn't often "at the beginning." The first page of a novel has become an industry; seriously, there are services devoted wholly to critiquing only the first page.

We all know the internet feeds our collective attention deficit disorder. There's a whole lot of free entertainment out there, so if you want people to see your stuff (and especially if you want them to pay for the privilege), you need to have something exceptional from the beginning. They have plenty other places to turn, so you've gotta give them a good reason not to.

We all love Tolkien, but the Hobbit never would have been published in this age. It fails every 'first page test' ever devised. How can that be, when he's the flagbearer for the entire fantasy genre? Well, as impressed as we all are with the inventor of the wheel, it's hard to claim he perfected the thing.

Progress is a pain. A day in the life of a halfling was plenty-entertaining when there weren't any alternatives, but as that saying in Stephen King's Gunslinger goes, "The world has moved on." We can't really ease into the climax anymore, can't start anywhere near mundane. We've come to the point where we can assume the audience knows how to swim, and therefore, they prefer to enter the pool at the deep end. Things need to be different, dangerous, and intriguing right from the start.

This is why I say you don't start at the beginning, and this is where I need your help! I need the stories to read nothing like my blog, all the technical details need to stay out. We want to break any new ground we can, but we can do that while taking cues from successful people.

Game of Thrones began with a ranging and a White Walker. We didn't know anything about the Wall or the Black Brothers or Winter, but from the way the rangers interacted and cues in their conversation, we knew they were a practiced, capable military force that didn't spook easily. Yet they were spooked. George didn't take long to show us they had a damn good reason to be scared.

The survivor of that encounter was executed for desertion by Ned Stark, Ned Stark takes his boys back to Winterfell, and only then are we introduced to the normalcy of life in Westeros. Martin began with the sort of scene you might expect to find closer to the climax, with danger and intrigue and horror, then eased us into the mundane rituals of a day in Winterfell. Learning the relatively boring details of life in Winterfell and the goings-on of the kingdom and the petty family drama were all much more interesting when we know it's all in danger at the hands of them white prune-zombies. After all, the head of the house just executed the guy who saw them up close and personal, so the threat can't be far away.

Because the Song of Ice and Fire started in the deep end of the pool with the White Walker prologue, the shallow end stays interesting long enough to see us through to Bran's fateful climb up Cersei's tower window, and after that, no amount of tedium is going to keep us from watching Westeros slowly spiral into war.

Game of Thrones isn't even the best example of how to hook people right away, probably not by a long shot. It's just a clean demonstration of how to start anywhere but at the beginning.

Watchmen began with the Comedian getting brutally murdered. We had no real idea who this clown was, but that didn't make it any less interesting. Indeed, if your story contains any element of mystery or intrigue, it probably oughta start with the crime-in-progress or somebody stumbling upon the body. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy begins by destroying the Earth. Mass Effect begins in a troop transport en route to a battlefield, the only exposition to a rather robust universe being given in the mission briefing. Star Wars started with laser fire between a space cruiser and a Star Destroyer. Pulp Fiction begins with philosophical mobsters on their way up to whack some skimmers. Ya hit hard before ya deliver the softer punches.

We can probably get away with more than what we initially believe when it comes to the first scene. It may seem natural to start out peaceful and mundane to help the reader understand, and even as a way to ease into your own story before you know the plot details of what will happen later, but it turns out you probably want to know where you're going before you start. You need enough of an idea of what will happen later in order to open with a desperate situation, one that's relevant to the larger conflict you'll get to later.

Saxton Hale does a wonderful job of explaining why exposition sucks and why you should resort to Explosition! instead. Take a look:

Stick around long enough for Saxton Hale to "fix reading" (it was clearly broken).

So lead me by example, friends. Which franchises grabbed you right from the start? Which stories made you wonder "how'd they come up with this stuff?!" by throwing you into the grinder then sorting it out afterward? Books, comics, TV shows, games, movies... they all start with writers, so they're all relevant. Who employs the best technique when it comes to keeping the audience in their seats until the story ends?

Git Ya One: the Life Element

So we've finally come to one of the more exotic and unfamiliar of the elements. Sure, we've got the 'nature' school of magic, like what shamans and druids in Warcraft use, but that's probably the closest analog. The biggest setback to living in any fantasy universe would probably be their lack of medical science. Since magic is science in the world of Arbiter, we can't just leave the void of pharmaceuticals unfilled. That's where the life element comes in!

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Color: Green
Sin: None. Well, more like 'all.'
Virtue: Ditto

Nature and applications: Unlike the other elements, life doesn't have a narrow personality. Different forms of life have different demeanors, and even different individuals in a particular species can have wildly variant personalities. However, one thing is certain: users of the life element are known to be domineering. The ability to dominate is essential for any life mage.

  Life is a transformative energy. If earth is exposed to life magic, it becomes flesh or wood or something of the like. Water becomes blood or sap or honey, and air becomes breath. Life is the missing variable between the basic elements and the crops, beasts, and people of the world. If any substance is outside the control of a sorcerer of the physical schools, it's probably because life transformed it into something new.

  Though many healers only wield the light element, the best menders use life. Light only fuels and accelerates a patient's ability to heal itself, while life can correct the problems the body can't correct on its own. For instance, a blind man might see if a life mage uses their own eyes and brain as a template to teach their patient's body to rewire itself into a seeing configuration. Life leaves no scars, won't let a broken bone mend crookedly, doesn't create rogue cells that consume its host body. Increased efficacy requires increased resources, however; unlike light, life requires more materials than just the patient's body. As no sorcerer is able to conjure something from nothing, they require some sort of meat or fiber if they hope to mend someone's flesh and tissue.After all, life is an energy, not a material.

  A novice might correct a scrape, an intermediate might save a dying soldier, but there's no telling what a master can accomplish. Life mages can take a human and make them into something more. Bull horns, eagle wings, cat eyes, chitin, bark, fins; some cultures worship life mages as gods, and others shun them as abominations, but there's no denying their potency. These wizards can incorporate the ecosystem into their own being, absorbing the material of any flora and fauna they've dominated into their own bodies. As long as they have a subservient life-form available, there are few limits to the ways they can alter their bodies.

  As evidenced by their propensity to heal, this control isn't limited to their own bodies. Life users can cause individual blades of grass to combine and grow into vines to constrict an enemy, command a herd of buffalo like a personal army, or even create a new species of bird from an existing egg. The only limit is the ability to dominate the life of whatever they wish to manipulate.As such, there are no known records of a person being manipulated against their will.

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So hopefully this gives you an idea of what life is, why it's an energy magic and not a physical one, and why it's the only element that doesn't have a personality. It's supposed to really play into the idea that 'to live is to be a magician,' because life is a magical element and to live is to wield oneself. Just like the other elements are conscious and can be appealed to, we too are an element that can be appealed to. While electricity is closely tied to intelligence and thought, life is tied to individuality and soul. The life element in Arbiter is sort of the proof of a soul, something we don't necessarily have in the real world. Still, the soul is a resource, just like the water, earth, and air are resources the soul uses to create and maintain its body.

So basically, life users steal souls. The Shang Tsungs of wizards!

And just like Shang Tsung, I doubt we'll have anybody be able to harvest another person's soul unless they're basically dead anyway.

Life opens up the possibility for shapeshifters, for variations on humans like giants, orcs, goblins, minotaurs, or werewolves (we can do better than that, though: weregerbils, for instance!), and a much greater variety of wildlife (dragons, wyverns, griffins).

And, again, it fills the void left by a lack of genetic and medical research. This provides an alternative for the sorts of things you might find in sci-fi: splicing, bionic limbs, augmentation. Maybe you can even prevent or reverse aging with it. Probably couldn't cure my baldness, though, because that (and ONLY that) is too good to be believable!

This element could get really fun with hybrids, too. Modify the body in a way that generates charge that can be stored in some kind of electric gland (maybe by harvesting electric eels), make yourself an extra bladder in your tummy so you can shoot water bullets (learn from the archer fish), integrate metal into your skeleton and maybe even your skin; at this point, I'd wager I've made life seem super strong, but maybe the social consequences help make up for any disparity in power?

So. How would you like to see life used? To phrase it another way, how would you augment yourself or your minions with a power like this? Anybody wanna comment on some more technical applications, like how we might explain any of these transformations to someone with a background in biology? I apologize if this one seems more robust than some of the others, but again, this one seems new and exotic compared to the more classical ones. Make your voices heard, m'friends!

Excess Liquidity: the Water Element.

We finally get to the first physical element! Why now? Well, there's a rhyme and reason to the order. The colors may lead the way.

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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?

Electricity: an Elemental Butt Sandwich.

Light seemed like a pretty straightforward element. At least, when compared to electricity. Does that sound backward? Well, after this, maybe you'll agree: electricity is trickier.

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Color: Purple
Sin: Wrath
Virtue: Wisdom

  Nature and Applications: Most people don't have a grasp on the concept of electricity, and in ancient times, even the most scholarly people believed it only existed in the sky. To this day, most people only know it as lightning, as some foreign spirit in the clouds that only comes down to punish any who dare anger it.

  The rare masters of this element profess a poetic irony in the superstition surrounding electricity, particularly because it plays a crucial role in every human mind. The layman equates electricity to lightning, and therefore as an irrational and strictly destructive force. However, the principle element that causes lightning is actually the source of rational thought. While light fuels the consciousness of water, wind, and earth, the elements lack the guidance of true thought, their awareness confined to blind emotions and impulses. Electricity is what sets the living mind above the elements.

  Electricity is a pragmatist. It craves efficiency and order, and therefore, reacts violently when order is upset. Like many great scholars, it is curious and easily absorbed in the search for knowledge. Just as a professor is prone to strike a student who interrupts their reading, electricity attacks anything that disturbs its flow.

   The most conspicuous use of this element is always in its offensive capacity. The human body is regulated by the nervous system's natural charge, so a sorcerer of electricity can easily disrupt that control by introducing a foreign current. Further, many physical elements naturally try to resist any invading flows of electricity, and the conflict between matter and energy can result in burning. Electricity is a fickle element, and requires special conditions in order to be weaponized, but its users are famously good at finding clever ways to meet those requirements. For instance, many common weapons double as a natural candidate for storing charges and transmitting shocks.

  When used with subtlety, it has more constructive applications. To know an electric mage is to know an inventor; their understanding of the energy inspires the creation of all sorts of gadgets. Electricity is known for its ability to coordinate with light and heat, and as such, electricians are known to employ devices that can make light, cook, and even do manual labor for them.Electricity is truly a tool that only the clever can use.

In a more direct applcation, since electricity is such a fundamental part of thought, these mages are known to be better at understanding what other people are thinking.

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Alright, so as you may be able to tell, I don't have as strong a grasp on how electricity will play out in Arbiter. The difficulty is that, usually, sorcerers can pull their element directly from the environment. While I could technically just claim a mage can siphon from the charges in the electron clouds of all the matter around them, but electricity is special. Asperger special, to be precise. The title finally makes sense! Asperger, Ass burger, butt sandwich, you get it... essentially, electricity is the Patricia Tannis (Borderlands) of the elements.

Brilliant, but irritable to the point of neurosis. While, like heat, light, and even life, sorcerers will still source their power from their environments, electricity won't simply gather through the air. They need some method of conduction or generation.To try and gather it directly from the atmosphere's molecules or from the earth's particles or from whatever substance disturbs electricity's love of order, it would probably just have an autistic-style fit and fry you for violating the system. So you have to play ball and have some kind of battery, generator, or conductive tool to collect the raw energy before you can cast with it.

Say they're in an environment with an abnormally strong charge, like one of those super sandstorms in the Sahara Desert (rumor has it, they produce ground-level lightning storms). Perhaps a mage has a device to capture and redirect or even store that energy for later. Maybe they live their lives around the gathering of energy, they're the 'come prepared' sort of battler. It could all be about batteries, and while they might have countless generators around the house to convert light, heat, and motion into electricity slowly over time, they can only use as much electricity as they bring to the battle in the form of a limited-capacity and heavy battery? Maybe they just scooch across the carpet in their onesies a lot?

For hybrid mages, perhaps they can use other elements to help them generate electricity. For instance, a light mage's understanding of light might enable him to produce solar power (photovoltaics) in some way. Electricity is among the most difficult elements to use, and to me, that suggests most electric users can use other elements and thereby generate electricity by using another element in a clever fashion. Unless your personality is completely high-functioning autism, a la Rainman, you probably studied your way up to electricity through another school of magic.

Also, magnets. How do they work? (you lose points if you know why that's supposed to be funny)

Seriously though, magnetism falls into their specialty.

This is the best opportunity yet to get ideas from you guys. How might an electrician (an electric magician, get it?!) source their spells? Plus, I electricity is such an awkward word, what should we call this school? Shock magic? Furthermore, there's a distinct lack of spell description here. I have more ideas than lightning strikes, but this is already long, and a lot of those ideas incorporate concepts that warrant their own articles. Be as creative and indirect as you want: how could you see electricity being used in battle?

Phrisky Photons: the Light Element.

Forgive me if I've said this before, but I currently plan to have magic in Arbiter be comprised of 8 different elements, and that collective will be known as the elemental spectrum. The classic elements, the ones that really spawned the idea of elements in fantasy, are earth, air, fire, and water. Why am I doubling that number? Well, I guess because other people have, and I liked it. Plus, they divide neatly: four are energy (light, electricity, fire/heat, and life/nature) and four are physical (earth, water, air, darkness).

If you're confounded by an element's categorization there, save it for that element's individual profile in the weeks to come!

So we'll start with Light, an element that isn't on the classical list, but one we've seen frequently enough. Warcraft and Warhammer, Final Fantasy, Zelda, Magic: The Gathering, and holy crap all my examples are games. You know what, though? I'm not gonna care, because if we tried hard enough, we'd find it elsewhere.

Anyway, here's the profile:
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Light element

Color: White (shut up, we're calling it a color)
Sin: Lust
Virtue: Love

   Nature and applications: Light is the purest form of energy. It is plentiful and generous, giving itself freely to whatever it touches. Those who are fond of it claim it to be the source of love and everything that is good. Cynics associate light with promiscuity and impulsiveness. Some say it is the easiest school of magic, because all the element desires is to give itself to others.
 
   Light is believed to be the source of the physical elements' consciousness, that it brings the energy required for wizards to be able to manipulate water, earth, and air.

The most common use of light is in healing magic, where it is used to supercharge the body's ability to regenerate.

From a utility standpoint, someone's sight is entirely dependent on light, so light can be used to play tricks on the enemy's vision or even deprive them of it entirely. And since Light is necessary for sight, Light can be used to spy on things you'd normally be unable to see; Light obviously travels swiftly, so as long as there's light around to ask favors of, it can travel to a target and return to reassemble what it saw in a matter of seconds.

There are offensive applications too, however: light mages can concentrate light into beams of pure kinetic energy, which can be used to inflict blunt-force trauma or even punch holes through solid objects.
 
   Indeed, many scholars believe light and kinetic energy are the same thing: any object that moves at sufficient speeds will glow in proportion to its velocity. This is why stars and comets shine: they either burn hot or move swiftly enough. Even weapons have been purported to glow with an unnatural light when swung by particularly-skilled warriors, though the light only lasts a moment, and it's not common to find a person with the prowess to achieve such speeds.
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That's how we might describe it from within the world of Arbiter. From outside, there's a couple more things I want to say about it.

First and easiest, associating a color with each element is important because they'll be used with runes (we'll explore that in the post about runes).

While light and heat are closely associated in reality (can't think of anything that generates light that doesn't also generate heat), I want to separate them for Arbiter. I want to change its nature a bit, to make super concentrations of light less like laser beams and more like the repulsor blasts from Iron Man's hands, or maybe even the Kamehameha. Like it says above, kinetic energy. I feel like it would make light more identifiable from "fire" magic. And, if my wildest dreams ever came true and I had the chance to work with a comic artist or game developer or movie producer or something, they could have fun with the whole "an object's brightness is proportional to how fast it's moving" dynamic. If his hammer glows, you know the hit is gonna hurt. Shut up, it's fun to daydream about the idea!

Unlike other franchises, which like to use light as a metaphor for good and darkness as a metaphor for evil, I want to avoid that suggestion. Sure, there will be churches and societies in Arbiter that might claim that light is pure good and dark is pure evil, but I hope to always have credible characters to dispute that claim. Just like all the other elements, light has a neutral alignment. The whole reason I plan to assign one of the seven deadly sins (and a similar virtue) to all (except one!) elements is not to suggest how good or evil it is, but to give you a better idea of the element's consciousness, its personality, and an idea for what type of person would like to use which school of magic.They are what motivates the element to do anything at all, the desires a sorcerer needs to appease in order to get their element(s) to play along.

In this case, Light is the Snooki of the group. People who love her do so because she's outgoing and friendly and innocent. (I don't see promiscuity as a crime, really) People who hate her do so because she's intrusive and impulsive and shamelessly stupid. Ya feel guilty for hating her because whenever she does something bad, it's simply because she didn't know any better. She never does anything with the intention to harm. She's only intolerable because she NEVER knows better, although my entire judgment comes from the clips they played during Beavis and Butthead...

Was probably a mistake to make that association, but Light, more than any other element, might need a strong example of why a given person may not like it, why not everyone can be a light mage. Which is why it might be okay to compare to Snooki right now.

So. When you guys hear 'light magic' or 'light element,' what comes to mind? What games, books, or shows immediately stand out? (right now, I'm either thinkin' Warcraft priest/paladin or Kizaru and the Pacifista from One Piece) Has anyone used it in a particularly clever way? Most importantly, can you think of ways you might make use of light in spellcasting? Perhaps in somewhat more real-world ways, like mirages or inducing seizures/hallucinations, or would you rather break the laws of real world physics like I did? (light is the fastest thing ever, therefore, the faster something moves, the brighter it should glow!)