This is something that Saker Tarsos and I started a long long long long long time ago and never got even close to finishing. The periodic table is big, a lot of the elements aren't that interesting, and also working on this was a good reminder that I know embarrassingly little about chemistry and therefore couldn't really leverage this to its greatest effect. Many of my entries are a mix of my poor understanding of the chemistry, real-world applications, any historical or mythological significance of the element, or random stuff that popped into my head. I haven't re-read these in probably at least a year so I'm sure they're full of mistakes. It is unlikely that I'll ever finish this, although I'm realizing we missed some good ones so maybe I'll come back to some of them. Any suggestions also appreciated. A lot of the entries are repetitive for reasons I've already kind of explained. Each entry starts with its symbol, name, period (I think that's what it's called...), and then the creator (ST is Saker, MC is me). Hopefully some of these are not terrible.
EDIT: Blogger is being obnoxious and making it inexplicably difficult to edit new entries in, but look to the comments for Nerdhogg's entries until I can figure out why this isn't working.
H Hydrogen Nonmetal ST They have witnessed the beginnings of the Universe, and the experience has left them terribly scarred. They meld with others to forget themselves, or flee to the upper atmosphere to get away from it all. They have an explosive temper when in large numbers. Those that remain in the troposphere will combine with Oxygen to become standard Aristotelian water elementals, or with Carbon to become Hydrocarbon Moleculars.
He Helium Noble Gas ST Self-reliant Helium elementals seek to rise above the troubled memories of their creation, for they were either smashed together from bits of Hydrogen in the forges of the gods, or spat out from angst-filled Uranium or Thorium elementals in their fits of self-harm. They are calm and collected, regarding themselves as being above asking other elementals for help. They have long memories and are thus wise and knowledgeable if questioned, but hard to locate.
Li Lithium Alkali Metal MC They are migratory beings, traveling along bolts of light between the positive and negative planes. The gods designed their routes as a circuit, which they channel to power their divine machines. It is thought that mortals were designed from those same circuits, which explains why some mortals find emotional balance and comfort in their presence.
Be Beryllium Alkaline Earth
Be Boron Metalloid
C Carbon Nonmetal
N Nitrogen Nonmetal
O Oxygen Nonmetal MC Ethereal and ubiquitous elementals of life and death. In their purest form they enrich and refresh those around them, but in less pure forms make the air heavy, crackling with ozone. In sufficient quantities they can produce powerful winds, suppress flames, or feed them. While they provide energy and strength, they also oxidize metals and carbons, draining and corrupting the host. Some cultures accept oxygen elementals as spirits, above good and evil, and embrace their gift and their curse, while others see them as parasites and vampires, and others still as weapons to be harnessed.
F Fluorine Nonmetal MC Pinkish-white creatures. Known as the celestial sword-and-shield, they can pierce the heavens, but they can also harden and form a protective barrier around objects. They are able to take a form like heavy water elementals, and naturally repel water.
Ne Neon Noble Gas MC Normally colorless, odorless, inert gaseous beings. They dislike interacting with other elementals or materials of any kind. Some will dance across the skies, but most traverse the cosmos, preferring the vacuum of space to atmospheres. When forcibly extracted from the air and caged in glass tubes and electric containers, they produce a bright reddish-orange laser light. Such neon lanterns are highly valued for ornamentation and are seen as a sign of wealth.
Na Sodium Alkali Metal
Mg Magnesium Alkaline Earth ST Born from tumult, they carry within themselves the slumbering rage of stars. They form themselves into wicker-wire forms of dull metal that burn with intense heat and light should they suffer insult.
Al Aluminum PT Metal
Si Silicon Metalloid
P Phosphorus Nonmetal
S Sulfur Nonmetal
Cl Chlorine Nonmetal
Ar Argon Noble Gas MC Gaseous, blue-green glowing creatures found mostly high in the sky. They do very little, but also keep very much from happening in their presence. It is nearly impossible to start a fire around them, and most magics are silenced. For this reason, their presence is often requested for diplomatic meetings or to maintain order at neutral grounds.
K Potassium Alkali Metal
Ca Calcium Alkaline Earth
Sc Scandium Trans Metal MC Sporty, silvery, yellowish-pink metallic elementals with auras like sunlight. They forms objects like baseball bats and lacrosse sticks from themselves. They're more interested in playing than fighting, but have no problem throwing down, especially if their favorite team is insulted.
Ti Titanium Trans Metal
V Vanadium Trans Metal
Cr Chromium Trans Metal
Mn Manganese Trans Metal
Fe Iron Trans Metal MC Large, bulging muscles, thick veins with perfect blood flow, the prototype of bodybuilding. Despite their unwieldy size and musculature, they are surprisingly flexible and adaptive, and are one of the more prosperous and abundant of the periodic elementals. They are seen as allegories of technological advancement and progress, both for good and ill.
Co Cobalt Trans Metal
Ni Nickel Trans Metal MC Silvery-white with a gold tint, and often covered in veins of greenish salts embedded in pores. They are hard and highly ferromagnetic. While valuable in their own right for their strength and magnetic properties, and as a measure of the value of a currency, they are known for their trickster behavior, misleading miners towards useless veins of fool's copper. As a result, they are often seen as an omen of bad luck, or gifted as an insult.
Cu Copper Trans Metal MC Sometimes they take humanoid form, usually feminine, but mostly they form as bundles of wires in relatively simple circuits. Although relatively soft, they are durable to environmental conditions and highly electroconductive, and are in fact the most abundant of the electroconductive periodic elementals. Blue blood courses through them, rich in oxygen and prized by deep aquatic life. While their skin is metallic and reddish-brown or pinkish-orange in color, they develop a greenish layer of rust when exposed to air. While many find this rust attractive and embrace it, others diligently scrub their skin. They are toxic to bacteria and fungi, and are therefore often sought after for the natural sanitation they provide.
Zn Zinc Trans Metal
Ga Gallium PT Metal MC Silvery-blue metallic elementals covered in blue and violet LED lights along circuit-lines. They have what appears to be a microwave in their solar plexus, which is actually a powerful ion beam cannon. They can sense infrared radiation on their skin. They have a low melting point and will seamlessly transition from liquid to solid and back based on the temperature in their environment or the temperature of those touching them. In addition to being superconductors, they can make other metallic periodic elementals weak and brittle by touch.
Ge Germanium Metalloid MC Nanofibrous beings invisible to the naked eye and infrared. They collect like string in a pocket, but the jumble is not random, it is a mathematically impossible circuit. The fibers weave throughout molecules, bending them into super-dimensional polymers. The weave bends light, magnifying and contorting sensory stimuli, interfacing with life and transmitting the signal directly into the brain. The circuit is like a superconducting transistor, amplifying the signals it collects from light and from the molecules in its weave, like an exponentially growing singularity.
As Arsenic Metalloid MC On some worlds they are the most fundamental elementals of life, treated like gods or demigods or progenitors. On our world, they are often seen as an harbinger of death. They come in three forms; the most common being gray and brittle and the most electroconductive, another form yellow, soft, and waxy and the most poisonous, and a third form black, glassy, and brittle and mostly inert. They are sometimes merged with lead elementals to strengthen them, but are most often employed as assassins, given their toxicity to many carbon-based lifeforms.
Se Selenium Nonmetal
Br Bromine Nonmetal
Kr Krypton Noble Gas MC Thick, flowing lines and beams of gaseous laser, mostly white but sometimes red or other colors. They are ethereal and can take on many forms as a gestalt of laser, although they often take a roughly humanoid form when dealing with humanoids. In addition to lumination, they can produce stunning flashes of light, which also serve as perfect photographic memories. Their gaseous form is heavy, and has a tranquilizing effect on oxygen-breathing lifeforms in their vicinity if i close proximity or tightly enclosed.
Rb Rubidium Alkali Metal
Sr Strontium Alkaline Earth MC Silvery-yellow metallic humanoids with a CRT monitor for a head, covering their entire face up to their mouth, which bares humanoid but inhumanly large, strong teeth. They are immune to X-ray radiation, and by lifting a glass visor over their face, can emit harmful X-rays. They can also project burning-hot crimson fireworks from their hands, and are phosphorescent in the dark. They were once bountiful and highly sought after for their ability to safely project messages streamed at electromagnetic and magical frequencies, but in recent years have been replaced by newer tools, and have significantly declined in number. They have a bit of a chip on their shoulder about this.
Y Yttrium Trans Metal MC They form in lung fluids as a silvery, crystalline cluster, like a cancer. They spread throughout the body, turning the host into a superconductor. The host's skin becomes phosphorescent. They emit light from their orifices like a cathode-ray tube. Nerve clusters light varying colors like a circuit of LEDs. Electrodes develop over the surface of their body. Outside the host, they cannot survive unless they merge with rare earth metal elementals, although there is no known method of testing whether a rare earth metal elemental is carrying the yttrium infection.
Zr Zirconium Trans Metal MC White-gold metallic elementals, resistant to heat and corrosion. By smashing their bodies they can create powerful flames from the particles, but they are otherwise better suited as workers or defenders in hot, radioactive, or corrosive environments.Each Zirconium elemental is born as a pair with a Hafnium elemental, but the Hafnium elemental is often absorbed into the Zirconium elemental shortly after birth/creation.
Nb Niobium Trans Metal MC Crystalline, normally gray creatures, although they can take on many colorful, iridescent forms. In addition to electromagnetic powers, they are also able to strengthen many other metallic elementals into steel alloys. Niobium elementals sexually reproduce. Their litters count in the dozens, but most are killed or consumed by other elementals long before reaching full maturity.
Mo Molybdenum Trans Metal
Tc Technetium Trans Metal
Ru Ruthenium Trans Metal
Rh Rhodium Trans Metal MC They appear like a sleek automobile, usually like a sports car, and are white-gold in color. They are highly resistant to corrosion, and their fumes are actually just recycled air that has had toxic or dangerous substances filtered out. For these reasons, they are often prized as mounts (although they are intelligent and will take umbridge with this description of their relationship with their driver), or called upon for assistance in toxic environments.
Pd Palladium Trans Metal MC They are a lustrous white-gold in color, and appear as a feminine humanoid. They are engineer-soldiers, masters of craft and warfare, their natural armor and weapons always at least one age advanced as compared to the rest of the setting, and always banded and studded like jewelery. They offer their knowledge to enlightened societies, but are keenly aware of the consequences of such knowledge. They teach the concept of discrete time, but acknowledge the anxiety it may induce. They provide medical and dental care as they fill the cavities caused by sugar refinement and clean the air polluted by their technologies. They are generally well-meaning, but cannot accept complacency, even if comfortable.
Ag Silver Trans Metal
Cd Cadmium Trans Metal
In Indium PT Metal
Sn Tin PT Metal MC Soft and silvery-white, with a liquid crystal display somewhere on their body, often as their face or on their chest, and studded with artistic punches outwards from their skin. They are able to shift between a metallic beta form, and a non-metallic, crystalline, gray alpha form. They are electroconductive, weaker than rare metals but useful for their ubiquity, and are resistant to water corrosion.
Sb Antimony Metalloid MC Silvery, crystalline elementals with striking, beautiful eyes accentuated by naturally-forming kohl. They are both invisible and immune to evil eyes. They are naturally brittle, but can harden lead elementals, particularly against fire and acids.
Te Tellurium Metalloid
In Iodine Nonmetal MC They are scouts and medics, able to perform a wide variety of chemical and spectral analyses on an environment and regulate endocrine systems in many lifeforms. They have a blackish-purple color, and vary in shape, but mostly humanoid or aquatic. They often have a briney, salty smell like the ocean. When set aflame, they glow a brilliant violet.
Xe Xenon Noble Gas MC Although technically an invisible gas, they emit bright and colorful lasers, and tend to be showy. They are like an EDM or disco DJ, producing shows of laser light, but also their lasers can alter the neurochemistry of their partygoers, giving them energy or sedating them.
Cs Cesium Alkali Metal
Ba Barium Alkaline Earth
La Lanthanum Lanthanoid MC They appear as komuso monks, but are more like ninja in disguise. Their heads are covered in a flammable mantle, covering their gas lighter heads. They are capable of producing powerful, focused arcs of flame, but are soft and vulnerable in a direct fight.
Ce Cerium Lanthanoid
Pr Praseodymium Lanthanoid
Nd Neodymium Lanthanoid MC They are naturally silvery metallic elementals, but are often found in a glassy form of pinkish or bluish color. In their metallic form they are powerful magnets, often constructing metal shells around themselves in the shape of microphones, automobiles, and computers. In their glass form they project infrared laser beams, and have mastered the art of transmitting information onto hard disks via lasers. Between their magnetic properties and laser-transmission properties, they have become prized librarians or mentats of powerful alchemages. Nonetheless, they are not only drivers of alchemagic, but also of nature magics. In their glass form they often take a shape reminiscent of roses or other flowers, and in fact have the ability to enrich soil and promote plant development.
Pm Promethium Lanthanoid MC Small, phosphorescent creatures. They are radioactive, can be used to produce energy, and have x-ray vision.
Sm Samarium Lanthanoid
Eu Europium Lanthanoid
Gd Gadolinium Lanthanoid
Tb Terbium Lanthanoid
Dy Dysprosium Lanthanoid MC Silvery metallic elementals that can change their shape using magnetostriction, literally restructing themselves through application of ferromagnetic force. They often have one or more metal-halide lamps on their body, which hum and radiate red, green, or white light and give off heat. They have the ability to produce infrared laser beams, are resistant to radiation, and have fine-grain control over electromagnetism.
Ho Holmium Lanthanoid MC Naturally silvery-white, they are fragile beings, corroding to yellow and pink and often partially aflame. They do not live long, but they live their brief life to the fullest and are known for their magnetic personality. In fact, they are the most magnetic of any of the periodic elementals. Even when taken against their will, they are prone to Stockholm Syndrome.
Er Erbium Lanthanoid
Tm Thulium Lanthanoid
Yb Ytterbium Lanthanoid MC Shining and silvery, with an emerald green aura of flame and radiation surrounding them. They can control their radioactive output to be (relatively) safe, and can harness the energy for X-Ray vision and imaging. They are masters of precision, from their internal atomic clock to the strength and sharpness of their self-cut blades.
Lu Lutetium Lanthanoid
Hf Hafnium Trans Metal MC Born as a pair with a Zirconium elemental, it is almost identical in appearance except for having a filmic iridiscence. It shares many of the abilities of its sibling only stronger. Most Hafnium elementals are absorbed by their Zirconium sibling shortly after birth/creation, so they are more rare. Hafnium elementals can be summoned by an occultic/alchemical ritual involving the mass sacrifice of Zirconium elementals.
Ta Tantalum Trans Metal
W Tungsten Trans Metal
Re Rhenium Trans Metal MC Silvery-white and honey-comb patterned. They are durable creatures, resistant to melting and when melted resistant to boiling. Their guts extend from their body like a hernia, in the form and with the function a jet engine, dripping gasoline and jet fuel.
Os Osmium Trans Metal
Ir Iridium Trans Metal MC Yellowish-white, metallic, with humanoid female traits. They are (arguably) the densest of the elementals, hard, and almost entirely resistant to burning, melting, or corrosion. They are often utilized by the gods as messengers, shot ballistically on beams of rainbow across the cosmos. In their pure state they are brittle and generally shatter on arrival, but are nearly indestructible and unstoppable along their rainbow trajectory. Occasionally they are used as ballistic, planet-killing god-weapons.
Pt Platinum Trans Metal MC Silvery-white elementals known for their rarity. It is considered a sign of wealth to employ platinum elementals or to have a concentration of platinum elementals within a kingdom. In addition to their electromagnetic abilities, they are also known for their ability to act as catalysts for various alchemagical transmutation spells.
Au Gold Trans Metal MC Although soft, these reddish-yellow metallic beings are some of the most useful and sought after of the periodic elementals, complicated by their relative rarity. The malleable elementals are often shaped by alchemists, wizards, and craftsman into exotic forms as fashion accessories. They are also highly electroconductive, making them useful weapons, but also useful for electrical transmission. They can also reflect electromagnetic radiation, and even have anti-inflammatory properties that make them useful to apoptomancers. They are also often used as the benchmark for a currency, where the value of the currency of a kingdom is measured by the quantity and quality of gold elementals in service to the kingdom.
Hg Mercury Trans Metal
Tl Thallium PT Metal MC Like tin treants with a subtle green aura. They harness light, integrating cognitive processing and circulation into one photoreceptive mechanism. They can see in infrared and are poisonous to the touch, making them excellent nocturnal assassins. They hide in forests, waiting for nighttime passersby to brush into them, sealing their fate. Their favorite snack is hair.
Pb Lead PT Metal
Bi Bismuth PT Metal MC Iridescent, rainbow-colored, metallic elementals with a stair-step crystalline structure that psychedelically bends and warps like a four-dimensional MC Escher painting. They are healers, treating digestive discomfort and certain infections. While not humanoid in form, they will often bond with an intelligent lifeform that is beautiful on the inside and out, worn like exotic jewelry, but also painting their eyes and nails, an aura like splotches of shimmering paint builds along the surfaces surrounding them, disappearing as they pass.
Po Polonium PT Metal
At Astatine Metalloid
Rn Radon Noble Gas MC Gaseous elementals that are normally odorless, colorless, and tasteless. They are also highly radioactive, making them silent and dangerous killers, but too slow and too unwieldy for singular assassination. When cooled to a solid state, they have a yellow or orange-red radioluminescence. They mostly reside safely underground, although accidental deaths sometimes occur around hot springs where radon elementals bathe.
Fr Francium Alkali Metal MC Native yet unstable elementals, they spend most of their lives as astatine, radium, and radon elementals. They are highly radioactive, making their francium form more like a last-ditch kamikaze effort.
Ra Radium Alkaline Earth
Ac Actinium Actinoid
Th Thorium Actinoid
Pa Protactinium Actinoid
U Uranium Actinoid MC Silvery-gray metallic elementals with neon-green circuits that glow under UV light. They are normally weakly radioactive, and take the form of small, innocuous lizards. When enriched, they grow to monstrous, kaiju proportions, wrecking havoc physically and radioactively in the environment. Some have learned to harness the power of the enriched elementals to produce energy and magics.
Np Neptunium Actinoid MC In the shape of a horse, their color varies from silver to dark purple, yellow-green, green-blue, light reddish-pink, or dark green. They are nuclear powered and able to move on land or in the sea (transforming into a hippocampus), and are prized as mounts even amongst the gods. They may self-destruct in a highly radioactive nuclear fission explosion.
Pu Plutonium Actinoid MC They usually have a dull gray shell of oxidation, although sometimes yellow or olive-green, but in their purest state they are silvery-gray. They are highly radioactive, but containable and fissible. At a high cost, plutonium elementals can be summoned or birthed, and used for massively powerful explosive alchemagics or as a source of alchemagical energy. They are sometimes in humanoid form, but often phallic and with aerodynamic features.
Am Americium Actinoid
Cm Curium Actinoid
Bk Berkelium Actinoid MC Feintly silvery-white, metallic elementals that reflect mostly in infarared. They are weakly radioactive, but generally not a passive danger.
Cf Californium Actinoid MC Silvery-white metallic elementals soft enough to be cut by a blade. They are radioactive, and have the ability to activate other radioactive elementals. They can also harness their radioactivity into a "sixth sense", an ability to sense the radioactivity and other chemical properties in an environment.
Es Einsteinium Actinoid MC Naturally silvery-white and metallic, they glow hot blue with nuclear energy. They usually take the form of or are covered in cubic crystals, although sometimes they take on a hexagonal crystalline structure instead. Most are unstable, synthetic creations, like short-lived kamikaze bombs. A rare few are wrapped in a paramagnetic field which weakly attracts metal, but is more so a containment suit for the elemental. However, even within the containment suit they are soft elementals and not suited for much more than being a bomb.
Fm Fermium Actinoid MC These elementals are birthed in the aftermath of disaster, particularly nuclear disaster. They are short-lived and radioactive, a brief after-image of holocaust.
Md Mendelevium Actinoid
No Nobelium Actinoid MC Rare and myserioud elementals, with properties similar to ytterbium elementals. In our universe they are radioactive and rapidly decay. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.
Lr Lawrencium Actinoid
Rf Rutherfordium Trans Metal
Db Dubnium Trans Metal
Sg Seaborgium Trans Metal
Bh Bohrium Trans Metal
Hs Hassium Trans Metal
Mt Meitnerium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to cobalt, rhodium, and iridium elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.
Ds Darmstadtium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to nickel, palladium, and platinum elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.
Rg Roentgenium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to gold, silver, and copper elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. To summon a Roentgenium elemental is to summon nuclear death.
Cn Copernicium Trans Metal MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to zinc, cadmium, and especially mercury elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. They are gaseous in our universe, and when they bond with gold elementals they become volatile.
Nh Nihonium Unidentified MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to boron, aluminum, gallium, indium, and thallum elementals, except highly radioactive. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable. It is believed that in a sufficiently heavy enviornment, these elementals could be made stable in our universe, and much could be learned about the extra-universal/dimensional elementals from examination within these heavy, stable islands.
Fl Flerovium PT Metal MC Rare and mysterious elementals, with properties similar to lead. In our universe they are radioactive and rapidly decay. They are superheavy, but at room temperature are gaseous, creating a heavy, suffocating field. They come from another universe or dimension where the laws of physics are slightly different, allowing them to be stable.
Mc Moscovium Unidentified
Lv Livermorium Unidentified
Ts Tennessine Unidentified
Og Oganesson Unidentified
I really enjoyed reading these; they make for a great exercise and worldbuilding prompt! It'd be neat to see a setting with period elementals used as the base lore. I've had a go at a few, I would've done more but chemistry definitely isn't my strong point.
ReplyDeleteBe Beryllium Alkaline Earth – Reflective and smooth at birth, but becomes more jagged and worn as it travels across the realms. Used as guides across the planes. Particularly large ones can be used to carry summoners between worlds. Prolonged exposure may result in lung failure.
S Sulphur Nonmetal – You smell them before you see them. Brimstone elementals are gaudy at the best of times, bright yellow and crystaline. Used to purge lands of life, weeping sulphuric acid and spewing gouts of blue flame. Seen as an essential evil in alchemical terms.
Ag Silver Trans Metal – Used frequently as combat elementals, due to having the highest thermal and electrical conductivity of any metal elemental. Shiny and irregular in form, composed of dendrite growths and irregular masses. Prized by monster hunters for their effectiveness against lycanthropes and other creatures of the night.
Hg Mercury Trans Metal – As beautiful as they are deadly. Free flowing and serpentine, they seep their way into people's bodies to kill them from the inside. The art of freezing them into shrapnel-blades is known to a select few, embedding shards of the frozen blades into their enemies and letting the smaller elementals finish the dirty work. In some regions it is believed their blood will bring longevity and good health.
(This is maxcan7 I'm just on my work account at the moment and can't seem to figure out how to switch it 0.o)
DeleteThese are great, thanks! Do you mind if I add them to the list? I'll add your initials (NH?) and hyperlink you if there's anything you want me to plug.
(I know the feeling, I have to open my account in incognito mode because switching between blogger accounts also switches which google account is active, it's all a bit of a mess XD)
DeleteBy all means go for it! NH is fine, and if you would be kind enough to hyperlink to my blog - https://nerdhogg.blogspot.com/ - that would be greatly appreciated. I'm really glad you like them!
You urgently need to add the alkali metals. All of them are soft, very light-weight, and react violently with water. The further down the table, the more explosive the reaction.
ReplyDeleteChlorine- clouds of toxic greenish gas often employed as chemical weapons.
ReplyDelete