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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3230204" data-attributes="member: 4937">You've anthromorphized them.  A elemental creature that mingles itself in non-elemental things doesn't learn and become an 'elder'.  It can't but be diminished in some fashion by its experience - giving up something of itself for whatever it gains (if anything).   Fire doesn't meet water and become more firey.  Matter can't meet anti-matter and then become more material.  It becomes nothing, and only thing gained is the chaotic flailing energies it sheds in the encounter.   Is it the dream of positive to encounter the negative?  Surely if the positive didn't wage war with the negative, ever striving to stay above its destroying embrace (however futilely assuming a universe that obeys the laws of thermodynamics), then the whole universe would collapse like an emptied balloon.  Of course, this assumes a polar universe.   We could have a tri-valued universe in which nuetrality had as much substance and energy as positive and negative.   But even then, surely there is some force opposing the gathering of negative to positive, otherwise wouldn't the universe have already come to equilibrium?It's one thing to have a mingled being enjoying things of mingled value - sex, money, violence.   Those things are natural to the nature of a being of mingled matter with the capacity for good and evil.   But however tempting it is to make an elemental more nuanced, in doing so you aren't making the totality more complex.   Rather, you are painting your whole canvas grey - coloring over the whites and blacks on the edges.  If your demons can be good, then you've removed absolute evil from your palette.   There are lots of things in the middle to be nuanced, but only a few things exist on the edges.   Destroy thier basic nature and you lose the idea of them, and thus the totality of them entirely.  No, I'm not interested in anthmorphic drives for an existantiated idea.   I'd be interested in some ideological force - even a misguided one - that might drive a unmingled being to seek pleasure in things of mingled value in such a fashion that even a pure being might see the attraction of it.  The Glimmerskin can't be a mere thrill seeker, because that presumes that things that thrill it are the sames that thrill us.  It's more likely that it would recieve estactic pleasure from things we are barely sensitive too.   The Glimmerskin can't be seeking war for the sake of violence itself, because a positive elemental being would - absent something else to feed on - starve on destruction and death (indeed would be poisoned by it).  And the Glimmerskin can't be taking pleasure in the exercise of power alone.  It's evil that revels noisily in its might and vainglory, not good.  So what?  Is the knowledge of good and evil a thing of positive value in itself?  Is there some noble element to conflict that lets a creature of positive value exist in the midst of the hell of it?  Is the Glimmerskin a rogue aura of courage or noblity, feeding synergisticly on the splendor of war and noble causes, while while slowing killing itself on this ultimately deadly narcotic?  Is the Glimmerskin the rogue spirit that drives good men to seek quick victories over evil?   Is it the drive that causes noble men to fight for evil causes?   What ultimately does it want, and why?  Surely there is more going on here, and surely above all a Glimmerskin cares about the 'taste' of the violence it experiences.  I would imagine in a raging psychopath there is very little to enjoy if you're a positive spirit.  How can a positive spirit be parasitic anyway?  Surely a positive spirt gives more than it takes - the opposite of parasitism.   Perhaps to a Glimmerskin, we are the parasites that it can't avoid getting diseased with, but then why does it enjoy the experience?   Can it not help itself?  Again, must we then be feeding it some rich broth amongst the poison?  What?  Not sex.  A positive spirit is sex and extacy bursting out all over all the time.I've never thought through this fully, but it seems to me that the only possibility is that there is some nobility in striving which a creature from a universe of infinite resources cannot get in its home dimension.  If everything is abundant, what's there to struggle for, and if there is nothing to struggle for then there are certain goods which cannot be experienced.   Perhaps the creature feels afflicted by the fact that in a universe without danger and fear, there cannot be quite the same nobility in courage.   I'm not sure I completely buy that though.   That implies that good can't exist without evil which would seem to hobble good and diminish are pallette.   If we can imagine things which can be created but not destroyed, I wouldn't be so quick to remove the possibility of good which exists independently of evil.</blockquote>

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