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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8603392" data-attributes="member: 58172">Regarding the primal power source.Animism views every object of nature as a sentient mind. In D&D mechanics, every object of nature, whether watery lake or earthy mountain, is an elemental with a mind.Some elemental minds of nature are stronger than others. Generally the mental activity is subtle and ambient, and less central minds defer to the more central minds that are stronger, like children to parents. Some objects of nature have powerful minds with much influence over other minds, even influence over nearby physical phenomena.For example. The mind of a mountain is often more prominent than the minds of the specific rock formations, waterfalls, fields, and forest that are on it. The mind of a major river is often more prominent than that of a stream trickling into it. The mind of the land of a forest collectively can be more prominent than the mind of each tree that comprises it. Note, the mind can be an object that appears and disappears, like fire igniting and extinguishing, variously, across time and space. Likewise, thunderstorm.There is a correlation between power of the mind of an elemental object and its cultural importance to a human community. But it is mutual. A powerful elemental mind influences and becomes more prominent within the minds of the human community. Oppositely, a nonprominent elemental object might gain central significance to the culture of a human community, such as a rock formation of a recognizable shape or a useful mineral, thus the power of its elemental mind "awakens" and gains prominence from the human interest.Mechanically, in D&D, objects of nature are assumed to be "normal" objects despite the ambient psionic activity of their minds. Only the minds whose power crosses a threshold that compares to a human mind, and able to engage humans interactively, are considered to be an "elemental" in the sense of a D&D creature type. Even so, these interactive elementals are still normal features of nature, differing only in quantity, not quality. These minds are native within the material plane.The magic of these elemental minds is identical to psionic, the same magic that the minds of humans can wield. However, the nonhuman motivations, ubiquity of occurrences, and thematic distinctiveness, seems sufficient to distinguish the elemental "primal" power source from the psionic power source.The elemental minds are nonhuman and alien to human minds. It is hypothetically possible for the mind of a mountain to telekinetically stand up and walk somewhere else. But that rarely happens because the mind of a mountain rarely desires to do the kinds of things that the mind of a human body desires to do. The mountain wants to be still and meditate. Other mind magic phenomena are more likely. Despite how alien its nonhuman mind is, a human mind can often relate to it analogously. For example, a human might perceive a mountain accurately enough to be ancient, calm, supportive, and reliable. This mutual relatability enables genuine friendships to develop between humans and objects of nature.It is common for prominent objects of nature to project their minds away from the material object, thus manifest ghostlike rather than as an animate elemental. It is possible but rare for a mental projection to disconnect from its material elemental to journey elsewhere to become the mind of an other object of nature elsewhere. For example, the mind of one mountain detaches to travel across sea to become the mind of an other mountain elsewhere. The new mountain gains instant prominence and retains the memories of the original mountain. The mental projection wields its mind magic.Where existing incorporeally as a force in the material plane is the same thing as existing in the "shallow" ethereal plane, the projected mind travels in this manner. The stronger the mind, the stronger the force of its virtual body. A disembodied mind is the same thing as a ghost, but lacks the negative influence of the shadowfell.In some, animism views objects of nature as sapient minds, that wield mind magic. In D&D these concepts correlate the elemental creature type and the psionic power source. But the elemental themes are significant and useful enough to warrant to treat as a separate "primal" power source.</blockquote>

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