Отрывок из второй главы коры третьей редакции, которым с нами любезно поделились авторы.
"Here's an excerpt from Chapter Two, introducing a class of often-overlooked spirits that didn't get a lot of glamour or attention during the last couple of editions, but which we're planning to make more distinct and interesting in the new edition. As always, this is production text and might not be identical to what shows up in the final product.
Elementals
From storm fronts, forest fires, earthquakes, mudslides, from deep ocean currents, from lightning strikes and blizzards, from the heat-haze of the desert and the crushing force of the avalanche do elementals birth themselves into the world.
The elemental races are old beyond measure. Before men, before beasts, and some say before even the gods, elementals have stalked Creation. They coalesce from the interplay of the world’s natural energies and begin as countless types and species; each elemental race carries a unique form. They are naturally material and live in the world—wind bears herd clouds while wood spiders lurk in ancient forests, and during the dry season of the South, vast stampedes of llama-yu fire orbs traverse the desert. They perpetuate the energies that birth them, and young elementals live as embodiments of the dynamism of nature.
If they survive the ages—unlike gods, they’re ageless but not immortal—ancient elementals are almost completely unique, powers named and feared whose original forms are lost to time. At the apex of both power and enlightenment, elementals undergo a slow metamorphosis, assuming the serpentine forms of the lesser elemental dragons; no other shape could express their might. Respected by Heaven, the dragons often serve as censors in the courts of Yu-Shan, charged with overseeing celestial law in both Heaven and Creation.
In the fallen Age of Sorrows, under a fractured celestial bureaucracy, lesser elementals follow their instincts without guidance, sometimes pushing natural processes into imbalance. Greater elementals rule courts of their lessers or pretend at godhood over men. And the lesser elemental dragons are as prone to corruption as the gods, demanding bribes and turning a blind eye to their duties. Yet elementals’ terrestrial origins give them a unique perspective among the spirits of the world—elementals are mortal in a sense, native to the material, and have more reason than gods to sympathize with the plights of women and men.
SIDEBAR: Through Mortal Eyes
Most people in the Age of Sorrows don’t see elementals as a single type of being. Many, like the ifrit and the cloud people, appear almost as exotic mortals—even when they’re known as spirits, they’re treated most often as strange foreigners or puissant heroes akin to God-Bloods or Exalts. Elementals with alien mentalities and inhuman forms are seen as exotic animals, fearsome monsters, or simply natural phenomena. And many pose as gods.
Most don’t fall clearly into categories. A beast that stalks the local livestock unless propitiated is a monster and a god; an elemental who lives among a mortal community but seeks praise in payment for its deeds is both a god and a local champion. A savant may know that the former is a wood spider and the latter is an ifrit, and that both are elementals, but to mortals who toil and die in Creation’s dirt, it’s academic.
The same applies to mortal perceptions of gods and demons, and for that matter beasts, beastfolk, and the Exalted. By far the most common reaction shared by men confronted with the unknown or obviously supernatural is to assume it’s a god and to seek a priest."
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Тема: О механике Возвышенных (Прочитано 108415 раз)