Wildfire Elementals - the Living Inferno Strides through Ashes

Elementals are a classic in fantasy and science fiction. Immense beings made of air, earth, fire, and water always seem evocative, powerful, and scary. Staring down a figure made of swirling winds, jagged stones, or swirling water is something most adventurers should reasonably fear.

In most fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, we see archetypal elementals. Beings made of just one element. This is part five of six where mixing the elements together has lead to strange wandering monsters for adventurers to find, fight, and flee in fear from.

Wildfire Elementals

The air we breathe is just less than a quarter oxygen. If there were much more, the air would ignite and breathing pure oxygen is deadly to most living things.

A beastly wildfire elemental leaving a town burned and behind it - Scourge of Geier Reach by Jung Park

Certain air elementals can change just how much certain parts of the air is in its swirling, rippling body. If it changes the air the right way and catches aflame, the rare and truly destructive wildfire elemental is created.

Wildfire elementals are truly destructive and as mercurial and shifting like the air and fire they're made of. Some resemble the vaguely humanoid shapes of usual elementals. Most wildfire elementals grow as they take more searing hot air into their bodies. This makes their forms swell and take on unusual and animalistic shapes.

Wildfire Elemental stats generated with Homebrewery

The wildfire elementals have the generally destructive attitude given from the effects their fire has on the world they stride through. Their touch and very auras bring furnace like heat. As more burns, the smoke, steam, and hot air is slowly drawn into the elemental, increasing its size and strength.

Not all wildfire elementals start their existence as pyromaniac monstrosities. Though a very dramatic name for a being no bigger than a fingernail, some wildfire elementals are very small and surprisingly docile. Smaller elementals are no bigger than a flickering candle flame. They hop between spots to burn. They live comfortably and briefly on candles in every world.

Searing Blaze

Ultimately, the large and destructive wildfire elementals always grow to immense sizes to seek out things to destroy. Trails of powdery, ashy footprints herald their passing. The cleansing fires that clear out overgrown forests and historical blazes that level cities are usually caused by striding, swirling flames. The buffeting fists and blasts of fireballs can surge across a landscape, and the heat of the surrounding air can lift the immense shapes of these beings far higher than if it were solid.

For a party tracking the blazing footfalls of a wildfire elemental, there's little to miss. Destruction and the victims of the worst levels of burning are always abound. A party could very well be tasked with tracking and slaying a wildfire elemental as they hit tier two of play. It'd make a challenge and a truly heroic act for the nation they're in.

Now we want to hear from you, how will you include wildfire elementals? What shape will these living infernos take? Let us know on our discord server or in the comments below.

Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, he writes about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out himself. On Youtube, he can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Follow his Twitter @IzzetTinkerer.