Elemental Plane

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A setting that represents or is made of a concept/thing. It may be sentient, in which case it may also have an avatar running around. Elemental Embodiments are likely to have come from this place.

Compare Elemental Nation, which may be an example. Compare and contrast Anthropomorphic Personification, for when it's a person rather than a place.

Examples of Elemental Plane include:

Comic Books

  • DC Comics has several of them, each one representing a primal force inherent and connected to a specific type of life, and each one ruled by a group of elemental entities. The most well-known is the Green (plant life, ruled by the Parliament of Trees) which is the source of Swamp Thing’s power. The others are the Red (land-dwelling animal life, ruled by the Parliament of Limbs), the Clear (aquatic life, run by the Parliament of Waves), the White (air elemental beings, ruled by the Parliament of Vapors), the Grey (fungal life, no known rulers), an unnamed realm for fire elemental beings, ruled by the Parliament of Flames), the Melt (earth elemental beings, ruled by the Parliament of Stones), the Metal (sapient machines and computers, ruled by the Rhythm), the Divided (bacteria, amoebas, and other microscopic life, rulers unknown), and the Black (or the Rot, undead beings, ruled by the Parliament of Decay)

Literature

  • The Five Forbidden Regions in the Xanth series: the void, the region of water, the region of fire, the region of earth, and the region of air. Each region is filled with terrain and weather that represent it: the region of water, for example, contains a lot of lakes and it rains often.
  • Death's Domain and the Palace of Time in Discworld. Both symbolizing their concepts as much as the Anthropomorphic Personifications who inhabit them do.
  • Robert Silverberg's novel Son Of Man is made of this.

Live-Action TV

Tabletop Games

  • In Dungeons and Dragons, there are many of these. The "inner planes" include planes of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, as well as the planes of "Positive Energy" and "Negative Energy".
    • In the Planescape setting, the "outer planes" include a plane representing each of the Character Alignments, and the "inner planes" also include "quasielemental" or "paraelemental" planes such as "the Plane of Dust", "the Plane of Lightning", etc.
    • Module WG7 Castle Greyhawk. The Queen of the Honeybee Hive on level 7 opened a gate to the Demi-Plane of Flowers, a gigantic plain covered with every imaginable type of flower and plant.
    • 4th Edition takes the elemental planes and mixes them into one plane, the Elemental Chaos.
  • All of the Titans seen in Scion, as of yet. Of those that haven't been, it's safe to assume that the vast majority also are.

Video Games

  • World of Warcraft hinted at those in the past, but really went nuts with the concept in Cataclysm:
    • Deepholm, the plane of Earth, made of mostly shiny rocks and crystals.
    • Firelands, the plane of Fire, with lots of magma, ash, lava and hot air.
    • Skywall, the plane of Air, consisting of mostly clouds and wind.
    • The Abyssal Maw, the plane of water, typical underwater flair everywhere.
  • The Legend of Zelda plays this in spades. Every console game has a Forest theme, Fire theme, Water theme, Death theme, and Light theme.
  • EverQuest has a bunch of these. Indeed, an entire expansion is called, "The Planes of Power", which contains something like 15 different planes. And there are more planes from other expansions.
  • NetHack has four of these: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. You can only access them if you leave the dungeon the way you came with the real Amulet of Yendor in your possession.

Web Comics

Western Animation

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