Need Ideas for Big Baddies: The Elemental Lords

[DuctTapeKatar]

Ok. So the basic ideas for the Elemental Lords are that they were very, very, very powerful elementals, probably the first to form. My idea is that, these giant elemental spirits took over the lesser peoples (Humans, Orcs, Halflings, etc.), and made an a small treaty with the elves (though not to say that the Elemental Lords thought that the elves were pretty tempting to invade, and that the elves welcomed the Elemental Lord's ambassadors openly). They were basically giant magical dictators which, if the people didn't obey them, ended up eviscerating everyone in their general vicinity, and granting buffs to those who swore their loyalty. The Elemental Lords eventually took over large swaths of land, and began creating big castles and even ended up waging a war against the Dwarves and the dragons they worshiped, which they almost won... Then... Stuff happened which ended up destroying them, and the pieces which were left behind became the common Elementals one would be able to stand up against easily.

Here's the problem: I have zero idea what should have happened to make the Elemental Lords disappear. Sealing them away is an idea, but that's kinda cliche. My original idea was that the small elementals would try to re-combine and then be resurrected as the Elemental lord of that element. So I have why the Elemental Lords are gone: They're just broken apart into little pieces and due to people constantly killing a lot of the little elementals or being summoned and controlled, its hard for them to re-form.

It'd be nice to have some feedback, and I would also like to see potential alternatives or replacements if these Elemental Lords are not your sort of thing, but still want to contribute.

[Everyl]

You could invert one of your ideas - instead of modern elementals wanting to reform into Elemental Lords but constantly being thwarted, maybe modern elementals fear being destroyed because they risk being reabsorbed into the Elemental Lords and losing their individuality. If too many elementals of the same type were to die in rapid succession, their "souls" might reform as one powerful Elemental Lord who would hunt down all the other surviving elementals of that type to reclaim their power; as long as only a few ever die at once, they'll keep reforming as lesser, individual elementals.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the modern, lesser elementals are nice, of course. A big part of the conflict of the setting could be figuring out how to resolve a conflict with hostile elementals without risking the return of one or more Elemental Lords. And that assumes that the humanoid races even understand the risks inherent in warring against elementals, of course...

[DuctTapeKatar]

That actually works pretty well. Thanks for the feedback.

[WantLearn]

Another thought might be that since the elemental lords were so busy dictating the prime material plane, they spent too long away from their home plane and eventually ended up fizzling out from lack of energy. Since they were powerful immortal beings, they didn’t truly die, they just sort of fragmented into lesser elementals.

[avr]

If it happened during a war on dwarves and dragons maybe it was related. The dwarves and dragons set off four great catastrophes which ended up breaking the elemental lords (while probably being almost as nasty to them.) Making a volcano erupt beneath the waterlord, conjuring a fimbulwinter over the firelord, dropping a mountain on the airlord and perhaps dropping the earthlord into a bottomless pit and/or throwing vast amounts of lightning at it.

Edit: or throwing the earthlord far, far into the sky. There'd be a huge crater where it landed.

[Xuc Xac]

Edit: or throwing the earthlord far, far into the sky. There'd be a huge crater where it landed.

Or a moon if it didn't.

[Knaight]

I had a long post, but the forum ate it. The short version:

The elemental lords were extremely powerful, but never exactly subtle. They were also arrogant, and while they considered the higher races and especially the dragons a threat, they paid no real attention to the lesser races after they had been conquered. Once they had been, and the dwarf-dragon front was progressing a bit more slowly, a number of members of those lesser races colluded to deceive the elemental lords into fighting each other. First, they convinced each of them that they were bearing the brunt of the war, and that the other three* were letting them do it while keeping their losses minimal. Distrust and suspicion grew, and with it grown the mortals were able to perpetuate a second deceit, that even the loyalty of the other three might be questionable, and that the reason they were letting the one bear the brunt of the war was so that they would be weak after it, and could be killed off so that the territory would be split only three ways*. Distrust and suspicion grew to outright paranoia, and this paranoia caused the dwarf-dragon front to stall out completely, with the dwarves and dragons teetering on the brink of destruction, but never quite there. All of them had troops positioned on the other three*, all of them saw it as their armies up against holding forces while the other three were building coalition armies elsewhere. Then the last lie was put in place by the mortals, that a deal had been made between the other three and the dwarf-dragon alliance, where they would destroy the one and let the dwarves and dragons help split that territory, if they served as allies during the civil war.

The powder keg was set, and all that it needed was a match. This came in the form of the dwarf-dragon counter attack, which hit the armies of one elemental lord while the other three were in absence, actual coalition armies being a thing of the past. The one struck came to the conclusion that they were being betrayed, and lashed out. Each of the other three all realized they were under attack, but didn't immediately hear that it had been an attack from all directions, and responded in kind, striking at the coalition they were sure was there. By the time it was a massive civil war, the mortals had already spun it as the coalition of back stabbers breaking up in the face of more back stabbing, with each of the other three trying to attain dominance by conquest while the one was just trying to survive. The elemental lords destroyed each other. How destroyed can vary - if the small elementals need to come from the destroyed elemental lords, then all four killed or mortally wounded each other completely, and in their deaths they disintegrated into lesser elementals. If the lesser ones could be there anyways (or just come from wounds), a better option would be to have some variety. Two are killed completely, leaving only the lesser ones. One runs of while seemingly mortally wounded, but survives in a distant place, ever so slowly healing and strengthening themselves. The last goes into hiding, convinced the other three are dead, and waiting for worthy successors to them to appear, to seek revenge on the mortals that brought them to war.

*I'm assuming there's four of them, given the description thus far, but it's not actually essential.

[Lycanthrope13]

Easiest idea I can think of would involve overuse of avatars. Fire, by it's very nature seeks to expand and consume. A loose alliance was formed to stop the advance of the fire nation (copyright infringement not intended). The Fire Lord began splitting off portions of himself to serve as semi-independent lieutenants, leading his armies on the front. The other Elemental Lords start doing the same, and find that it leaves them slightly weakened.

The 3 devise a plan to defeat fire. They must attack on as many fronts as possible, forcing Fire to divide until he becomes vulnerable, at which point a sleeper agent will strike.

With Fire defeated, the 3 squabble for what remains of his empire, and after millenia of conflict, meet the same fate as Fire.

[SirBellias]

Back in the day, magic was a lot more powerful. And the only reason the Elemental Lords could sustain themselves was by drawing heavily on the magical field the world generated. So the Dwarves and the Dragons decided to build the Trans-Aetheric Deconstitution Dynamo, which is a large machine the expends large amounts of magical energy to rapidly transport large piles of something antimagical to the Aetherial plane and back. In effect, it doesn't do anything but lower the amount of background magic available to the Elemental Lords. Their forms became unsustainable, and they broke down into many smaller creatures. The Dynamo is a cleverly guarded secret of the dragons now, who have been known (or not, as it's secret) to temporarily stop it to do some major world saving/civilization wrecking.