Okay, welcome to our special presentation of: "When Tempestarii Go Wrong". The reason most Tempestarii don't screw with their runes, the...

Incursio

If a Tempestarii can be described as permanently standing in a doorway, with one foot inside and the other foot outside; an Incursio can be described as having permanently slammed the door shut on his fingers.

Most Tempestarii live in eternal hope of one day finding a way to remove the binding runes keeping them locked within a human form and returning to their natural elemental state. To that end, many of them spend the rest of their life searching for whatever scraps of ancient lore and lost magical knowledge they can find on Felarya, desperately hoping to come across something that will be useful to them.

Unfortunately, the binding magic is ancient and powerful, and not so easily undone without severe consequences; usually, that consequence is the utter and permanent destruction of the elemental spirit within the Tempestarii. Those can be considered the lucky ones.

The rare, unlucky few who survive an attempt to undo the bindings become Incursio. Incursio are Tempestarii who somehow managed to loosen their binding runes slightly, forever altering themselves in the process; they are no longer Tempestarii in the same way Tempestarii are no longer “proper” Elementals.

Incursio are even worse abominations than Tempestarii; whereas Tempestarii are merely shunned, Incursio are actively hunted down and allowed no peace. This is partially because they can be much more powerful and unpredictable than “normal” Tempestarii… but mainly for two other reasons.

The first is that eventually, all Tempestarii go insane. This can range from charming, suave “Hannibal Lector” insane, to flat out psychotic rage at the entire world. Eventually, their minds reach a breaking point and they are no longer able to cope with what they are… and they typically vent their frustrations on others.

The second is that, unlike Tempestarii, Incursio can be considered closer to a “true” human/elemental hybrid. This means that they have been altered on both a spiritual and physical level, and there is a solid link between their human body and elemental spirit. A genetic link. This means that unlike Tempestarii, should an Incursio have children, they can inherit an Incursio’s inhuman genes.

Rather than the ability to merely control an element, these genes tend to confer unusual, specific mutations and powers to their offspring. For instance, one child might have rocky skin dense with minerals, while another might have crystal formations growing out of his bones. One child might be completely immune to fire and heat, and be able to swim and breathe in lava, while another might be able to ignite her blood into a napalm-like substance. Generally, such offspring will only have one distinct ability/mutation, and not multiple unrelated mutations (they are not like Marvel Comics’ mutants). This is true 99.9% of the time; children inheriting more than one ability are that rare, and children who have inherited more than two abilities are unheard of. (Note: Plainly put, it doesn’t happen. Ever. Im-freaking-possible. )

Children born from an Incursio/Human pairing tend to be extremely rare; not only are most Incursio simply not capable of giving birth for physiological reasons, but they tend to be extremely not fond of the humans who bound them. We are talking about serious, psychotic hate here; many Incursio who have totally lost it try and enact genocidal plans to destroy all humans on Felarya, until they are finally stopped and destroyed. (Note: An Incursio might make a good villain in a human-centric story. )

Why are Incursio so angry, and why are they such a bad thing to be? When an Incursio botched their attempt to undo their binding runes, they forever altered the magic imbued in the runes, which in turn forever altered their own body and spirit. By doing that, they forever lost any chance at all of undoing the runes; the magic has been changed into something completely different, so any previous spells or knowledge regarding the runes and ritual simply no longer apply. A Tempestarii at least has a slim hope of finding a way to restore themselves to their natural state; an Incursio has none.

It gets worse; because they altered their bindings somewhat, an Incursio is able to tap into a much higher amount of its natural elemental abilities than a Tempestarii can. This includes being able to alter its body somewhat, partially becoming its element. However, because of the runes, an Incursio can not fully control this greater amount of power. Parts of their bodies constantly shift between becoming flesh and their element; an Earth Incursio has minerals and rock spikes constantly forming inside of it and tearing their way through flesh and organs; a Fire Incursio burns, flames erupting from various points of its body and searing its organs…

It is not a happy, enjoyable life at all. The worst part is, none of these things are enough to kill an Incursio; it causes them terrible pain, but their bodies quickly mend from the elemental damage, as though it was never even there… until it begins again. It is this constant pain that is theorized to eventually drive all Incursio insane; in fact, many try to terminate themselves just to escape… only to discover yet another problem.

An Incursio is very difficult to kill, but even more shackled to its human body than a Tempestarii is. As long as there is enough of the body intact, they will continue to live in a semi-elemental state, able to take on a similar appearance to other elementals of their type, but forever prevented from becoming one with their element. In this case, “enough of the body” can mean as little remaining as the skeleton, or even just the skull. They can have the skin flayed from their bones, their heart stopped, their brain pierced, and be burned alive… and they will not only feel every bit of it, but they will survive the experience.

Afterwards, what will be left is something resembling a typical elemental, gravitating around a skeleton or fragments of one. A “raw” Air Incursio might resemble a tornado, with individual bones whirling around inside of it on currents of air, while a Water Incursio might resemble a mass of water flowing around a walking skeleton. The uninformed might assume them to be some type of Undead at a glance, however, the Incursio are still Elemental beings; Anti-Undead spells will be useless against them.

To the Incursio, their existence is near intolerable; they are one step closer to being “true” elementals once more… however, that one step is as close as they will ever get. They will always be shackled to the dead weight of their human form as long as they exist, preventing them from fully merging with their element or fully rebuilding a new physical form. What’s more, the body/skeleton is their weak point; the very obvious runes on the skeleton makes it a fairly visible target. And should it be destroyed, the elemental spirit is forever destroyed along with it. In the end, they are not really any better off than they were as Tempestarii, despite the much greater power they can access. Is it any wonder so many of them lose it completely and rampage until they are destroyed?

I was about talking about a certain incursio that either was a water or earth type elemental to be able to alter it's body but not to such an extreme extent then again it probably can't be helped that parts of it's body ends up being part elemental and what if two incursio each of a different element mated and gave birth to a child wouldn't that have at least one ability of each parent?

I have a question, are nekos more or less cold toward Tempestarii than humans? Also, would Negav commoners be aware of Tempestarii in general?

I'm actually writing the chapter where my OC which I mentioned look a lot like a Tempestarii, and he stops at both Nekomura and Negav. I was wondering if both cities would be as cold toward him, or if Nekomura would have no hatred for him whatsoever.

Upon further reflection, however...

Strictly speaking, Incursio heredity could be important past the mother and father; a family or clan continually bred Incursio genes into their lineage (for whatever reason) would have a higher occurrence of abilities (primarily single abilities; double-ability offspring would be slightly more frequent (maybe one or two every three or four generations), but are going to remain rare in any case)... in addition, the nature of those abilities would be slightly more random.

Basically, an Incursio offspring with several Incursio ancestors has the potential to manifest an element possessed by any of them. If there are Lightning, Lava, Ice, and Nature Incursio in a girl's family tree, then when she manifests an ability, it will not neccessarily be one of the two elements possessed by her parents; it could very well by an element possessed by a grandparent, or even further up line.

If an ancient Incursio clan existed, and managed to keep their blood relatively "pure" (as pure as any abomination can be ), then people of their lineage might manifest abilities from nearly any element. However, regardless of how many Incursio you have in your family; and even if you're pureblooded to the point of being horribly inbred... there still aren't going to be any exceptions to the two-ability limit. It just does not happen.

As it is, a family with very heavy Incursio genes would have a very high rate of mental disorders and insanity; both of which are hereditary, just like those nifty powers Grandma handed down to you. As with everything, there are drawbacks; for Incursio children, the fact that they were born of an unnatural pairing between unnatural beings is inescapable. The most functional ones might get off with mild phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders, or bipolar disorder; more severe cases (including those "lucky" enough to inherit two powers) may have serious psychosis, megalomania, multiple personalities, sociopathic disorders, etc.

In fact, a clan of Incursio offspring would probably have their own goals and motivations, and just not think like other humans; they might make a pretty good adversarial organization, out to do anything from take over the world, to exterminating all life on Felarya, to finding some way to get rid of the Guardians, to simply pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Anything goes, really. Those family get-togethers might be pretty interesting, if your girlfriend who has nifty elemental powers has been reluctant to introduce you to her parents... meeting the folks is bad enough when they're normal; when they're megalomanical, "evil", crazy people who consider themselves superior to normal human beings? Forget about it.

So, people in Negav would know enough about them to pelt rocks at people that vaguely resemble one?

Sorry to use to be out of topic.

A remark about creating a "super race" by mixing different elementals, in theory it looks easier but not really. I explain, all the elemental are in oppostion or have in affinities with the others by example:
Fire oppose to water, ice etc but are stronger against nature,neutral with wind and earth because both of them can nullify each other and friend with lava.

So to mix a elementals with another you need to know his affinities with the other. If you mix a fire with a earth ealemental you have three case 1)a lava elemental with mixing the both attribute,2) a fire elemental,3)a earth elemental. In clear we can have a new elemental combining both attribute in a new elements or a elemental with the elements of one his parents.

Possible element create by mixing two elemental:
fire+wind=lightening it's possible depending on the system of magic
fire+earth=lava or ash
earth+water=nature,or mud or argile
wind+earth=sand
wind+water=lightening, and ice (I mean blizzard)
fire+water=vapor

You may think all his element are powerfull but it's not the case, wood is strong against water but weak against fire, sand is weak against water, ice, fire and neutral with earth and wind. Lava weak against wind, water and ice and neutral with fire and earth.

Light and darkness:
This two elements may look powerfull next to the others elements but it's not the case. Light and darkness can be considered as two opposite polarities of the same energy when they face each other one can nullify the other.

Their relation is particuliar with the other, they can mix with the other without problem.
darkness+fire= dark fire
light+fire= a fire of light.

The reason are the other elemental are neutral they are at the same time positive or negative, and they can be used against each other. By example fire can be efficient against light or darkness.
When you see an darkness elemental absorbed a fire elemental, in reality the darkness only absorbed the light in clear the fire is still burning inside. Even in a place cover in the darkness or bathed with light the other elements are still efficient. It's only affect the creature who need the light to see.

Darkness and light have no superiority against the other elements.

The idea of super elemental using all the elments:
This elemental will be very efficient against the other elementals but weak against the other.
Because he will gain a strong attack power sacrificing all his resistance and immunity against the other elements.

This kind of characters has a major flaws 1) he need to maintain a constant balnce inside his body if the presence of the elemental are unbalanced he can suffer from that and die from inside. by example if he use to much fire 2)The body due to this particuliar nature the body is difficult to restore due to the fact each element need are in balanced inside, so when the body is destroyed in general it takes more time than a classical elemental to restore it. All of this make the body very frail to any attacks, physical or magical.

In conclusion create a entity mixing all the elements can be "cool" and look powerfull but this power cost him the ability of the manipulation of his body.

I was talking about being able to manipulate tissue and bone density

you still aren't getting it I am talking about making the bones hard as steel or controling the bodies metabolism or even stop ageing all together or increasing the size of certain muscles or glands I was never talking about change the scientific elements just the ability to control the level of strength and durability of the body