Canonfire!

Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:22 pm Temple of Elemental...

I figure the group that comes to this web site often probably has a good understanding of why the Temple of Elemental Evil is "elemental." Can someone try to explain to me what makes it elemental evil as opposed to plain evil?

I figure that if I get a good handle on the mechanics of it, then I can start designing a Temple of Elemental Good that evil adventurers would want to plunder. Would there be such thing as a Temple of Elemental Neutral? I somehow don't see druids having a temple so much as the outdoors as their place of worship.

Thu Apr 09, 2009 10:46 pm

there was a LOT of history behind the events leading up to and eventually including the Temple of Elemental evil. It wasn't as simplistic as 'good vs evil', it involved a political kidnapping, politics of the Abyss, some divine rivals and lots and lots of 'omg how do I get out of these damn nodes!'

Fri Apr 10, 2009 12:59 am

The word "elemental" in it obviously refers to the evil aspects of the four elements that are allegedly worshipped there. That being said, I could well imagine neutral or good elemental temples.

Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:10 am

The whole "elemental evil" thing was a ploy to appeal to as wide a variety of potential minions as was possible. Also, there are evil leaning elemental forces who it is assumed Iuz allied with in some way. That is built upon a bit more in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
_________________
- Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -

Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:54 am Defining why evil is "elemental"

Raymond,

If I understand your question, you're asking why this Temple is specifically referring to a particular brand of evil that is "elemental".

The "Evil" is not elemental in the sense that it is "fundamental", it is elemental in the sense that it is related to the four elements. The thing of it is, if it had been "The Temple of Evil", that might imply things like demons, devils, undead, black dragons, vile religions, etc. This particular temple has nodes in it that are based on the four elements (air, earth, fire and water), and they are each aligned toward evil. Thus, it is "Elemental Evil" rather than a more "generic" type of evil.

On a related note, there are evil aspects of each element. Additionally, there are good aspects. There are even Elemental Princes that lead forces of good and/or evil for each element, similar to how Demon Lords lead their armies of the Abyss. For example, good and evil elemental princes include:

Chan [good air] and Yan C Bin [evil air]
Sunnis (and Entemoch) [good earth] and Ogremoch [evil earth]
Zaaman Rul [good fire] and Imix [evil fire]
Ben-Hadar [good water] and Olhydra [Evil water]

These are simply very powerful elemental creatures that typify the aspects of an element in it's aligned aspects. For example, fire lets us cook, keeps us warm, gives us light, etc. But in it's evil aspect, it is a destroyer of all things, and is capricious and fickle in it's destruction.

There is some good information in several articles from Dragon Magazine #347 about Elemental Princes, if you're interested in finding out more, and it also has other articles on all kinds of other elemental stuff (that could be included in an elemental-themed game).

In regards to your question an other aligned temples, I believe that the majority of elemental creatures are nuetrally aligned, and there are (as I mentioned above) certainly good-aligned Elemental Princes. While I could theoretically envision a Temple of Elemental Good, I think a Temple of Elemental Nuetrality would be a bit odd.

Hope this lends a little toward answering your question.

Have fun, and good gaming!
_________________
Owner and Lead Admin: https://greyhawkonline.com<div>Editor-in-Chief of the Oerth Journal: https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal</div><div>Visit my professional art gallery: https://wkristophnolen.daportfolio.com</div>

Fri Apr 10, 2009 4:41 pm Yeah, I Believe That Helps

Getting a hold of a particular "Dragon" magazine article might be the hard part but sounds like good research if I'm interested in designing something that might also combine the forces of those four good elemental princes inside a Temple of Elemental Good which contains elemental nodes like that of the Temple of Elemental Evil.

I'm thinking that I would place it in the City of Greyhawk. So I'll be hunting for maps of Greyhawk that already show a temple which might fit the senerio. I haven't done any work on it yet. I'm still thinking of all the things I'd want to research first to make it fit logically as the antithisis of the ToEE. In general, I'm thinking, "What would an evil party band together to get inside a good temple which has followers out in the open very unlike the ToEE? Would there be something like the real life temples, churches, mosques which in the game would contain a magical artifact?"

I've started thinking about this in the back of mine recently and then last night I caught a special on TV which documented researchers trying to figure out how Constantine came to the conclusion that he really found the cave in which Jesus was buried since that space is now surrounded by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That to me has similar aspects to the Kaaba in Mecca or the Temple Mount. These are old structures today and in game terms I'm thinking I wouldn't make them old but rather recent or have a timeline on building something based on an NPC's plans. That line of thinking leads me to "What would a player try to have his or her character build if he or she were trying to build a ToEG?"

If I ever get around to making it, I could give it a module code of T5!

Fri Apr 10, 2009 7:08 pm Oh, Damn!

I just found that I lost all the D&D files I had saved to my PC over the last year including the Acrobat files I bought from piazo for the modules I couldn't get on ebay. Ahhh!!!!!

It gets better...this is the same PC where we keep all of our family's digital pictures.

Lesson learned by me:
Don't think that a mirrored drive (RAID level 1) is the answer to your back-up problems. My OS got wacked so that applied to both drives. I bought an external USB drive and used KNOPIX to copy the files off the wacked drive. I didn't think to by pass my RAID controller to try reading each drive seperately since at first look I thought I had everything. The reinstallation of Windows forced me to re-partition/format due to the drive errors which probably caused the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error in the first place.

So I hope all you out there have back-ups in addition to any RAID stuff you're using. Good luck.

Sat Apr 11, 2009 12:44 am

Partitioning a drive can sometimes help with that, but not always. Put the OS on its own partition and then you can slash and burn it, if necessary, whenever you need to. Many people I know re-do their OS on a monthly basis to keep it clean and pristine. Beyond that, make a hard copy of anything that is important to you, like family digital pictures, PDF files you bought, etc. I have hard copies of nearly everything I have, especially my own document files I've spent countless hours reserching and typing up.
_________________
- Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -

Sun Apr 12, 2009 5:03 pm Partitioning

I didn't bother to partition my drive because last year my whole drive took a dump so partitioning wouldn't have helped. This year my problem was with my new drives but it affected the OS and mirroring didn't help. I should have had another, seperate drive for backing up. Now I do.

Sun Apr 12, 2009 7:21 pm

That's why when my system go whacked, I just bought a new HD as my system drive. No muss, no fuss... just time consuming going through the OLD system drive to retrieve everything. 8)

Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:24 pm

I've been running a back-up drive for a while too, which works very well. I still recommend keeping hard copies of the important stuff though.

Now then, best get this sucker back on track. Wink

So... The Temple of Elemental Evil. Yeah, it's cool, with its elements, and evil, and...stuff.

Discuss. Cool

_________________
- Moderator/Admin (in some areas)/Member -

Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:09 pm

Raymond stated -

In general, I'm thinking, "What would an evil party band together to get inside a good temple which has followers out in the open very unlike the ToEE? Would there be something like the real life temples, churches, mosques which in the game would contain a magical artifact?"

That would exactly be the reason. Evil beings will always be self serving. If the "good" temple has an artifact that can be corrupted or traded for more power, an evil entity would be interested. And how better to obtain an item than to have others do all the difficult work and then betray them and reap all the rewards for oneself. Or one evil being is more powerful than the others and drives them into the house of good to be slaughtered while the "leader" sneaks around back to steal the item.

Or

An evil entity looking to prove itself to an evil god to garner greater favor, wishes to prove it's worthiness of receiving said favor. Being evil, it sends others or "leads" others to a good church to defile and destroy all.

The possibilities are endless, the motivation is just different.

Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:48 pm City of Greyhawk

So is there already a goody-goody temple in the City of Greyhawk? Are there more than one near each other? Maybe it would be easy to lay out a map if I knew how big existing structures were so I could tell if I should create an above ground temple or catacombs below ground. I know there are supposed to be tunnels underground so if I could I would want to take them into account.

Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:32 am

If you can get your hands on a City of Greyhawk boxed set, there are maps in it for the city including a map of the sewer complex. There is a section of the city where most of the temples are. I don't recall if all the temples are labeled or not.

Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:46 am

I've got scans of my own hand-drawn maps of the City posted over at my blog:

http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2008/05/city-of-greyhawk-maps.html

They're based on the sketch map in the front of "City of Hawks", but are (mostly) compatible with the books from the blue boxed set.

Joseph

Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:27 am CoG fro LGJ for use with temples

Lest we forget one of the greatest sources ...
The Living Greyhawk Journal published a very nice map of the entire city, along with a key that labeled every significant building in the city. (it can often be found online as a download, of course.) There are some temples in close proximity, but there are many spread throughout the city.

Evil temples are banned in the City of Greyhawk, but there a a few small hidden shrines (that no on knows about, obviously Wink

)

Icarus
_________________
Owner and Lead Admin: https://greyhawkonline.com<div>Editor-in-Chief of the Oerth Journal: https://greyhawkonline.com/oerthjournal</div><div>Visit my professional art gallery: https://wkristophnolen.daportfolio.com</div>

Thu Apr 16, 2009 9:48 pm Cool

I think I found all those images you all were talking about. I'll review them later! Thanks. Happy