So when you summon a demon they can speak and have agency.
What about elementals?
Some elemental NPCs (that we usually kill) also speak but what about mage water elementals?
What about shamans?
Are they intelligent? Can they talk?
Shamans ask the elements for help and they may or may not give it.
Warlocks make demonic contracts or the demons are free to roam.
Mages… just summon them.
What’s the process?
I vaguely remember reading once the difference between an elemental and the thing a Mage summons is that mage elementals are just water given form by magic. Less a sentient being and more a puppet.
So like some sort of meek golem?
Elementals summoned by a mage are just constructs, and not sentient. Though I assume some of the more powerful ones have some degree of agency, like other Arcane constructs (Trilliax comes to mind).
Naturally occuring water elementals, like those that used to appear on the beach in Darkshore, are true elementals, like fire or earth elementals, and are sentient. And these are what Shaman commune with.
Though, we get a sort of crossover in Tides of War, when Jaina uses the Focusing Iris to force the natural elementals into becoming a tsunami, bound for Orgrimmar. But even under coercion, they’re sentient enough to ask Thrall for help.
Normal natural elemental spirits have spirit of life as a part of them. I think that’s the part that make them sentient. Also, these are the elemental shaman call on.
Mages elemental is a bit different. According to ToS audio book, khadgar create arcane elemental by filling them with his essence. What’s that mean is up to interpretation. As for me it’s khadgar splitting the small amount of his spirit to create the elemental. That is how he program the elemental. And the elemental is still a part of him. As he knew when one is destroyed.
They vary, you have supra intelligent Elemental Lords like Neptulon and Ragnaros, and Thunderaan, and you have brute animal like intelligences of the lower caste elementals that mages have access to or your typical wild elementals.
The mage’s water elemental is created not summoned from the plane of elements.
They are summoned. It’s the bracers that they wear that keep them tied to our plane, conjured by the spell. That’s why elementals without bracers are referred to as “Unbound”.
Well that’s blizz for you, never keeping their own lore straight.
Mages bore me almost as much as priest when it comes to casters, but i love shamans so i’ll try to tell you how i understand it. Mages don’t commune with the elements, so any true elemental they summon would likely be very unloyal to them. They compensate by using arcane magic to enchant water and control it through the bracers, which is why water elemantels mages summon can’t use actual water magic to heal and stuff, and instead use ice magic, which is actually closer to air magic in terms of elements (That or both can do it with air doing it more often).
Water ELementals mage summon are compared to constructs because they are as smart as a construct, they have no problem solving skills, and if they are self aware then that means mages are on par of death knights and warlocks for what they do to sentient beings, enslaving them and all.
In general mages can create stuff like ice and fire but can’t really control it as well as shamans as they use the arcane to craft it into a form they then fling at you.
Mage elementals are actual elementals. Thrall heard Jaina’s crying out in pain when she combined them into a tidal wave in Tides of War.
Mages are said to be creatures of hubris, after all.
ah I see now.
When was it changed to do that? Initially, the bracers just helped the water elemental keep its form. They’re supposed to be watery robot golems. The ones that end up unbound are mage-created water elementals that lost their owners and randomly generated their own sapience.
Then why would Thrall specifically get messages from the water elementals in pain as Jaina prepared them into a massive tsunami?
I think Golden just messed up, like when she wrote about worgen having tails. Maybe you can hand-wave it off by her building up so much water that she scooped actual, sapient water elementals in the mix, but it seems like an accident in the story. Same with Thrall coaxing a fireball to not hit him during the duel. That’s just not how mage spells are supposed to work.
well… I am just going to fan fic worgen having tails.
The Shattering’s take on elementals was so strange, I wish it just gets ignored. It implied everything was an elemental, like when Thrall tried to reason with a fire burning in Orgrimmar.
Because Jaina being jaina was doing too much too fast… and you don’t have to be supraintelligent to feel pain.