If I am reading this correctly, are there elementals of spirit and decay along with water, fire, air, and earth?
There are not.
Spirit and Decay are qualities that separate the likes of omnicidal brute warlord Ragnaros from the likes of peaceful spiritual leader Incineratus. They are what separate planets like Azeroth, where the natural state of the surface is a hellscape populated only by violent elementals without significant biological life, from planets like Draenor, where normally the elementals are so tranquil as to not take form at all and biological life thrived.
They aren’t physical concepts in themselves. Things can’t be “made of” Spirit or Decay the way they can be made of water, or earth, or combinations of such that make up biological matter.
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Spirit is Life Energy as Spirit is known by the full name Spirit of Life.
Decay the force used by Dark Shaman is the Void(as shown by Nagrand in WoD). The Void eats away at everything including both Life and Death.
Death is Experiences that Souls acquire from their existence while Life holds the Soul together.
In Vol’dun Akunda the Exalted extracted Memories from living people and said memories took the form of Death Magic proving that all experiences count as Death even when the person is alive.
Keep in mind that what Yvenathilm just said was heavily speculative and not 100% rooted in the canonical.
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Spirit and Decay can in many ways be sort of looked at like Star War’s concept of The Force.
Spirit is the “Light Side of the Force”. It is an energetic field which appears to blanket the Great Dark Beyond in varying levels of concetration. Planets with high amounts of spirit energy around them have no native physical embodiment of the elements because they exist in harmony. Draenor is an example of this: Incarnated Elementals did not form there until Aggramar’s meddling allowed them to artificially form as a byproduct of his actions.
Spirit is also known as Chi, and all living organic creatures contain a store of it. WoW’s Monks preform their supernatural abilities through learning how to use their internal store of Chi, and sometimes influence others. Druids may also interact with Chi indirectly, through the spirit of the Wilds.
Decay is well… “The Dark Side of the Force”. It is everything Spirit is not. Like its counterpart it appears to pervade the physical universe, where it causes discord. Decay energy can be used by dark shamans to enslave elementals and force them to act against their will as weapons. We have never seen a world heavy in Decay energy, as low concentrations of Spirit energy does not seem to equate it high amounts of Decay.
There have been some suggestions the Emerald Nightmare was a manifestation of the force of Decay created by N’zoth but this is rather hard to conclusively prove. Likewise, it is possible Warlocks and Necromancers might make use of this energy in their spellcasting, but nothing has ever said so conclusively.
Y’all we’ve datamined literal actual Death-ementals.
We’re getting Death Elementals.
It’s a thing now.
Shouldn’t have been sure, but Rule Of Cool I guess.
As well as Red and Black Sin Elementals, Memory Elementals and Stygia(byproduct of violent Soul destruction in the Maw) Elementals…
When Blizzard gets an interest in dealing with the Life Realm we will see Life Elementals( https://wow.gamepedia.com/Spirit_(lore) )…
Life Elementals(outside of the Void-tortured Blood Elementals), Nature Elementals(checked Chronicle and it treats the Nature subset of Life to be distinct from Life in it’s pure form), Decay Elementals and Spirit Elementals seem to be the only Elementals not around at the moment…
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Disrupt_the_Rituals mentions that Dark Shamanism originates from the Void…
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Magic#The_Elements which seems to be a direct quote from the Chronicle merely says that Shaman use Decay to control the Elements without mentioning the term Dark Shaman…
Why the Decay Page on Wowpedia fails to notice that is beyond me.
The Fel Page on Wowpedia also failed to notice that Chronicle never mentions how Fel is created either and just assumes without actually reading Chronicle(it just quoted Chronicle without looking at it or even looking at the Pages mentioning Fel like I just had) that Fel is created from the destruction of Light and Darkness…
Taunka are Decay users I presume… Dark Shaman on the other hand are Void users.
Wonder what Decay Elementals would look like…
Just going to remind everyone that Light and Void elementals exist in canon. At this point, Blizz is going by “Rule of Cool” writing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually get Decay and Spirit Elementals.
It’s a pity we have no idea what Decay even is… Wowpedia made the assumption that Decay is the force used by Dark Shamanism despite Chronicle saying no such thing…
Dark Shamanism unlike Decay is specifically aligned with the Void according to Nagrand Questing in WoD… That means that Foul Water/Slime(non-necrotic Slime specifically) is Shadowfrost Magic, Toxic Air is Shadowair Magic, Rust is Shadowearth Magic and Ash/Smoke is Shadowflame Magic…
Blood(which has Blood Elementals) and Nightmare are pretty much Shadow-tainted Life with Blood being the tortured variant and the Nightmare being like Underrot where it sometimes has Fungus and Rot everywhere.
Just like 99% of the things he says
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