I'm reading the Eberron source book. It tells about how the ships, airships, trains or even swords may have elementals bound to them. I am overthinking this but do the elementals mind being bound to the air ship, sword, what ever? Depending on the nature of elementals, it could have a cruel slavery aspect to it.
Is it an individual elemental, pulled from it's elemental plane? Does the mage pull a random but specific entity, so it would be like a mage kidnapping Bob the Blacksmith from town and binding him to a forge somewhere else. In elemental land, do they have routinely lose loved ones to the bondage of the material world? "Pyre was taken 300 years ago and his children and grand children have all perished of old age."
Or are they happy as clams in their new place so long as they can manifest their powers. Pyre, trapped in a sword, is content so long he gets to immolate something once in a while.
Have books or other source books, or you all, addressed this?
I'm not familiar with the canon of the bound elementals in Eberron, but generally when I have felt that the character binding an intelligent creature to an item was improper, I instead thought of it as binding small, non-sentient elementals that just exist in multitudes flitting around their elemental homes instead.
Sort of like binding an animal to a purpose (caging a song bird, attaching horse to wagon, etc.) rather than Bob the Blacksmith.
Even here I imagine of cases where the wielder of the item may torture the elementals, but for me it is less so than if the bound elemental had to be sentient.
It was talked about often in the 3.5 Eberron books and the impression that I got was, yes, elementals do mind. After all, they are trapped inside some, and forced to do things. However, a lot of times they don't know they are bound - there's a really good short story in the 'Tales of the Last War' anthology where an airships fire elemental is awakened by the Mournland and starts messing up the crew, but outside the Mournland it lacks the ability to do that.
I would tie the intelligence or sentience of an elemental to how many different functions it performs while enslaved (it may not even know this fact). For basic, menial task, they would just harness a brute elemental. But if you wanted an airship that could turn on a dime, move at the speed of sound, etc. then a more powerful (intelligent) elemental would need to be harnessed. Therefore, you need someone with the right mental ability and fortitude to maintain control over it or have very strong magical bonds in place, or a combination of both.
Not neccessarily. while elementals are alive, harnessing one to drive your ship or train may not be anything more eggregious than harnessing a team of very willful horses to drive a carriage. Many, if not most elementals might not have more than an animal level of intelligence.
If you go by the 3rd edition rules, even the elder elementals had only intelligence 6-10, with the lesser elementals having intelligence scores as low as 4. So, none of them are quite as stupid as horses, but most of them aren't as smart as normal people, either.
I always got the impression there were different ways to bind the elemental, for example, bribes, threats, or just doing it with outright force, however, most people just went for the force method because it was the most effective.
Actually I always thought that the binding of elementals was slavery. Its just that the elementals are too few and too dumb to put up an effective resistance to it. And most other sentient races don't really think of a 9' tall walking fire column to be sentient and really don't see the problem with it.
This could make for an awesome Eberron adventure as the PCs fight against an 'eco-terrorist' organization trying to free the enslaved elementals. Or heck the PCs could be that organization!
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My point was more that elementals and what they might actually want is hard to discern, irrespective of intelligence. A "typical" animal basically has four drives, the so-called Four Fs - fight, flight, food and sex. Humans, frankly, aren't much different. But elementals probably don't have at least two of those - they by and large appear spontaneously in the Elemental Chaos and I'm not aware that they actually eat anything (certainly, bound ones never do). The primary drive for a fire elemental is to set things on fire, and an air elemental, I dunno, flies around and so on. Basically, they are true to their elemental natures, in the same way that other planar beings are - so LE devils want to dominate and conquer, CE demons just want to kill and destroy, and so on. So while they might be upset by captivity as a bound elemental, they equally might not - their mindset is alien to ours and hard to fathom. I would suggest that whatever suits the campaign is the appropriate answer.
If I remember correctly, there's a group of Zil gnomes who work to convince elementals to voluntarily bind themselves to magical vessels. I believe it was in Magic of Eberron.
Thanks for the discussion. I like the idea that most of the time elemental is like a willful horse or bear. Not exactly sentient, but able to justify a rampage if released.
PsychoticWarrior, If you had a fringe group of crazies trying to release all your elementals, do you realize you sort of recreated the PETA movement in the D&D world? (P.E.T.E. - People for the Ethical Treatment of Elementals) Though I don't think it would last long. In the real world, it's not really acceptable to stab them. In the Eberron, well.....
In the Mark of Death triology they say that the elementals are angry about the process. And should you survive an airship crash you may suddenly have a brand new problem to think about.
Wouldn't all conjuration spells then be considered slavery?
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Wouldn't all conjuration spells then be considered slavery?
It's a slippery slope, but the answer is "not really". The creature summoned from the other plane probably knows the alignment and chosen deity of the spell caster and can choose whether to come or not. There are probably millions of celestial dogs running about on the celestial planes, and some of them just live to please.
Using Planar Binding could easily be considered slavery though.
As far as the OP's question is concerned. Yes those elementals are intelligent, and they are enslaved, and they don't like it. Many are kept docile via powerful magic (as if they were drugged and unaware of their surroundings). There is indeed a group of Zil gnomes attempting to enlist the aid of willing elemental, essentially binding them to a Terms of Service contract and paying the elementals for their time. This usually ends in a higher quality ship, with better manoeuvrability and power.
Thanks for the discussion. I like the idea that most of the time elemental is like a willful horse or bear. Not exactly sentient, but able to justify a rampage if released.
PsychoticWarrior, If you had a fringe group of crazies trying to release all your elementals, do you realize you sort of recreated the PETA movement in the D&D world? (P.E.T.E. - People for the Ethical Treatment of Elementals) Though I don't think it would last long. In the real world, it's not really acceptable to stab them. In the Eberron, well.....
...and who wouldn't want to stab some PETE(A) wackos?! I know I'd love it ;-)
Well, the Mark of Death trilogy plays fairly fast and loose with canon (not that there was as much back then).
There still isn't, right? One of the core concepts of Eberron was that everything published outside of the campaign setting guide was just a suggestion, and that the DM had plenty of space to create.
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Well, I'm not sure I ever saw that written down, but arguably a DM can take the whole thing as a suggestion anyway (and probably should, to suit their own vision). However, it is written down somewhere (I'm fairly sure, though without the book I can't give a page reference) that the dragons of Argonessen consider half-dragons aberrations to be hunted down and destroyed, yet in the Mark of Death there was a half-dragon working for a dragon with no apparent further explanation. That seemed more like a mistake by the author (or the setting wasn't fully created and that particular item pointed out to him, possibly, at the time of writing) than a bold step outside canon. My comment was mainly about that - I forgot about references to bound elementals in that series.
In Ebberon only the Zil know how to bind elementals and as mentioned above the master binders prefer to make deals with the more powerful elementals in exchange for being bound insted of enslaving them.
The regular world is damaging to elementals so most elementals that break their binding just vanish back into the elemental chaos.
The ones that were tortured or treated very badly will most likely kill everyone around before fading back into the elemental chaos.
The elementals used for binding into small items like swords and armor are usually ordered by their lords, high ranking elementals, to submit to the binding.
Also it goes without saying the bigger and more powerful an item is the more powerful elemental you need to bind to it.
doesnt the fact that slavery and torture exist and accepted just fit the gritty ebberon feel?
because your campign has slavery, doesnt mean that you support the practice.
I got the impression that humanoid slavery was outlawed in the "civilized" states, like Breland or Thrane, and only existed in the fringe states like the one run by the monsters (Droaam?) or pockets in the Lhazaar Principalities to the East.
I got the impression that humanoid slavery was outlawed in the "civilized" states, like Breland or Thrane, and only existed in the fringe states like the one run by the monsters (Droaam?) or pockets in the Lhazaar Principalities to the East.
You would be correct.