[Ink]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

That depends on what you think the theme is.

The platonic element conception (ie, that originally used by D+D in 1st and 2nd edition, originated with Plato) envisions the elements in reality being produced by or tied to elemental planes that are infinite in extent and purely composed of that element. An infinite plane would have infinitely many royals on it if it had any royals, so... where's the problem?

Since the term 'elemental' is tied up with the platonic concept of element anyway, the fact that the game uses elementals suggests its implicitly accepting the platonic concept, and thus the elemental royalty being unique is actually unthematic.

I'm not saying making them non-unique is necessarily the way to go, I'm just saying there aren't really major thematic problems with doing so.

yeah but the dominion's elemental royalty have personalities (or at least stories) to an extent, meaning they aren't really the pure, unanimous and anonymous platonic type element. Based on it perhaps, but then also ground through the fantasy-machine.

not that I don't support them being non-unique, there could be infinite elemental personalities floating around on the elemental planes (it would be odd that there are only three or so personality-types of each element, but I digress), and the type summoned is just picked randomly.