There’s nothing like a raging inferno to make a man realize he is powerless in the face of nature’s wrath.

It’s time to talk about fire elementals. Living flames as they are sometimes called, the name does them justice. Their body is fire. They cannot be touched without risk. Some are able to control their fire well enough to hold things without burning them, but this is rare and seems to require a great deal of concentration on their part.

So, probably the first and most important piece of advice I have for anyone who has to deal with fire elementals is to NOT TRY TO TOUCH THEM!

Give them a wide berth. Don’t worry about being rude. Most of them know they’d kill you if you got too close. Those better at controlling themselves are able to keep the heat they give off to a tolerable warmth, but should their concentration slip you could be incinerated.

So, best to be safe.

Where earth elementals are generally quite placid, fire elementals are far quicker to anger.

They can also be very mercurial. Quick to change. Patient one moment and furious the next. Like their earthen kin, they don’t have to worry about old age or anything along those lines and their concept of time while not as bad as earth elementals is still fairly dreadful.

They can wait for great lengths of time but often act with a sense of urgency. They will race along the path to their destination and then remain there for eons.

As you can imagine, their volatile nature and sheer destructive potential make them infinitely harder to deal with.

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Fire elementals are rarely summoned or used, and when they are, it’s often for use in very specialized areas. Places where they won’t destroy a city or a town.

Some armies make great use of them. As you can imagine, living flames make excellent weapons. But, even then precautions have to be taken, or it’ll be your camp they set ablaze.

I suppose the best thing to compare them to is fire itself.

An invaluable tool that keeps us warm, cooks our food, lights our streets and homes, but also something that can quickly change from useful and helpful to deadly and impossible to control.

For those of you studying magic, I strongly advise that you adhere to the rules set in place. They are not to be summoned by inexperienced wizards. Such reckless summoning can result in hefty punishments. As they should.

As for the elemental plane of fire… it is a place with temperatures too high for any normal man to survive. At least not without magical assistance of some kind. Ash and fire rain from pitch black clouds high above, rivers of lava wind their way across the landscape, and even a gentle breeze carries with it flames as hot as a dwarven smith’s forge!

It is home to fire elementals of all shapes and sizes. Some walk on two legs with a very humanoid appearance, others flow like living pools of lava, and as with all elementals there are too many other varieties to name.

There are a few records of other fauna that call the fiery plane home, each adapted to its conditions in their own way. No doubt each plane has its own forms of life, but as you can imagine between the difficulty of planar travel and the sheer danger involved we know very little.

An elemental lord of fire is thought to rule over the plane, but little is known about it.

Something I find most interesting is that although each plane certainly has very strong ties to its particular element… there is still the presence of other elements. Take lava for instance. No doubt it is strongly tied to fire, but when you think about it… it’s molten earth.

Perhaps even the most extreme places need a degree of balance?

* Nicholas Wolfram, Professor of Monsterology at Lestria University