A Concise History and Description of the Elemental Weird
While stories of rampaging elementals, self-animated storms seeking blood, and other such unpleasantness goes back centuries, the first scientifically rigorous summoning of an Elemental Weird dates to 689 BC. In that year, the famed summoner Dr. Karl Venner of the Brautslava Institute summoned a heretofore undiscovered variation of elemental, which he termed the
Wyrd. The first Weird, a self-animated cloud shaped like a hawk, was what would become known as a Wind Weird, and existed for several years in a large glass jar in Dr. Venner's office, until a small university fire allowed it to escape in 703 BC.
Dr. Venner's experiments provoked a flurry of interest in the new sub-category of elemental, which began 693 when he published his results in the fourth edition of his
Systema Elementae. Difficulties with harnessing the power of Weirds for constructive purposes led to the falling off of interest in the 710s, and by 730 only the Red Academy in Hazlan still had any large scale investigations of Elemental Weirds ongoing.
Like all elementals, Weirds come in a seemingly limitless array of shapes and sizes. From the core four elementals, the Water, Air, Fire, and Earth Weird, one moves out to encounter Lightning Weirds, Smoke Weirds, Pyre Weirds, and even more esoteric forms. The defining factor of all these Weirds, however, is their predatory intellect.
Now, with traditional elementals, there is a distinct lack of inherent instincts or tendencies. A minor earth elemental, in general, has no goals in its 'life' but to burrow eternally through dirt and stone. It is an extremely uncomplicated organism, even when compared to the relatively base needs of biological animals.
As an elemental grows more powerful, it gains in intellect, and at a certain point acquires sentience on a human level. However, the same point at which an elemental acquires the ability to carry on a cogent conversation is the point at which an elemental acquires enough force to commit mass property damage if irritated. While such Elemental Nobles are from time to time utilized in the more advanced thaumaturgical experiments coming out of Darkon and Dementlieu, their use is simply to chancy to be common. Of those elementals whose intellect exceeds that of humanity by an order of magnitude, the enigmatic Elemental Lords, the least said the better.
Dr. Venner's Weird, at least in it's initial stages, seemed to offer an alternative. For a Weird is a predator, and thus comes with a passel of predatory instincts and a significantly more developed intellect than a traditional elemental of roughly the same power criterion. Many weirds exhibit the ability for advanced coordination and cooperation with other weirds, forward planning of ambushes, a basic understanding of the capabilities of non-Weird entities, and in some cases, rudimentary tool use.
The specific mental abilities of a Weird differ in large part on the individual subtype. Water-typed weirds tend to be ambush predators, while earth Weirds are pack hunters who function rather like wolves. In fact, there is a strong tendency amongst Weirds to adopt physical forms that are somewhat reminiscent of mundane animals.
The difficulty, however, lay in
what exactly Weirds hunted. For a Weird hunts unpleasant emotions, what Yervail Kemal of the Red Academy defined as 'negative resonance' in 731. Fear and pain most commonly, though grief, anger, despair, and others have been reported. Moreover, Weirds tend to become extremely restive if not regularly fed, followed by, after a sufficiently long starvation, a rapid physical decline and disintegration into their constituent elements.
For this reason, Weirds have become unpopular for common use in most of the Core, though certain groups in G'Henna and Hazlan still utilize short-term Weird hunting parties, usually using Earth or Air weirds. Those who still employ summoned Weirds are thus usually criminal organizations, cultic groups, or rogue wizards who find the Weird's killer instinct a benefit, not a handicap.
...
The Grave Weird is one of the numerous subdivisions of the Weird, being what might be termed a Necromental Weird. These rare creatures occur when an Elemental Weird is summoned using constituent elements from very heavily necromantically-tainted ground. The newly summoned creature, rather than being a regular Earth Weird, becomes a Grave Weird.
It should be noted that, in the most technical sense of the term, the Grave Weird is not undead. The essential animating spirit is neither alive nor dead, but elemental, and should thus be considered distinct from either life or death. Nevertheless, the fact that the Grave Weird is coated in necromantic energy, and of course it's highly characteristic appearance, makes this a largely academic distinction. Powers and effects that operate against the undead have full effectiveness against the Grave Weird. Like most undead, Weirds are heavily resistant to necromantic energy, and are somewhat vulnerable to highly focused energy. They also share the traditional elemental hardiness to elemental attacks.
[Undead and Elemental subtypes, Resistant to Necrotic, Vulnerable to Radiant, and have a Variable Resistance]
Otherwise, they have many of the same abilities and traits as Earth Weirds, and by extension, Earth Elementals. They can burrow underneath the ground, leaving no mark or tunnel. They can sense vibrations through the earth. They are also capable of fully or partially submerging their victims in the earth, feeding off the trauma of their captive.
[Grave Weirds have Tremorsense out to 10 squares, can burrow and have a special shift-and-burrow move ability known as Plunge, and have claws which can slow you, and Entomb, which you have already seen (every time someone entombed loses HP, the Weird gains some).
They also have certain abilities which are not so typical, most famously the necrotic Black Breath. This mist, which accelerates necrosis rapidly in the flesh, is most accurately a concentration of the Weird's inherent necromantic energy, transferred by medium of an extremely fine dust blown through the mouth, which due to the necromantic energy appears as mist.
[Grave Weirds have a high-damage Necrotic Breath weapon, and the Bloodied Breath ability.]
Grave Weirds are further capable of using their unique physiology to their advantage. By forcing their constituent corpses into limited mobility, they can impede the movements of those around them.
[Grave Weirds have the Grasping Corpses Aura, which is a 1-square aura that slows.]
Ultimately, Grave Weirds are pack predators that prefer to attack from subterranean ambush, and are characterized by a profoundly malicious hunting style, often described as a vast game of cat and mouse.
[Grave Weirds deal extra damage if they have Combat Advantage]
- -Dr. Emmanuelle Greyvin,
Brautslava Institute, 759