Elements of Dwaia

Overview

Elements are the indivisible parts from which the universe of Dwaia is built.
The elements are fundamental. This means that they cannot be broken apart or otherwise destroyed, unless they are annihilated with their anti-element. Equally, the creation of an element requires the creation of an equal amount of its anti-element. To clarify, because Harambe is an element, Harambe cannot be destroyed without creating an anti-Harambe first. However creating an anti-Harambe involves creating a Harambe as well. Thus the Harambe Equivalence Constant or HEC (The number of Harambes in existence minus the number of anti-Harambes) is, as its name expresses, a constant. This is called the Principle of Equivalent Exchange.

All things on Dwaia are composed of elements, including all life. Weaker entities usually have basic elements, while stronger, more ascended entities contain (or are themselves) advanced elements.

Source of the elements

Given the notion of fundamentality and the Principle of Equivalent Exchange, Science generally accepts that the elements are primordial. However, alternative theories are a common theme in religion. One example is the Cult of 8, in which it's believed that all elements are constantly generated by structures known as Spires that are made from the ultimate-aspected forms. They exude an energy over their respective face of Dwaia based on that element, giving each face of Dwaia its distinctive environment. However, all falsifiable attempts to observe a spire have failed, and they remain documented only by word-of-mouth in the testimonies of cult members.

Base elements

There are 6 Base Elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Energy and Bo. Earth is the base for all that is solid and fundamental. Water is the base for all that is greatly flexible and liquid. Air is the base for gases, fumes, and invisible force. Fire is the base for spicy and also glowy things. Energy is the source of motion and change. Bo is the source of sentience and free will. All of these classes combine and interact to form life and the world.

Many low-level creatures and objects are made of just the Base elements. Since low-level things make up the majority of all things, these elements are very important, though they're rarely as powerful as their modified forms.

Element relations

Each element has several associations, or what could be thought of as characteristics. Some are described later on this page, such as Aspects and personality traits.
All relations of all 6 base elements are listed here in the following table.

Class	Aspect	Direction	Quality	Ideology	Color	Personality
Earth	Regression	East	rough and cool	Regressive	Yellow	Down-to-Earth
Water	Progression	West	nice and warm	Progressive	Blue	Inventive
Air	Life	North	nice and cool	Egalitarian	Green	Nurturing
Fire	Death	South	rough and warm	Supremacist	Red	Critical
Energy	Ascension	Nadir	magical	Theocratic	Black	Withdrawn
Bo	Ultimate	Zenith	personal	Populist	White	Talkative

Aspects

An Aspect is a primordial substance which near-solely exists to modify an element, decaying otherwise. Aspects were once thought to ignore the Principle of Equivalent Exchange, having been observed to spontaneously both decay and form to and from pure light. However, it was later discovered that the rate at which Aspects form from light is directly determined by the amount of Aspects already present in the world. It has also been shown that the relative intensity of light on a particular location only affects the likelihood of an Aspect's location to be there when it forms, and that the local intensity of light has no bearing on its actual chance to form.

Bonding

Any base element can bond with any Aspect, altering that element's fundamental properties. Each element has room to bond with exactly one aspect, so that the ratio of elements to aspects within any compound can never exceed 1:1. Aspects hardly exist outside of being a quality of elements, since their desire to bond makes them highly reactive. Furthermore, any aspect which does not bond with an element in due time will undergo fundamental decay and dissolve into pure light.

Aspects can, however, be magically or alchemically transmuted off of one base element and onto another. Earth's high stability often makes its aspected elements into a convenient fuel for these transmutative processes. The only exceptions to this are Plant matter, which rapidly decays into Trash after death, and Harambium, which is an absolute bitch to break down. There are six aspects, leading to a total of seven possible states for each element.

It is hypothetically theorized that under certain specific conditions, an aspect's trait of fundamental decay can be negated, allowing it to persist indefinitely. However, actually replicating these conditions has yet to be achieved. The effort is ongoing, and its feasibility remains an unanswered question in the scientific community.

Notation and nomenclature

There are two major systems for notating the elements. The first is a newer, unified science-based system, which is widely preferred in the studies; The other is much older, formed alongside the original elemental science: alchemy. The latter system is known as alchemical or traditional notation, and is no longer used in science or in the actual practice of alchemy. However, traditional notation remains in use in less rigorous contexts, such as in representing the planes of Dwaia.

Scientific notation

To get the scientific symbol for an element, affix the symbol of its Base element with the symbol of its row (its Aspect). For example, the symbol for Pomf is Ae⧺ (pronounced variously as "air ascended" "ayy plus plus" or "ayy peepee"), because it lies in the Ascended row and on the Air column.
The symbols have the following pronunciations:

Element Symbol	Pronunciations
Te	earth, tay, terra, toe (rare accent)
Aq	water, ack, aqua, moist
Ae	air, ayy, aer, wind, breeze
Ig	fire, igg, ignis, blaze, phoenix (archaic)
Qu	energy, cue, quint, quintessentia, quintessence
Bo	bo
Aspect Symbol	Pronunciations
⧺	plus plus, double plus, peepee, ascended, ass
†	dagger, spookified, spook, death, cross
∲	harp, naturalized, nature, nat, life
↓	down, regressed, trashified, trash
↑	up, progressed, technolized, tech
♯	sharp, ultimate, ulti, pound, hash, octothorpe

Traditional (alchemical) notation

Originally, dealings in elemental affairs were documented with logographs — symbols that depict each of the elements visually. The traditional symbols have long since become heavily stylized over time, with the original pictures having been lost to history.
The six symbols as they appear today are as follows:

Element	Traditional Symbol
Earth	Ѫ
Water	ꔖ
Air	Ꮺ
Fire	Ỽ
Energy	Ⴟ
Bo	⍍

Table of elements

Any base element may take on exactly one Aspect, thus producing an array of 42 elements — that is, 6 base elements + 36 elements with aspects:

Base	Bo (Bo)	Water (Aq)	Air (Ae)	Earth (Te)	Fire (Ig)	Energy (Qu)
Death (†)	Skeletol	Blood	Zyklon 🅱	Bone	Spirit	Evil
Life (∲)	Faeon	Meat	Breath	Plant	Soul	Good
Regression (↓)	Trashmannium	Sewage	Braps	Trash	Rancid kebab	Shitpost
Progression (↑)	AI	Steam	The Cloud	Car Parts	Firewall	Knawledge
Ascension (⧺)	Ego	Juice	Pomf	Steel	Spice	Distraction
Ultimate (♯)	potato	Meme juice	Succ	Harambium	Japalenon	Autoanium

Personality

tbd

Deprecated notes

Bo

is the element that allows entities to be sentient. All sentient entities contain some bo, but some frequently used examples are:

Cowbo
Human

Energy

is the element that connects all the others such that they can combine to form the universe. Energy element entities include:

Autogeist

Water

is one of the most basic elements on Dwaia, it is very moist and dank. Water element entities include: