Air/Earth Elemental

Any stretch of open, gusty air will serve to conjure an air elemental. Called to the material world, it takes the form of a formless, ever-shifting cloud. It seldom speaks, but its tongue can be heard in a tornado's piercing scream or the low groan of a storm at midnight.

Though hard for beings of other planes to grasp, it can hammer an enemy with a concentrated blast of wind, like a huge unseen fist, for 2-20 points of damage. It moves blindingly fast, which makes it valuable across wide battlefields or in drawn-out fights in the sky, and its command of the air gives it +1 to hit and +4 to damage in aerial combat.

Its most dreaded power is the whirlwind: an inverted cone 10 feet across at the base and 30 feet across at the top, whose height depends on Hit Dice (40 feet at 8 HD, 60 feet at 12 HD, 80 feet at 16 HD). Forming the cone takes a full turn, and dispersing it takes another. The whirlwind lasts one round, killing every creature under 3 Hit Dice in its path and dealing 2-16 points of damage to everything it does not kill. If a ceiling or other obstacle stops it short of full height, it kills only creatures under 2 Hit Dice and deals 1-8 points of damage to the rest.

Any area of soil or stone can be used to conjure an earth elemental. On the material world it appears as a towering humanoid made of whatever earth, rock, ore and gemstones it rose from. Its face is cold and blank, its two eyes glitter like cut gems, and though it has a mouthlike gap it rarely talks. Its voice is the hush of deep tunnels, the rumble of quakes and the grind of stone against stone.

Slow but relentless, it passes through rock and earth with no loss of speed or agility. Water stops it: it must detour around a lake or river or tunnel beneath, and it prefers burrowing under because that keeps it roughly on a straight course.

It always fights on the ground if it can and is seldom lured away from it. Any creature standing on the earth takes 4d8 (4-32) points of damage from its blows. Against airborne or swimming foes, each die of damage drops by 2, to a minimum of 1 per die.

Structures founded in earth or stone suffer terribly, making these elementals superb siege engines. A reinforced door that would take ordinary troops several rounds to break gives way easily, and a small cottage can be flattened in a few rounds.