Element shapes

A freshly generated element is only a small orb at a fingertip. Form Element, <Shape> Shape gives it a shape: the elements leave your fingers and line up in front of you, pointed where you look — arrows in a fan, swords in a portcullis, shields overlapping like scales. The shape decides everything: speed, damage, flight time, and what happens on impact. There are fifteen: twelve that fly, three that are placed.

Saying a shape

System Call. Generate Luminous Element. Form Element, Arrow Shape. Discharge.

• Form Element can be left out: Arrow Shape alone is enough (spoken, it often gets lost).
• The shape applies to all held elements, and to each core.
• You can change your mind: the last shape spoken is the one that leaves. The change from one to the other is visible (a little under half a second).
• You must hold at least one element, otherwise: "There is no element to form."

Thrown shapes

Damage for one element at power 1, before the element's multiplier; speed in blocks per second; flight time before the element fades.

Actual damage is: shape damage × (1 + SCA / 50) × element multiplier. An umbra arrow at SCA 50 therefore deals 5 × 2 × 1 = 10.

Following the target

Without Fly Straight, elements chase the creature you are aiming at when you say Discharge (48 blocks, in a narrow cone around your gaze), or the one you designated with Trace. Each shape turns more or less sharply: serpent and butterfly stick to their prey, crescent and needle barely deviate. A traced target is chased four times longer, with tighter turns.

Area bursts

The sphere and the dragon explode at the end of their flight like a small Burst (at least three elements' worth). Any core of 8 elements or more does the same, whatever its shape.

Placed shapes

They do not fly: they appear on the spot at Discharge and stay for a while. The dominant element of what you held gives them its colour and effect. Their size and duration depend on the total number of elements (cores included).

Shapes and cores

A plain shape spoken on cores (Merge Element) makes each core a giant of that shape: bigger (up to six times), slower, and far stronger — a core of n elements hits like n^0.85 elements (a core of 10 ≈ 7 arrows in one).

Other shapes