4.13.11 Sagani

Underpinning reality at the very heart of the world's composition are the six elements - Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Shadow, and Spirit. Held together by a combination of these six core fundaments, the heart of the Prime Material beats by their primordial will, anchored to this world by supernatural connections forged to the worlds of their origin -- collectively known as the Elemental Planes, from whence countless disciplines draw strength and power untold, and of which all life is fundamentally composed.

Spirit and Shadow are oft regarded as the more ephemeral and esoteric of the six - no less fundamental but manifesting in less raw, physical ways than their counterparts. It is Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, then, that comprise the four primal physical forces of creation - and it is most often these core forces that Magi of old, in their many disparate guises, have sought to control for their own whims.

Each element in its own right is a wellspring of incomprehensible power and history's many storied ages are punctuated by poignant sagas of the elements unbalanced and the cataclysmic, disastrous consequences that ensue when this precariously balanced conjunction is disturbed. While all mortals - undead or living - possess a body formed from a carefully designed composite of all six elements, an excess of one or a shortage of another can and does enact profound consequences upon the physical and the mental. 

Exposure to the raw, untrammelled might of any single element is almost invariably a death sentence for those involved. Those scant few capable of withstanding such an ordeal are known throughout lore and history as Sagani - a vessel of the four primal elemental forces that has achieved harmony through strength of will. Incapable of drawing Spirit and Shadow, Sagani instead form a profound connection with the powers of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. 

Unlike the conventional practices of lesser mages, Sagani instead infuse their own bodies with this newfound might, transforming a portion of their own selves to act as a conduit through which power flows to do their bidding. Their form is one of constant metamorphosis and hazy intangibility, ever-shifting to meet the needs of its wielder in battle and to channel the energies they call upon in the moment.

Discarding the fragility of their mundane corporeal forms, the Sagani coalesces a new body composed of these four base constituents, becoming an empowered amalgam of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water without the tedious limitations of an everyman state. The process is not dissimilar in nature to the endurance required to withstand exposure to the raw elements, something the first Sagani in the modern day - Czcienn Svin, formerly known as Czcibor - proved himself capable of doing in the late Year 500 of the Midnight Age.