Elementary, My Dear Reader

This wasn’t what I intended to post next, but I’m still working on the “fleet carriers” post. In the meantime, have some more words.

So, among the basic words in a language, certainly for chemists, are those for various substances, and this is as true in Eldraeic as it is for any other language.

If we are to begin at the beginning, it would be with the classical elements, which in the Old Empires region were usually held to be six: air, fire (andra), water (alír), wood, metal, and stone (azik). But that is not quite enough to describe anything but what were, in the ancient days, considered the most fundamental substances, it being their combinations that gave rise to all the myriad components of the world.

And so, in the next step down, the first eldraeic alchemists divided substances into airs (gases), clays (“woody earths”, of which there seemed to be rather a lot), crystals (“metallic stones”, likewise), fires, metals, oils (“fiery waters”), salts (“stony waters”), waters, woods, and stones, thus:

• aessoth: a (type of) crystal; any crystalline (to the eye) substance
  (from aesa “crystal” + oth “substance, stuff”)
• alíroth: a (type of) water; any watery substance
  (from alír “water” + oth)
• azikoth: a (type of) stone; any stony substance
  (from azik “rock, stone” + oth)
• claithalíroth: a (type of) oil; any oily substance
  (“dark/shadowed water”, from claith “shadow” + alíroth)
• ésaeroth: a (type of) salt; any salt or similar substance
  (“many little crystals”; from é [diminutive prefix] + aesa + oth)
• múszikoth: a (type of) clay; any clay-like or earthy substance
  (from músel “soft” + azikoth)
• nistraöth: a (type of) metal; any metallic substance
  (from nistra “forge” + oth)
• teliroth: a (type of) air; any airy substance, or gas
  (from telír “sky” + oth)
• lethroth: a (type of) wood; any woody or fleshy substance
  (from leth “life” + oth; note that lethroth includes both wood and meat, as the classical element does)

There is also:

• andradoth: a (type of) fire; any fiery substance

Resulting from the common ancient confusion that fire is an element, rather than a process. Although while not substances, it is still possible to consider various different types of fire (i.e., different combustion reactions) and arguably plasmas as subcategories of andradoth.

To provide a comprehensive list of substances would of course be a virtually endless task, but let’s simply start with the metals, of which there were a pleasantly limited number known in ancient days:

• andralis: uranium (“fire-metal”; it’s warm to the touch)
• arídanis: gold (“sun-metal”; from the color)
• ashínis: silver (“star-metal”)
• brans: iron; also bransael, steel, and telbrans (“sky-iron”), meteoric iron.
• glénis: tin (“key-metal”, so called because it unlocks the potential of other metals, such as copper and lead)
• morins: copper (“red-metal”; from the color)
• púlnónis: lead (“mass-metal”; obviously, it’s heavy)
• traäshínis alír (“star-metal water”): mercury

And there you are. Go forth, and talk about stuff!