The encyclopedia entry on PE Planes has this to say:
"The paraelemental planes were not always as they are today. Eons ago, they were Dust, Steam, Magma, and Ice, but they have shifted over time, Dust and Steam merging with the Quasielemental Planes and Water and Fire, Earth and Air becoming the new opposition."
What's that all about? Are we dealing with differences between various editions? This makes it sound like Earth and Air weren't always opposed elements -- what's up with that?
"The paraelemental planes were not always as they are today. Eons ago, they were Dust, Steam, Magma, and Ice, but they have shifted over time, Dust and Steam merging with the Quasielemental Planes and Water and Fire, Earth and Air becoming the new opposition."
What's that all about? Are we dealing with differences between various editions? This makes it sound like Earth and Air weren't always opposed elements -- what's up with that?
That was from the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix III. It's background detail in the description of the wavefire monster. That's page 116 of the book.
No, it doesn't have anything to do with edition differences. However, the para-elemental planes were handled differently in early 1st edition than how they were handled in later 1st edition. Dust and "Vapor" used to be paraelemental planes, and later became quasielemental planes. But Air and Earth, and Fire and Water, were opposed in early 1st edition as well, so it's not a straight play on that.
So yes, it's implied that once the elements and their oppositions were different than they are today.
I edited the Encyclopedia entry to make it clearer.
It assume the quasielemental planes were essentially the same as now. There was a misty, cold Quasielemental Plane of Mist in between the planes of Positive Energy and Water, and there was an entropic, destructive Quasielemental Plane of Dust between the planes of Negative Energy and Earth.
The paraelemental planes of Steam and Dust were nothing like that. The Paraelemental Plane of Steam was a super-heated, infinitely deep ocean that boiled continuously. The Paraelemental Plane of Dust was a p lace of choking, swirling sandstorms rather than a place of disintegration and decay.
What happened was when the planes shifted, they didn't replace the previous quasielemental planes - instead, they merged with them. The present-day Quasielemental Plane of Steam is a combination of the old Quasielemental Plane of Mist and the old Paraelemental Plane of Steam. The present Quasielemental Plane of Dust is a combination of the old Quasielemental Plane of Dust and the old Paraelemental Plane of Dust.
This is the explanation for the wavefire, an elemental being made of boiling water who is decidedly out place in the current Quasielemental Plane of Steam, which has nothing to do with boiling water. It's also the explanation for the two feuding clans of mephits on that plane, the mist mephits and the steam mephits, who hate one another and are trying to wipe each other out.
The PSMCIII takes pains to note that it's just a theory, mind you. It might not be true. But it does suggest it. Page 116, if you missed my previous post.
I don't know, I kind of like the idea that Water and Fire make Acid. But I suppose that in Planescape, fire is not thought of as a primarily chemical process.
Kobold Avenger -- I thought that Silt corrosponded to Ooze?
I'd have the quasi-elemental steam actually be called mist, because it didn't really fit into my idea of what a plane of steam should be like. I always pictured a hot steam rather than somewhat cool steam.
But perhaps the old para-elemental planes are still out there, just hard to reach since the idea of them faded from most planewalker's and cosmologist's heads. I know it would be contradictory to the Guide to the Inner Planes, about the Inner Planes not affected by belief.
Anyways if a paraelemental plane between fire and water existed it would be steam, while the plane between water and positive energy would be mist. If the plane between air and earth would be called dust, then the plane between earth and negative energy would be called silt (validating the Athasians).
Fire and water make Alcohol!
(Gratuitous punning ends here)
I like to view the four classical elements as analogues of the four out of five states of matter that ancient peoples would have been aware of.
According to everything that I have read, there was no fifth state of matter that the Greeks (which were the origin of the four classical elements) believed in aside from the four elements (and their combination); what are you referring to?
You're right, there wasn't one they were aware of. I'm referring to a Bose-Einstein condensate, which is essentially the opposite of a plasma. As the name indicates, it was only discovered within the past century.
Aristotle and other ancient Greeks did believe in a fifth element, Aether, which was postulated to be the substance of the stars. Plato said its atom took the form of a dodecahedron.
Fire isn't really plasma, though. Flames (in this universe, anyway) seem to be just heated macroscopic particles that fly up in the air, glow brightly, and then fall down. Plasma is an ionized state where the electrons become less bound to the nuclei.
Aether was added by Aristotle, and was thus conceived at least a thousand years after the classical elements. I'm not sure where you got the idea of Plato saying that aether atoms were dodecahedrons; Plato's Timaeus , the only work in which he addresses atoms, only talks of the atoms of the four classical elements and does not mention aether (which was yet to be conceived). Aristotle rejected the idea of atoms so he did not asign a shape to aether.
Who was a Greek. I believe the list of four elements was created by Empedocles only a few decades before Plato, not a thousand years.
The Plato thing I was unsure about, since I did think Aether was introduced by Aristotle, who of course was Plato's student. You're probably right about that.
Empedocles put out a "list" of the elements, and it was his elements that Plato was addressing in Timaeus; however, the four elements were mentioned at least as far back as the works of the philosopher Thales who lived over 200 years before Plato. The existence of the four elements was an accepted fact in his time and existed for quite some time before him. It is unlikely we will ever find a date, but I admit that they probably did not predate Plato by anything near 1000 years.
You're right. But it's always felt to me like, thematically, fire was representative of the plasma state.
First I hear of it. Paraelemental Planes are a mix of two non-opposing elements and Quasielemental Planes are a mix of an element and either positive or negative energy. I assume that whoever wrote that considered dust to be a mix of air and earth and steam to be a mix of fire and water, which would make sense except for what exactly they replaced when they became Quasielemental planes (ie, what was the mix of earth and negative and water and positive before the switch). That sounds like house rules to me, and if it isn't I would really like to know the source and page.