Hi all,
In my opinion Elemental Lords are fully compatible with SW and even necessary.
According to the timeline, the lords of Essaence (lords of Orhan) arrive in - 200 000 present time from another space-time. And with them come the Essaence and continually (as the interphase is not completly closed).
So, the Essaence have nothing to do with the creation of Kulthea and the solar system.
So, having the Elements as source of creation of the physical world is quite a nice way to explain the existence of the planet.
They were the first powers of the planet. Of course after the Essaence intrusion they have lost some of the power and influence. Thus, primal forces (fire, water, air, earth...) are always disturbed by Essaence (cf. Essaence Storms).
To conclude, Elemental Lords are still there, they are powerful enough to be used as Elemental focuses and it seems logical to suppose that they have a grudge against Essaence.
So an Elemental user could be naturally in opposition with others spell users (but mainly against the essence users as they are efficient in manipulating the elements and are considered as power stealers !!!).
It is up to the GM, but it could be fun to add in the Elemental Lords 's secret agenda the fact that they want to close the link between Kulthea and the point of origine of the Essaence, so to regain their initial power.
Of course they will not globally collaborate with Unlife, as Unlife is used by the Void to destruct the reality (maximal entropy).
The way I see it, is that it creates a third force, we have 1-The Essaence 2-The Unlife 3-The Elements. This situation creates a lot of interactions and plot ideas.
For me, the planes (the pales, the elemental planes) are created by the interaction between the Reality and the Void (Agoth the lord of the Void is supposed to predate Creation itself...).
Essaence and Anti-Essaence (the Unlife) are the vectors, the energies between them. They are used by their respective agents.
In other worlds where there is no Essaence and anti-Essaence (in our knowlege Kulthea is the only planet where Essaence exists), there is only interaction between the reality and the Void.
Where does Essaence come?, another space-time dimension ?. For me, it is the spark of life. It needs the physical world (created by the Elements) to blossom.
In some places (planets), it doesn't work, the planet are still without life, but sometime the miracle of life appears...
So I see it as a wave impregnating all the reality (created from the elements) some time after the creation of the physical world within the Void.
And since -200 000 years Kulthea is connected with the origin of this wave.
To resume:
(1) First: Void
(2) After: Big Bang = creation of the physical reality (Elemental reality)
(3) At the same time: creation of all the planes
(4) Even after: Essaence Wave creating life in all the Universe (when??? I suppose there is no need to know)
(5) In Kulthea apparition of a (probably) unique known link with the source of the Essaence wave (remember, it is a space time link).
Unlife being the antithesis of Essaence and came from the same place (it could be another wave which will annihilate life) it is attracted by Kulthea (using Charon as an intermediate).
This theory has several weak point.
First, it doesn't explain the Creation (the Big Bang). But as a scientist and atheist I am quite confortable with this (who or what created God(s) ?). More specifically, who or what created the Lord of Orhan?, they are Lord of Essaence so may be they are the expression or the creation of the Essaence itself when it interacts with the reality (aka physical world). They exist in Orhan as long as the flux of Essaence exists.
The spirits in Kulthea are born from the interaction with the reality and the Life (with was born the the initial Essaence Wave).
Second, according to this, the element predate life so elemental creatures should not be alive but only interacting in the reality uniquely due to physical laws. But all elemental creatures are alive (with their own intelligence and capacities).
A way to explain this is to postulate that all elemental creatures (from the True Elemental to the Elemental Servant) are born from the interaction between the element and the Esseance Wave. Some are grateful and collaborate with Essaence users (mainly Essence users) but others reject this state and wish for returning to the primal elemental stat (the element state alone, with only the physical, chemical laws and no bloody bio as a prefix). This explains the furious behaviour of most elemental creatures (most have a Beserk outlook)...Freud could have explained this
.
I will be gratefull to have your feedback on this theory.