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I've found reference to them by name but no source material. Both the elementals themselves and the relevant planes/sources for those elementals would be of great help please.

The para and quasi planes, to the best of my ability to detect, were scrapped in 3rd Edition. No source I can find mentions them at all, including the 3rd Ed Manual of the Planes and the Planar Handbook. I think if you want to add them to the Amia cosmology, you'll have to go all the way back to 1st Ed to adapt them from that edition's version of the Manual of the Planes.

I have a source. I'll try to get a copy.

We still have the corresponding Mephit types, by the way. And druids can (or used to) summon Para-Elementals, so they're definitely somehow part of our cosmos. The planes shouldn't be scrapped, but I suppose you could say they are the borderlands between the primary Elemental Planes. The physics of it is fucked up anyway, so it doesn't matter much how you explain their existence.

But yeah, I'm not entirely sure what would be the last source to describe them. I think you'll have better luck with Planescape, as with most things planar.

Surprisingly, the Wikipedia article on the matter is very informative with plenty of references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Plane

Lava and Ice paraelementals are IG last I checked, yep.

Mephits and summoned elementals could just as easily be cross-breeds as denizens of their own discrete planes. But I do agree with you, for the most part. I wasn't saying the para and quasi planes should be scrapped, just that the 3rd Ed writers seem to have done so. Keeping them and building them into Amia would be to the good, I think; more variety of lore is a Good Thing.

I've been researching this myself for a character concept. The para-elemental planes were themselves removed as separate entities, but rolled into the prime elemental planes close to the 'borders'. So Ice exists near the edge of Water to Air, Ooze at Earth near Water, etc..

Considering we use an amalgamation of various cosmologies, I would go with the octahedron model (whatever you make of the planar borders). It is definitely the most sophisticated and thematically cohesive model.

AFAIK, the quasi/para-elemental planes are separate and distint locations still, on Amia. The bit about them being rolled into the other planes sounds like 4th Ed stuff, IMO.

Gers wrote:

AFAIK, the quasi/para-elemental planes are separate and distint locations still, on Amia. The bit about them being rolled into the other planes sounds like 4th Ed stuff, IMO.

I've never seen any mention of them in the 3.X books. The best source for lore, though, would probably be the Planescape AD&D2e book Guide to the Inner Planes.

That Wikipedia article I linked charts their publishing history.

wait so salt,dust,ash...ect elementals are real in our setting?

Gers wrote:

AFAIK, the quasi/para-elemental planes are separate and distint locations still, on Amia. The bit about them being rolled into the other planes sounds like 4th Ed stuff, IMO.

3rd ed, pulled the para / quali planes and made them the borderlands between the other planes.
4th ed simplified things further merging the ether, abyss, limbo, and I think the other inner planes.
They also got rid of the plane of shadow and ravenloft in 4th.

erroch wrote:

Gers wrote:

AFAIK, the quasi/para-elemental planes are separate and distint locations still, on Amia. The bit about them being rolled into the other planes sounds like 4th Ed stuff, IMO.

3rd ed, pulled the para / quali planes and made them the borderlands between the other planes.
4th ed simplified things further merging the ether, abyss, limbo, and I think the other inner planes.
They also got rid of the plane of shadow and ravenloft in 4th.

They merged the plane of shadow and the demiplane of dread into the Shadowfell.

We've used a couple of the para-planes (where the intersections of the main 4 planes, with each other, are) but not so much the quasi planes (where the positive and negative intersect the main 4), to my knowledge.

Quasi & Para Elementals

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