Elemental

Elementals were the purest living forms of the four basic elements—air, earth, fire, and water—as well as several other, less common elements. They were intelligent, self-aware entities that were made up of the matter of their home plane. They could be summoned to any plane of existence, except the plane of concordance to their element. For example, summoning a fire elemental to the Elemental Plane of Water took more magical power than mortals could conceivably wield.

Elementals were considered intelligent, yet they saw service typically as bound servants or guardians. For example, Gromph Baenre had a bound fire elemental in his magical study, and he used it as a contingency guardian. This binding grated on the elementals, as they were only summoned for a singular purpose. Once that purpose had been fulfilled, they were free to return to their home plane. In some cases, this bondage could span centuries, if not millennia.

Summoning and binding an elemental in this way required much in the way of personal power. An elemental that sensed binding of this manner would fight the caster mentally. If the caster lost this battle of wills, the elemental was free to wreak havoc on the plane it was summoned to. In most cases, the elemental would slay the caster and return to its home plane.

The four main elemental types were fire, water, earth and wind. Races tied to a certain element were much more likely to summon an elemental of that same element. Salamanders were known to have the ability to request service from fire elementals. The efreeti were also known to have these agreements. Svirfneblin had close connections with the Elemental Plane of Earth. A svirfneblin cleric, Belwar Dissengulp, once summoned an earth elemental to protect his mining party from a drow ambush.

Elementals

 * Air elemental
 * Earth elemental
 * Fire elemental
 * Water elemental

Para-Elementals
Para-elementals were from the paraelemental planes, where the borders of the elemental planes intersected.
 * Ice para-elemental
 * Magma para-elemental
 * Ooze para-elemental
 * Smoke para-elemental

Quasi-Elementals
Quasi-elementals were from the quasi-elemental planes, where the borders of the pure elemental planes intersected with the energy planes.
 * Ash quasi-elemental
 * Dust quasi-elemental
 * Lightning quasi-elemental
 * Mineral quasi-elemental
 * Radiance quasi-elemental
 * Salt quasi-elemental
 * Steam quasi-elemental
 * Vacuum quasi-elemental

Other Elementals

 * Darkness elemental
 * Nature elemental
 * Necromental
 * Shadow elemental