[ Archomentals ] [ Air | Earth | Fire | Metal | Para-Elemental | Quasi-Elemental | Water | Wood ]
Archomentals of Air
You want to understand the five great winds of the plane of Air, cutter? Then mind your footing—metaphorically, at least—because on the Plane of Air concepts like ‘ground’ are more of an opinion than a reality—and the bloods who hold the strongest opinions are the archomentals.
From a distance, these transparent bloods can look quite similar. All of them are incarnations of key properties of air itself: Motion, breath, sky, flight, the space between things. None of them are truly comfortable with stillness. They each, in their way, insist that air is more than empty nothing. They all value unfettered movement, endless horizons, and the freedom of the wind, and every one of them has built a realm that’s more mood that geography: palaces of solid air, invisible manors, roaring storm‑hearts, labyrinths of pressure, or funnels of cloud that never stop whirling.
| Name | Status | Alignment | Portfolio | Realm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Akadi | Primordial greater power | N | Air, freedom | Air / Ozone Layers / The Great Funnel |
| Chan | Archomental | NG | Benevolent winds | Air / Vault of the Sky / Palace of Unseen Contemplation, |
| Hshurha † | Primordial archomental | NE | Last breaths | Air / Unknown / Verglas Precessional |
| Ranginori † | Primordial archomental [freed] | NG | Welcome breezes | Air / Ozone Layers / The Roaring Spark |
| Yan-C-Bin | Primordial archomental | NE | Hurricanes, whirlwinds | Air / Twilight Sky / Typhoon Clandestine |
Up close, though, the differences become clear. Akadi, the Queen of the Air, is the ancient, primal force at the eye of the storm: She cares for the element and its freedom, not what you do with it. She drifts eternally, letting storms rise and fall without interest in mortal squabbles. She even treats the other archomentals more like they’re just weather than actual rivals—Akadi is vast, impersonal, and disinclined to pick sides.
Chan and Ranginori are the bright crisp winds in the storm: Chan is the Glorious Zephyr, all cleansing breeze, gentle rain, and patient, quiet kindness; Ranginori the Zephyrous Prince is the serpent-lion of thunderclouds, who loves roaring out storms the way a child loves running downhill—fast, loud, but playful.
Opposite them circle Yan‑C‑Bin and Hshurha, who give this winds of this plane their teeth. Yan‑C‑Bin is rightly called the Howling Hatred, all hurricane and whirlwind. He’s clever, scholarly even, with a twisted sense of honour; he rewards loyal service, but his temper is like a squall—sudden and vicious. Hshurha, the Duchess of All Winds, is subtler and meaner: more of a presence than a person, and she brings the exquisite terror of knowing that if she decides to steal the air from your lungs, that’s that. The two of them see Chan and Ranginori as weak sentimentalists, and each other as useful monsters—dangerous, yes, but proof that air is the supreme element because without it, there can be no life.
If you’re wise, berk, you’ll remember: they might all be full of wind, sure, but they are not of the same breath. Chan’s breeze will lift you; Ranginori’s storm will thrill you; Akadi’s currents will ignore you; Hshurha will guffaw as you fall; and Yan‑C‑Bin’s calm, is only the pause before he decides whether you deserve to choke or fly.
Akadi
Queen of the Air. N Primordial greater power of Air and freedom [She/Her]
Realm: Air / Ozone Layers / The Great Funnel
Akadi [uh-CAR-dee] is the primal embodiment of elemental air, speed, and freedom. One of the few primordials who did not war against the gods, she remains a truly neutral force to this day, governing the element of air across many Prime worlds. Her philosophy centres on perpetual motion, the freedom to travel unfettered by notions of paths or boundaries. She neither creates nor prevents storms, leaving such mundane matters to other powers.
Her realm is called the Great Funnel, a vast empty sky within the Ozone Layers of the Plane of Air dominated by rolling clouds and dark storms. Few permanent temples exist anywhere to honour her; instead, her clergy wander the planes constantly, embodying her doctrine of ceaseless movement. Her proxies are called the Azure Guard.
Source: Dragon Magazine #347 p29; Inner Planes [2e] p25; On Hallowed Ground [2e] p53,181; Planescape Campaign Setting [2e] DM’s Guide p28
Chan
The Glorious Zephyr, the Silent One. NG Archomental of benevolent winds [she/her]
Realm: Air / Vault of the Sky / The Palace of Unseen Contemplation
Chan is the benevolent Princess of Air, an invisible mass of softly churning wind whose presence is felt in a refreshing gust of clean, cool air and the sound rustling leaves. She embodies fresh breezes, cleansing rainshowers, and life‑giving zephyrs, though she can rise to full tempest when she really needs to show her teeth. Chan believes that the air should be used to carry rain, sweet scents, and songs. She fights a subtle war of propaganda and rumour against her rival Yan‑C‑Bin, preferring to give omens, and seed whispers on the wind, rather than resort to open conflict. She rarely issues commands, instead trusting her followers to act as their conscience and her example suggest. Chan divides her time between joyfully floating through the elemental plane of Air, and her Palace of Unseen Contemplation, a flying glass manor hidden in the Vault of the Sky of Deep Air. There, flocks of good‑hearted aerial creatures—aarakocra, djinn, air elementals, and more—gather in relative peace, a quiet little aerie of stillness amidst the ever-blowing winds of the plane.
Source: Dragon Magazine #347 p41; #353 p43,46-47 (3e stats); Inner Planes [2e] p25-26,55,89; Planescape Monstrous Compendium Vol. III [2e] p8,18,20-21 (2e stats)
Hshurha
Duchess of All Winds. CE Primordial archomental of last breaths [she/her] †
Realm:Air / Palace of Unseen Contemplation †
Hshurha [hush-OO-rah], the Duchess of All Winds, is a wicked elemental lord of last breaths, and deadly windstorms. She rules a large chunk of the Plane of Air from her translucent palace. She’s naturally invisible; even when she’s among her own court her true form—if she has a single form at all—is unknown. She manifests instead as a zone of ever-shifting air pressure, a voice on the wind, or a sudden lethal gust.
Hshurha’s personality is cruel, tyrannical, and capricious. She delights in toying with visitors, especially “solid” creatures, humiliating earthbound beings, and killing her foes by dropping them from great heights or subjecting them to deadly buffeting winds. Philosophically she exalts formless freedom and the supremacy of the air, enjoining her worshippers to revel in formlessness, humiliate terrestrial creatures, and to never walk on the ground if they can travel otherwise.
Her realm, the Verglas Precessional, is a shifting, largely invisible palace of solid air suspended somewhere in the endless skies of Air, a labyrinth where the unseen walls and floors move around seemigly at random. Here Hshurha holds court with air elementals, invisible stalkers, and planar dignitaries, most of whom both respect and fear her volatile whims. She maintains a cool peace with some of the more aggressive djinn noble families while rumours suggest secret dealings with efreet and plots—carried out by her invisible stalkers—to undermine djinni influence on the plane.
Source: Rage of Elements [PF2e] p68; Divine Mysteries p190,306; Archives of Nethys
Ranginori
The Zephyrous Prince, the Duke of Thunder. NG Primordial archomental of welcome breezes [he/him] †
Realm: Air / Ozone Layers / the Roaring Spark †
Ranginori [rang-in-ORE-ee], dubbed the Zephyrous Prince and Duke of Thunder is a benevolent archomental lord of Air, winds which bring weather, and welcome thunderstorms. Like several other archomentals, he was recently freed from imprisonment; his personal gaol was the Untouchable Opal. Now liberated, he’s rapidly regaining his strength and enthusiastically rebuilding alliances.
When he manifests, he appears as an immense lion‑headed serpent woven from stormclouds, with a billowing mane and clawed feet with which he races through the sky chasing lightning bolts. Ranginori is free‑spirited, kind, and adventurous. He exults in travel, open horizons, and the sheer joy of motion, valuing personal freedom of movement and thought as core virtues. Ranginori teaches that air should refresh and liberate, not scour or suffocate, and that storms can be thrilling experiences rather than instruments of cruelty. He encourages curiosity, wanderlust, and resistance to tyrants—mortal or elemental—who would try to fence in the sky.
Ranginori’s realm is the Roaring Spark, which is centred on a perpetual thunderstorm which continuously crackles with lightning. They say there’s a vortex to the quasi-elemental plane there. The remainder of the realm—currently mostly ruined cloud-castles—spiral outwards from the storm, linked by glass bridges and solid clouds.
Source: Rage of Elements [PF2e] p65,69; Divine Mysteries p191,306; Archives of Nethys
Yan-C-Bin
Prince of Elemental Air, the Shadow of the Four Winds, the Howling Hatred, the Great Cloud. NE Primordial archomental of hurricanes and whirlwinds [he/him]
Realm: Air / Twilight Sky / the Typhoon Clandestine ‡
Yan‑C‑Bin [yann-see-bin] is a primordial archomental of destructive winds and storms. When he isn’t invisible, he commonly appears as a tall, thin elderly humanoid with long hair flowing in the wind, but his true form is a raging whirlwind with vague, sinister facial features. Although the Shadow of the Four Winds is highly intelligent, with a love of scholarly pursuits and a strong sense of honour, and he generously rewards cutters who serve him well. However he is also flighty and quick to react in anger or retaliation. Invoking his name inspires fear in sky-dwellers. His philosophy holds air as the most important element, since without air to breathe all living beings will die very quickly indeed—and he is not above using his powers to control air to choke the very breath out of his enemies. He wages a subtle cold war of information and sabotage against his greatest rival, Chan, while working to disrupting the schemes of Ogrémoch and keeping a close watch of his other foes Imix, Olhydra, and Cryonax.
The Howling Hatred claims a spectacular yet treacherous domain in the Twilight Sky of the plane of Air. Once, Yan-C-Bin was imprisoned in a prison of solid air, as punishment for attempting to conquer the Prime with Olhydra and Imix. More recently though he was freed by devotees of Bhaal, and in a gesture of defiance he’s repurposed his former prison as a realm. His palace, the Typhoon Clandestine, is crafted from solidified air—think a vast, crystalline edifice of invisible hardness that only reveals itself through refraction or physical contact. Surrounding it are fields of spiked glass spheres, razor-edged orbs that whirl in deadly orbits, shattering against solid intruders to unleash vortexes of shards. They are no threat to beings made from air, of course. The palace itself hums with eerie flute-like notes as winds thread through its invisible halls. His palace is more like a trophy-case than a fortress, and he maintains no standing army, other than a cadre of invisible stalkers, or staff, other than unseen servants. The palace is further protected by an angry-looking storm cloud of roiling blackness, although it never rains, nor is there lightning. Yan-C-Bin rarely lingers here, mind. The Prince is a wanderer and travels light, slipping through skies on any and every plane to spy on rivals.
Source: Dragon Magazine #353 p50 (hatred of Zaaman Rul); Inner Planes [2e] p112-113 (Citadel of Former Flame)
Source: Jon Winter-Holt. The longlist of Primordials was inspired by the work of Mentat55 (on enworld) and Medivh (on the RPGnet forum). † Denotes Pathfinder ore; ‡ denotes homebrew.