You know Elementals, right? The stand in for forces of nature itself made animate, like fire, water, air and earth. Maybe you would replace one with metal and wood, or add in the super special spirit/aether if you feel fancy.
Simple, yet limited without elaboration. Fire Elementals burn, or maybe fuel a giant furnace, but they are still played out.
But then I thought about it. Conceptually, they are specific parts of word. But who said they needed to be purely one substance?
Intoducing, Abstract Elementals! They are animate versions of other things from the physical reality, in more abstract sense. They arent the ground you walk on, or the air your breath, but the thing resulting from these, as those are a part of nature as well!
To give you some ideas... Mimicry Elemental.
In nature, doing Your Own Thing takes effort, so you may wanna take the easy way out. Why make unique warning signals or even invent a weapon, when you can just LOOK like the actually dangerous thing? Good chance it, any potential predator wont take the risk...
Mimicry Elementals are the enigma, as their essence is to copy they can imitate and replace anything, big or small. And yet thats their weakness.
If you are smart enough, you can play them by playing dumb, making them dumb by proxy as they HAVE to copy.
And if they copy the wrong thing... they will effectively die. The perfect mimic who turns into a stone too perfectly, he cant come back.
Thats why seperating or summonig them from the Elemental Planes can be tricky. Some even question if they have a true Elemental Plane of their own.
You cant always make sure they will copy what you want, or if they wont "die" by intantantly turning into the very matter they touch first.
Most commonly they manifest as reflections, transparent objects or just distortions. They dont hide details they lack, they are the hole that will soon gain its edge, to be able to exist.
Perhaps all shapeshiters are just Mimicry Elementals who survived in Material Plane?
Idea sounded cool, and would love to hear some other folks ideas foe such beings!
