Chapter Text
Of all the four elements represented in the main Elemental Planes, fire and water may be the most classic in their symbolism of total, diametric opposition without moral insistence on either side. While the forces of the Upper and Lower Planes may have reasons to clash that mortals may understand in their broader strokes, the philosophical differences irreconcilable with one another, fire and water are not moral entities who vie for reasons any more concrete than the understanding it to be the basic nature of reality. A flame may invigorate or destroy and water may nourish or drown, yet when faced with each other, annihilation is the most common result; fire is extinguished by water while fire’s heat fritters water away. Thankfully separated by the Elemental Planes of Air and Earth, the inconsiderable result of the Elemental Planes of Fire and Water bordering each other and experiencing more contact than the scant few portals that connect them could well be cataclysmic on an interplanar level. Yet, the meeting of flame and water is not complete destruction, and there is a mephit born of the two elements’ resentful union. Full of hissing, sputtering instability, the steam mephit straddles the line of liquid fluidity and burning vitriol.
Elemental Disharmony
Made of two diametrically opposed elements, steam mephitis shows their unstable nature both physically and emotionally. The wavering, insubstantial body of a steam mephit barely holds together, looking even in moments of relative calm as if it is about to tear itself apart. When threatened, a steam mephit can intentionally tap into this instability for a bit, steam leaking out of her form to make her harder to pin down by distorting the boundary between her actual body and the stream around her.
Though half made of fire, the instability of a steam mephit’s combined form makes her body temperature inconsistent. In most places, a steam mephit is warm but bearable to the touch. However, one must take care when touching a steam mephit, for her form bubbles with pockets of scalding hot vapour able to boil a person alive. These points often cumulate around her sharp claws, giving her otherwise insubstantial slashes a blistering edge. With slightly more effort, a steam mephit can eject several such pockets from her mouth in a blast capable of burning foes.
This disharmony is at constant work within a steam mephit, causing them a constant feeling of instability. As such, unable to quell the war going on within them, most steam mephits desperately strive to control as much of what they can around them. Unfortunately for them, steam mephits are weak pitiful creatures that largely inhabit the Elemental Chaos, one of the most unstable, ungovernable places in existence, making them even more stressed.
Places outside of the Elemental Chaos that tend to accrue steam mephits are fairly rare due to the conflicting elements required; however, steam mephitis crave to have such places as a home, with locations such as undersea volcanoes, geysers, and thermal springs being far more comfortable than the fleeting globules of flame and water they cling to in their native plane. Steam mephits may also find their way to more artificial sources of steam and hot water, such as kitchens, bathhouses, and forges. While many imagine a steam mephit infestation to be a problem, steam mephits would usually prefer the owners of the places keep the heat and water coming and so wilfully assist in keeping such businesses afloat, acting as surprisingly helpful, if unsurprisingly annoying, guardians and serving staff of their own free will.
Controlling Cooperators
Much about steam mephits is an improbable harmony of elements that should destroy one another. Perhaps noticing this, the ancient primordials used steam mephits to say things that rarely came easily to their dark selfish minds. In a league of nearly inconsiderable beings who seemed to know nothing besides war, arrogance, and consumption, the steam mephit was the closest thing to a pleasant phrase utterable in a single mephit. Where other mephits threaten or insult, a steam mephit simply means “I agree,” a recognition of another primordial’s wisdom or shared beliefs.
To call the sending of a steam mephit a kind act may be an exaggeration, however. While a primordial may have been willing to admit they shared an opinion with another, the opportunity to assert superiority is one that few were humble enough to pass up. “I agree” may therefore be an oversimplification of what a steam mephit is meant to mean. A more apt term may be “I told you so,” the sender offering their agreement with the recipient’s belief or plans, but also implicitly suggesting the recipient’s stance was thought of by the sender to begin with, and it was only common sense that led the recipient to abandon their original, backward ideas and obey the sender’s wisdom.
This arrogance trickles down into the unstable, controlling nature of the steam mephits themselves. When a steam mephit believes themselves to be right about something, they are completely intractable to counterpoints. What is more, steam mephits like nothing more than to press their beliefs onto others. It is for this reason that steam mephits are some of the few mephits that dislike large crowds of their own kind. While a small flock of roughly half a dozen steam mephits may have similar enough beliefs to mostly get along, larger flocks increase the likelihood of differing or opposing viewpoints that can easily tear it apart. As such, most steam mephits prefer to look beyond their own kind for lessers in need of their “guidance.”
Few steam mephits are truly delusional enough to believe they can claim mastery over beings more powerful than themselves, a collective including many creatures. Instead, steam mephitis look to other kinds of mephits, steam mephits considering themselves the greatest, wisest, and most rightful rulers of all the mephits. While steam mephits generally lack the magical aptitude to control, other mephits, as summoners do, do have the ability to nag, shriek, and complain ceaselessly until it becomes more efficient for the mephits subjected to the tirade to simply comply with the steam mephit’s supposed authority. With this “dominion” established, a steam mephit endeavours to use her genius to lead her “enlightened” servants to advance the power of the mephits.
Thankfully, steam mephits are only marginally smarter than mephitis of other kinds on average and have the same lack of true motivation, making their plots seldom of any real consequence. Some powerful beings use steam mephitis as officers or management, for a steam mephit that finds herself under the leadership of a more powerful being will quickly adapt to a position of shrieking her new master's orders to other underlings. Steam mephits especially like such intermediary roles when they grant the ability to command creatures far stronger than they would ordinarily, warriors and monsters that would swat the mephit like a fly if her words weren’t coming from an even more powerful being that rules them both.
Sex and Sexuality Among Steam Mephits
Generally, steam mephit’s are among the mephits most likely to be summoned by a woman for sexual reasons. Possessing warm, if slightly insubstantial, bodies that are generally safe as long as one doesn’t probe too deeply into their hotter interior, a summoner can close her eyes and almost imagine they are making love with a fellow mortal. This is helped by the steam mephit’s view of sex. Where most mephits accept the low opinion most of the world has for them and use it as ammunition to enhance the self-judgement a spellcaster may have for relying on them for sexual pleasure, a steam mephit’s sky high self-opinion makes her unable to see a mortal’s decision to have sex with her as anything but a sign of excellent taste in lovers.
Steam mephits have also developed a great taste for sex without the involvement of a mortal mistress. When not faced with a being undeniably stronger than them, however, steam mephits tend to seek sexual dominance in their unions. As such, multiple steam mephits trying to fuck each other will inevitably devolve into a great argument about who is serving who. Often unwilling to masturbate out of a desire to be served, a steam mephit often looks to their “servants” for sexual needs, by which they mean any nearby mephit of another kind they can badger into cooperation.
This demanding, nagging nature can sometimes extend to other creatures too. While a steam mephit generally knows better than to hit on a wizard or druid that called her forth for clearly non-sexual reasons, steam mephits generally consider themselves sexually desirable and may occasionally try to inflict themselves on mortal women when they feel the situation is right. Steam mephits are rarely outright rapacious, even when they have the numbers or strength to overpower a target; after all, fucking a woman by force would imply there is a reason she wouldn’t want to have sex with the mephit consensually.
Instead of trying to overpower a victim, the steam mephit tries to “charm” them into fucking her. Unfortunately, steam mephits lack much in the way of social graces, and when a person, be they a bathhouse visitor or a weary traveller, shows disinterest in making love to a shrieking, imp-like mass of steam, the steam mephit seldom takes no for an answer. Selfish acceptance and agreement incarnate, steam mephits see any refusal to have sex with them as a sign of poor judgement that must be corrected through their natural "persuasiveness," that is to say, through constant nagging, degrading insults, and mostly hollow threats for non-compliance.
Men to Steam Mephits
Steam mephits are generally quite divided about men and male creatures. When a man meets a steam mephit without external influences on her, her reaction is mostly a coin toss. If he encounters a flock, the unveiled differences in opinion may tear the flock in two. Regardless of opinion, however, one can always expect a steam mephit to have something to say about men, just as they do on all subjects.
About half of all steam mephits see masculinity as a fundamental sign of opposition on the man’s part, as if the man, by somehow “choosing” to be born the rarer sex, is defiantly refusing to accept the “correctness” of being female, like the mephit herself. Such outright defiance tends to make these mephits hostile to me, though a steam mephit is unlikely to outright attack a man unless she has significant forces to back up her assault. Instead, she will hang back, trying to convince the man of his inferiority from a safe distance through insults, while prompting other mephits to harass him more directly.
The other half of the steam mephit population knows of the pleasure that comes from fucking a man and believes themselves to be completely worthy of receiving it, to the point where she believes men “owe” her a good fucking. Believing herself to be perfect and charming, a steam mephit interested in laying with a man propositions him with crass directness. Still, few men will turn down a cooperative sexual partner, so there is a good chance a sexually interested steam mephit’s efforts will bear fruit. With the blessings of Nymphona protecting a man’s cock from the scalding nature of a steam mephit’s womb, a consenting steam mephit is in fact rather safe to grope or handle, as long as one keeps their hands away from her claws. When a man is visibly powerful, a steam mephit can act submissive, but if given any amount of free reign in sex, a man can expect her to become a demanding brat in record time, both during and long after sex.
Most of the time, the boiling pocket that serves as a steam mephit’s inert womb doesn’t really react to a man’s seed filling it. Sometimes, however, when the life and elemental energy of a man and steam mephit meet, they can combine into a pregnancy. A steam mephit who realises that she is pregnant and knows where the man she fucked is often goes after him, demanding to be looked after for the year and a half she is pregnant for. This care normally consists of continuing to have sex with her and listening to her whine about how unappreciated she is for things she seldom has reason to take credit for. In truth, steam mephit pregnancy is not very difficult at all; the fluid and compressible nature of steam means that the baby barely shows and puts virtually no strain on the mother’s body. When it comes time to give birth, the baby slips out painlessly in a rush of steam, expanding to full size and achieving complete independence as soon as it is out of its mother’s pussy.