Ember Swarm

As soon as Finn put out that fire the little things went mad. Finn says they burning him and we laugh cuz it was just some bits of cinder flew off the fire. That's what we thought. Then I saw the blisters already popping up. Was like someone had thrown a bucket of hot coals over him. Smoke started rising from his back. Then...I smelled it. They was cooking him, burning him alive. Another moment and he's gone up like the May fire. Finn screams and runs for the creek. Then we see the rest coming out of the hills. Millions of burning specks. Headed straight for town.

-Della Malgrove, lone survivor of the Cedardowns village fire

Classification: Elemental

Major Element: Fire

Minor Elements: none

Habitat: Arid Plains

Often overlooked until it's too late, a swarm of embers at first may look like little more than a few smoldering coals drifting from a cookfire, their drone nothing more than crackling cinders. Once the swarm's scouts find an abundance of flammable material, however, there is little that will stop the ensuing conflagration. 

Ember swarms were once thought to be a single, widely dispersed elemental but close observation and study of individual embers has shown it is in fact a swarm of thousands of tiny elementals working in tandem. Not unlike similar colony creatures such as bees or ants, an ember swarm exhibits a hive mind. Individual embers will often willingly sacrifice themselves for the proliferation of the swarm. 

The swarm feeds by consuming flammable materials in their collective blaze. Once materials burn down to char they are transported by swarm members to the nest for brooding. The ember swarm nest, also called a brood oven, is an orb of endlessly burning flame. Larger pieces of charcoal returned to the brood oven are used to keep the nest alight. Smaller materials are placed within to pyrolyze and eventually hatch into new embers.

Due to their unparticular diet of anything that burns, ember swarms are naturally quite dangerous to any creature susceptible to fire. Human settlements can be particularly alluring to the pests thanks to our tendency to gather flammable materials. Even more troubling, however, is the swarms immediate aggression towards any perceived threat. If it believes itself in danger, the entire swarm will erupt into a frenzy and attempt to set anything in the vicinity ablaze. Unfortunately anything from a curious farmhand to a heavy rain may be taken as a threat.