Fighting an air elemental

[Kitsune]

Working on a modern fantasy story
Main character is a powerful magic using type.

Was in a car which got attacked by an air elemental
Car thrown around, destroyed. Only because protected by a mystical shield and the car's airbag, the main character survived although battered and bruised.
Was a convertible so escaped through there even though the door is twisted and bent.

Air Elementals are extremely tough, normal weapons do not do anything.
Otherwise, they have to be commanded and follow those commands literally.
They don't like being summoned

Threw a magical spell called Hellfire at the elemental which hurt the elemental.
Still, take too many Hellfires to actually take the creature down.
Suggestions on how I might allow the character to defeat or escape the Elemental?

[madd0ct0r]

need the underlying rules of magic in this world.

[Kitsune]

I expect to get a lot of ideas that just will not work but sometimes getting a variety of ideas will help trigger somethign even when people do not have a complete understanding of your universe

[Purple]

Well given that a spell called "hellfire" seems to hurt it my guess would be that it can be hurt by fire. So what if the character were to set fire to his car and than lure the elemental in to be burned?

It all really depends on how elementals work in your setting though. Are they composed of regular air held together by a magical power or are they made out of some sort of special magical air? If it's the later we should be looking at ways to get rid of the magical air either by burning it away, blowing it away or stuff like that. If it's the former, fire should not hurt it at all. At least not until you reach such a high level of attrition to its air supply that it can't physically suck in enough air to replace what you remove. And we should be looking at ways to disrupt the spell holding them together. But on the other hand that would open us up to various ways of poisoning and messing with it by doing stuff like making it choke on exhaust gases.

[Vendetta]

If you've established that fire hurts the elemental, have your protagonist lure it into grabbing the wreck of the car to throw at him, then use his fire spell to touch off the fuel tank.

Since the fuel tank is leaking from the crash, the air elemental would probably have mixed with a decent amount of petrol vapour after holding the wreck for a short time, and would be nicely combustible.

[Sea Skimmer]

How big is it? Could you freeze the actual air T1000 style and run away?

[Ted C]

Suggestions on how I might allow the character to defeat or escape the Elemental?

That it was hurt by "hellfire" suggests that other classical elements can be used against it. Would it be harmed or disabled if it were buried, drowned, or burned more? I believe someone already suggested igniting the car's fuel tank.

For another way to harm it, we might want to know what it needs to exist. Does it need to be exposed to open air? If so, containing it in something airtight would presumably harm and/or kill it. Could it somehow be exposed to vacuum?

For escape, getting on the other side of an airtight barrier would work. Simply getting under water might be sufficient, since the elemental presumably can't just submerge "swim", but must move through the air itself.

[Zixinus]

Explosions. They extremely stir and shock the air. They are violent bursts of hot gas. Perhaps a violent implosion as well? If that doesn't at least shock your air elemental, I am not sure what would. Anything that would violently disturb air should at least effect an air elemental. The elemental does not have to have as strict a die-living states as we do, so it may not be necessary to go all the way to kill it.

Your character could also lure it or trap it underwater somehow. Or into a hurricane.

[madd0ct0r]

If it can't move through water, presumably a jet from a hosepipe could cut it in half?

[Zixinus]

Sucking it into a jet engine might be an awesome move too.

[Ahriman238]

I do believe a vacuum cleaner is traditional in these sort of circumstances.

Powerful magic-user? Well, there's a pre-prepared spell or artifact for dealing with pesky elementals in general, or air in particular. Or a general banishing. The Air elemental might be disrupted by the passage of lightning, water or large quantities of dirt through it. It can apparently burn, so maybe burn a few more hellfire spells to trap it in a circle (sphere would be better) of flame. Or it may not like the metal of the car. Your character might flee or be rescued instead of fighting to the death when ambushed.

Really depends on what rules you have, or want to make up, for spellcasters and elementals alike.

[Zeropoint]

Okay, just brainstorming here, but I do have a few ideas. First, what about salt? Lots of folklore credits ordinary sodium chloride with effectiveness against various supernatural things; maybe a shotgun loaded with rock salt would hurt an air elemental or disrupt the magic.

Also, if I recall correctly, the element traditionally opposed to air is earth (rock salt, being mined from the earth, counts here, too). Maybe hitting it with natural earth--soil or stone--would damage it. Of course, a city is going to be filled with altered and unnatural versions of such things, so finding some dirt or natural stone could be a challenge.

I also like the idea of using science against magic that people have been talking about. It's made of air? then BURN UP THE AIR with a gasoline fire! (well, that would consume the 21% of the thing that's oxygen.)

Suck it up with a vacuum cleaner? Use an air compressor to squeeze it into a little metal tank? Use compressed air as a weapon to fight it with its own substance?

[Ted C]

Also, you specify that the elemental doesn't really want to be there and that it only has to obey the exact words of the caster who summoned it. Your protagonist could conceivably find a way for it to fulfill its exact instructions without killing him, allowing it to return to its home sooner and with less harm.

[Kitsune]

Also, you specify that the elemental doesn't really want to be there and that it only has to obey the exact words of the caster who summoned it. Your protagonist could conceivably find a way for it to fulfill its exact instructions without killing him, allowing it to return to its home sooner and with less harm.

One of my thoughts is to create an illusion and let the elemental kill the illusion

[Ted C]

Also, you specify that the elemental doesn't really want to be there and that it only has to obey the exact words of the caster who summoned it. Your protagonist could conceivably find a way for it to fulfill its exact instructions without killing him, allowing it to return to its home sooner and with less harm.

One of my thoughts is to create an illusion and let the elemental kill the illusion

I don't know the exact instructions given to the elemental, so I can't look for loopholes, but if the illusion fools all of the elemental's senses, there's no reason it wouldn't consider its task done once it destroyed the illusion. Perhaps something more solid like a magical clone or doppleganger would be better, so it would have substance.

In a book called The Anubis Gates, evil wizards attempted to bribe the hero by offering to save his wife from death. Her death has already happened, and the hero knows that the past can't be changed, but the wizards say they can circumvent that problem by substituting a clone-like "ka" to die in her place, so history won't be affected.

Giving the elemental something to kill that matches its instructions would work similarly.

Your hero could potentially ask the elemental how circumvent its orders. After all, it resents being summoned, so it has reason to thwart its summoner. Working with the hero could potentially get it back to where it came from more quickly and easily than fighting.

[Kitsune]

Also, you specify that the elemental doesn't really want to be there and that it only has to obey the exact words of the caster who summoned it. Your protagonist could conceivably find a way for it to fulfill its exact instructions without killing him, allowing it to return to its home sooner and with less harm.

One of my thoughts is to create an illusion and let the elemental kill the illusion

I don't know the exact instructions given to the elemental, so I can't look for loopholes, but if the illusion fools all of the elemental's senses, there's no reason it wouldn't consider its task done once it destroyed the illusion. Perhaps something more solid like a magical clone or doppleganger would be better, so it would have substance.

In a book called The Anubis Gates, evil wizards attempted to bribe the hero by offering to save his wife from death. Her death has already happened, and the hero knows that the past can't be changed, but the wizards say they can circumvent that problem by substituting a clone-like "ka" to die in her place, so history won't be affected.

Giving the elemental something to kill that matches its instructions would work similarly.

Your hero could potentially ask the elemental how circumvent its orders. After all, it resents being summoned, so it has reason to thwart its summoner. Working with the hero could potentially get it back to where it came from more quickly and easily than fighting.

One of my ideas is to create an animated facsimile from dirt and then layer on an illusion of the mage.

[Ted C]

One of my thoughts is to create an illusion and let the elemental kill the illusion

I don't know the exact instructions given to the elemental, so I can't look for loopholes, but if the illusion fools all of the elemental's senses, there's no reason it wouldn't consider its task done once it destroyed the illusion. Perhaps something more solid like a magical clone or doppleganger would be better, so it would have substance.

In a book called The Anubis Gates, evil wizards attempted to bribe the hero by offering to save his wife from death. Her death has already happened, and the hero knows that the past can't be changed, but the wizards say they can circumvent that problem by substituting a clone-like "ka" to die in her place, so history won't be affected.

Giving the elemental something to kill that matches its instructions would work similarly.

Your hero could potentially ask the elemental how circumvent its orders. After all, it resents being summoned, so it has reason to thwart its summoner. Working with the hero could potentially get it back to where it came from more quickly and easily than fighting.

One of my ideas is to create an animated facsimile from dirt and then layer on an illusion of the mage.

There you go.