This thread came about because I was thinking about what the appropriate attack would be for magical sea creatures like sea-serpents and the like. Should it be normal fire, or frost, or something else? In some of the earlier Ultima games, we had monsters, such as seahorses, that attacked with a blue magic bolt of energy, and in Serpent Isle this came back as cold-fire, which I believe was a kind of icy fire with a blue flame. The fire sword and firedoom staff in the game were in this blue fire, as was the breath of frost serpents and ice dragons. Another alternative idea would be to recast this as blue flames of fox-fire, which would be a kind of magic fire that would be luminescent rather than radiant, low energy -- so less damage -- but longer lasting, and wouldn't be extinguished quickly by water. In such a manner, the blue flames would also burn on the waves of the ocean around your ship when a sea-serpent attacked, causing the fire to last longer, and make it unsafe to jump ship. It would be a product of fire and Moon Magic. Fox-fire is normally associated with bioluminescent fungi, but there's also a phenomenon in the ocean that was called during the Middle Ages "burning seas", which is now more modernly referred to as "milky seas" where the ocean is lit up with bioluminescent bacteria. Jellyfish, or sea-jellies as they were more commonly called, were also referred to as star-fish, because they were bioluminescent. Pliny noted that when rubbed with a stick, one could then straightaway use the stick as a torch. There were a lot of myths around them. The sea-jelly was said to be so hot and burning, and to consume as with fire everything it touched in the sea, including to the point that it cooked its own food. The glow was compared to the fire of the Holy Ghost; that it didn’t extinguish in the sea was like an action of divine grace — and, on the other hand, to the inextinguishable fires of Hell. Other types of fire in the game might be a black-fire, which would would be black, and basically be death magic in fire form; as seen as in Fiery Decay. Or holy-fire, which could be used by paladin type characters and harm the undead primarily. Now, the magic combo system, spellweaving, I think is intended to have a lot of interesting combinations of elemental magic, and ice and fire combos will probably lead to steam and things like that. But it would be interesting to use some spellweaving to let other types of magic take the form of fire. For example, the Moon Magic with fire leading to that type of magic, blue-flamed fox-fire. The other concepts are just extensions of the same idea.
Not sure how it would be linked in the game. I should point out that blue is indeed also the color of moon energy, Different colors of flames -- green, blue, red, etc -- could have different magical purposes though. Green fire, which you normally see in fox-fire in fungi, could obviously be poison, and could also be in bog lights. Etc.
