The powers within an Elemental are Realized a majority of the time in late adolescence to early adulthood as it takes a great emotional upheaval, negative or positive, to trigger it. The birth of a desperately wanted child, the witnessing of a loved one being killed, falling in deep, true love, or losing that love, or watching a sibling or parent being beaten by another parent are all examples of a Realization being triggered. Realizing one’s gift is seen as a transformation, a rite of passage such as the passage into puberty or marriage, and presents a great desire to those who are yet too young.
Before Realization, when children are standing next to each other, it is impossible to detect which would be human, and which would be Elemental aside from in Loftas, where humans breed solely with humans, and in-breeding is not only strictly forbidden, but is seen as such a highly repellent and disgusting thing that only those who are sick in mind and intent would abuse a human slave in such a way; if such a man or woman is found, they and their households are shunned to the point where they will find no work, will garner no food, and their homes and other holdings will be forfeit.
In Aisling’s Reach, where reproduction between Elementals and humans is a common practice, the telling apart of the two races is impossible until the actual act of Realization occurs, wherein the Regulators that are stationed as precautions in the classrooms and dormitories of the older children are called into action, and as much chaos and destruction as possible is avoided.
When Realization occurs, a person's power is literally unleashed, and as such the Elemental is especially dangerous as they have not yet learned to contain their power. In this way, a newly Realized is as powerful as one who has Realized years before. The power within the child or young adult is unstable and hazardous. For some, learning to control their emotions enough to control the power takes weeks, while others grab a tenuous hold within days.
Because it takes an emotional upheaval to trigger the Elemental gifts, the gifts are tied specifically to emotion. It is paramount that an Elemental learn to control the greatest of their emotions to keep from destroying all around them in a fit of rage, an instant of terror, or an overwhelming of absolute joy. Because of the dangers of allowing strong emotions to run rampant through an Elemental, meditation is taught at an early age and is a required daily exercise to help an individual learn control. In the wilds, where Elementals come to Realization without the help of learning meditation and the instruction of teachers, coming into their powers is a frightening time, much more so than the act would be in either Loftas or Aisling’s Reach, and takes a much longer time to tame their powers, learning to do so only through much trail and disastrous error.
The powers within an Elemental are not unlimited, but are tied directly to one's life force. Should an Elemental attempt to use a power that is too advanced for them, or attempts to sustain an active power for too long a time, the power needed pulls directly on their life force, and can easily lead to death.
--- Element: Fire
Fire Elementals are ardent, enthusiastic, spontaneous, self-sufficient, romantic, and can sometimes be bossy and forceful. Those born under this element are extremely volatile, their personalities as combustible as the element that represents them. These people are strong in their convictions and morals, and are not easily swayed from what they believe to be right and wrong. They are the loud ones, the grabbers of attention, but are not immune to fits of sullen silence as their attitudes are known to shift as quickly as a flickering flame, as perceived injustices or slights cause that natural spark ingrained within their personalities to sway and dance just as a candle flame. They are more comfortable using violence to win an argument than their words due to the fact that their tempers more often than not match their element, and are perceived as the loose cannons. When presented with a problem they cannot noodle out, they require action, and sometimes act before they think, the ‘hit first, questions later’ belief falling into play.
Fire Elementals have command over flame, able to conjure it from thin air. They can light a fire, shut off a lamp with a thought, and heave fireballs in rapid succession towards their enemies. They have the ability to make cold fire, a ball of flame so frigid that when touched by the bare skin of another has the capacity for severe debilitating frostbite; the use of this particular power is advanced, and so only the most adept are able to use it. Because of their embodiment of fire, their body temperatures naturally burn hotter than any other Elemental beings’.
They also have the power to heal faster than all others around them, thought to be because the spark of their life lives so closely to the spark of their power. Although this is not a rapid healing, an angry scrap that bled can turn into a mere blemish in hours, while a gash that would normally take months to scar in others takes only weeks for a Fire.
--- Element: Earth
Earth Elementals are practical, earthy, dependable, conservative, and sensual. They love material comforts and have good recuperative powers, but can sometimes become too materialistic. They are the touchstones, the ones that are steadfast and true. They gather the information around them that is presented in the physical world and are able to understand it on a more base and instinctual level than any other of the elemental signs. They touch and they know; they see and they conceive. They are just as strong in their beliefs as the Fires are in theirs, but are more likely to use their words to defend their reasoning than their fists, though are not at all afraid or reluctant to move to more violent means of demonstrating their views or the views of those they have attached themselves to if it seems that no other way is possible. They are uncannily unrepentant, believing that if a physical action is needed to get their points across, then all other more intellectual avenues have been explored and exhausted with this reasoning coming to fruition within a matter of seconds.
Earths are quiet ones, more at home in a forest meadow than among people, and are able to figure out those around them rather fast because of their introverted and intuitive nature. They have a heart for those around them, but lack the real ability to show it, and are often seen as stand-offish and cold because of it.
Earth Elementals have power over the earth. They are able to make things grow out of barren ground as long as seed resides deep within, and if powerful enough or enough are gathered and working together, can command Sabine’s earth to shift enough to cause one hell of an earthquake. They can manipulate all sorts of greenery from trees to hedges, and are the true architects of Loftas and Aisling’s Reach’s forests, gardens, and agricultural areas. Earths can cause rock slides, carve mountains, and send a bolder flying through the air with a mere thought.
--- Element: Air
Air Elementals can communicate well; they tend to be intellectual, and they are able to handle abstract reasoning. They are logical, broadminded, objective, idealistic, and unprejudiced. They are the dignitaries of the people. They carry themselves more regally than the elements around them, sometimes coming across as snobbish or supercilious as they are often of the mind that what they perceive of the world around them are absolute truths and it is nearly a fight to the death to convince them otherwise. They approach life with the credence that ‘the means justify the end’. They are the judge and jury in the way that they follow above all else a personal creed that karma will bite you in the ass, and you live your life the way you will end it, an attitude that is more than likely developed later in life, or is at the very least realized in early adulthood as it is a very adult attitude, though shadows of this belief are hinted at and proven early in life.
Those born under Air are the ones you would go to for an absolutely objective opinion, as they are adept at abstract reasoning, are broadminded, and unprejudiced because of their open minds, though are not above allowing their personal pet peeves and dislikes to enter into their advice, and are known to, at times, give false or bad counsel as a means for revenge. They have a knack for natural intelligence, but have the tendency because of their inertly high opinions of themselves to lack any real emotional depth. They are highly rational and calculated beings, able to see from a perspective completely outside the realm of emotional involvement the things that might catch others' emotions up and cause confusion to an issue or situation. This can make Air appear cold, arrogant, unsympathetic, and calculated. If emotionally involved with people, such as friends, family, or lovers, Air tends to become frustrated, angry, and biting back curses full of dissatisfaction towards whoever has placed themselves in a bad or difficult situation because Air Elementals believe they, themselves, would have known better.
This is not to say that Air Elementals are total and complete bastards. Many have the ability to love unconditionally and give all they can of themselves. They are not, however, apt to allowing their emotions to carry their reason away from them, and are known to have an even perception of head and heart.
Air Elementals command the sky. They, with the aid of a Water, can cause torrential rains or blanketing snow. They can make the weather frigid or devastatingly hot. They can generate breathable air from poisonous vapor, cause hurricane wind, tornadoes, and massive tsunamis above small bodies of water.
--- Element: Water
Water Elementals are feeling, sustaining, and receptive. They are emotional, intuitive, responsive, sensitive, and deep. They tend to be susceptible to moods, and are easily influenced by the environment around them, but at self-indulgent times can be self-pitying and wavering. They are known as the peacemakers, the ones who strive to smooth the ripples and suffer greatly from any tension in the environment around them. These are the people who are the natural empaths, the ones that feel the emotions around them either from the people around them, or from the situation in which they have found themselves ensconced more than garnering any actual knowledge from their surroundings, as with Earth. They are the ones who watch Old Yeller and bawl, or read Romeo and Juliet and are able to feel the exact moment Juliet pierces her heart as though they were piercing their own. They prefer quiet, in fact needing it to be able to center themselves. For them to be able to work efficiently, they must have order, or they will find their own thoughts and emotions muddled and twisted with those of the environment around them.
Waters prize beautiful things, such as a splendidly tended rose garden or a Monet painting, being able to lose themselves as with nothing else in the textures and folds of emotion presented in the perfection of such things. They find comfort and emotional centering in mundane and calming tasks, such as pruning a tree or sitting huddled up and reading a book.
Water Elementals lord over liquids, whether it is the liquid in your cup or the liquid in your veins. They have the power to cause the moisture in your body to heat and boil, cause whirlpools, to catch within their palms enough moisture from the air around them to make spheres of water that have the capacity to sting, or kill. They have power to move rivers, lift streams into the air and divert them, or draw from cracked and hard earth the water from deep underground and gather enough drinkable water for an army.
Due to their reliance on water, these Elementals have a tendency to dehydrate quickly and without realizing it. It is important, therefore, for these individuals to drink copious amounts of water and specialty drinks made solely for hydration purposes.
--- Element: Metal
Metal Elementals are base beings, more in tune with the world than even their Earth element brothers, perhaps due to the fact that in everything, including such organic things as the human body, metal abounds, but lack the ability to read people as well Earths are able. Not very talkative, they are naturally distrusting individuals, more likely to search out private pastimes that do not require much interaction. But, when a truly trustworthy person is found, they fasten themselves to that person and are rarely seen away from their side. They are known to present a hard exterior to the world when, in truth, the selves they hide beneath are as flexible as molten steel.
Metal Elementals have power over the metals in our bodies as well as the metals in the earth around them. They can take a thimble-full of dirt and make from it a silver coin. As with the table of elements, they have the ability to build up or take apart to their basest nature any metal they come in contact with.
The different types of metals have different affects on them. Gold gives them the feeling of power. Silver, the sense of calm. Lead makes them grow depressed and downtrodden, while copper gives them the feeling of euphoria.
--- Element: Electric
Electric Elementals are the wild ones, full of un-contained energy. They are wild and free, fighting the attention away from their Fire cousins with every ounce of their being. Full of laughter and joy, they are also highly susceptible to inner raging storms, their ideals clashing with their morals, their actions clashing with their desires.
Electric Elementals have power over the natural electrical currents in the air. Much of the lighting in Aisling’s Reach, the wilds, and Loftas that are not generated by natural pre-Elemental sources are due to these beings. They contain a natural static electricity, able to shoot sparks from their fingertips that can match the power of lightning.
--- Element: Light
Light Elementals are the martyrs, the ones who shove aside what they want and need in order to accomplish self-appointed goals. They are adept at taking the rules passed down from generation to generation and meshing them into their own personal passion for justice and peace, can twist whatever laws or rules that stand in the way of completing their goals to match their own way of thinking. They follow their own rigidly set moral code, doing what they believe is right despite tradition. They have been known to kill without hesitation in the protection of their loved ones and are highly unapologetic when they do so, having developed their own rigorous sense of justice.
Light Elementals have the power to heal. Using the life force within the injured and themselves, they can mend wounds cleanly with minimal scarring, but are unable to heal once a wounded person is close enough to death to prevent tapping into the person's own life force. Or, if a person is unwilling to be healed, Light is unable to do so as forcibly tapping into that person’s life force would surely kill them. Because of their use of their own life force during healing, the process is draining and can prove dangerous. Intervals between healing are needed to gather back the strength it took, and energy in the form of food is essential.
Being children of light, they are able to both conjure and look into great sources of light without being blinded by it. They can see clearly in any amount of light, no matter how minimal.
--- Element: Dark
Dark Elementals are the children of inner turmoil, a true two-sided coin. To the world around them they are gentle and kind, the pinnacle of self-confidence. Their inner selves, however, are tarnished and battered by a storm that threatens at all times to tear their iron self-restraint apart. Due to this fact, these Elementals are not unknown for their sudden outbursts of self-depreciating rage that are often pointed at others when their anger is truly for only themselves. Because of their tendency to fall victim to self-recriminations when left alone, they crave the company of others, tightly binding themselves to the people they have grown to trust, sometimes becoming a nuisance because of it.
Darks are naturally adept at strategic planning, seeming at times to possess psychic gifts due to their ability to know the outcome of a battle before it is finished when they are, in fact, only reaching the conclusion of certain scenarios long before those around them.
Dark Elementals can see in zero light, the shapes around them vague and ghostly, but just clear enough to where they can make out generalized objects, if not details. They have power over shadows, able to use them as portals for their minds to spy on the enemy. Spying on comrades, friends, and family is considered a taboo, and in both the Crescent Plain and Aisling's Reach Dark Elementals are strictly advised against this. They are gifted with the power of prophesy, can see into the future in varying degrees with each vision and can take steps to change what they see while not knowing the outcome of those changes; because of this, many possess wisdom enough to change what they see only when in dire need. These powers to see the future are used only by the most skilled of practitioners as falling into a deep death-like trance is required and without the proper knowledge of how to wake from such a state, actual death can occur.
Darks also have the ability to call forth recently deceased spirits, acting as necromancers to the astral plain for means of interrogation: if a murder or untimely death has occurred, the Dark Elemental has the power to call forth the dead spirit and find out what has happened. This is a dangerous art, and an inaccurate one, as spirits are mirrors of a person in life, and so are able to lie, cheat, and mislead.
