For some of the thoughts behind this topic, please see the Avishraa Tirades.

Element magic is the most common of the eight types of magic to be found among the Chosen, and consists of the ability to directly move, shape, or manipulate a particular substance. Users of element magic are referred to in the Citadel as elementalists.

Element magic is the ability to control matter of one, and only one, particular element, or more accurately, one “natural class”: it must be a type of substance that exists in nature and that has a certain amount of homogeneity of traits. The definition of the class may be wide or narrow depending on the individual, but is not necessarily related to chemical composition; there are many examples of elementalists being restricted to earths of any composition but a given range of particulate sizes (for example, a gravel elementalist).

The less solid the matter, the less ability there is to distinguish between natural classes. In other words, there are lots of natural classes to be found and used among solids, but rather less among liquids, and “air elementalists”, in fact, can control just about any gas. Related to this, different phases of matter cannot occupy the same natural class; one can be a water elementalist or an ice elementalist, but not both. Also related to this is the fact that, the more solid something is, the more that “impurities” - things not in the class - matter to one's ability to control it. That means that items with a lot of components or unusually structured compositions may only be controllable by a few elementalists with extremely broad powers (such as just “metal”). It is partly for this reason that organic tissues and materials are almost never subject to element magic; they are too heterogeneous and usually too highly structured to fall easily into a natural class.

In the context of the Citadel, where it is possible to closely observe the development of children, it has been determined that although elementalists appear to be born with their general magic type - as is the case with the other types - they appear to “latch on” to the element in which they specialize at around the age of one cycle. The substance in question must be something they are being exposed to, and have the opportunity to “play” with using their magic, during this period of their lives. Children are somewhat more likely to attune to substances that surrounding adults treat as important, resulting in certain occupational and cultural slants; the child of a smith might be more likely to be able to control a kind of metal, Ǣdyihòzhis elementalists might be more likely to control air or water, etc.

This being said, there is always the possibility of a case in which someone just happens to be exposed to something rare during childhood and becomes able to only control that thing, while never seeing it again in their life. If someone in the Citadel has all the other hallmarks of a Chosen and yet appears to have no magical abilities, something like this situation is assumed to be behind it.

An elementalist's capacity to affect his or or element is dependent on mass; an adult can typically manipulate several times one's own body weight at a given time.

An elementalist is capable of moving or lifting their element without muscular effort or physical contact, and of doing so more effectively than a single person could achieve by those means alone on the same mass of material. The ability becomes more difficult to use the further away the elementalist attempts to apply it, the more mass is involved, or the longer they attempt to use it, and extensive uses of this kind can tax the body in such a way that fatigue or hunger may result.

Elementalists are capable of altering the shape of a piece of their element. The ability may come across as trivial when used upon gases or liquids - which are fluid in any case, and which will disperse once the ability is relaxed - but the results are somewhat more impressive when applied to solid materials, as even hard and brittle materials, such as stone, will appear to be molded like clay while being shaped, rather than breaking. Included in shaping is the ability to fuse together, or break apart, masses of one's element. (For those whose natural class is restricted to particles of a particular size range, it is possible to create pieces that cease to be under the elementalist's control.)

Shaping is generally a much less fatiguing ability to use than moving.

A little under one-quarter of all Chosen are solely, or primarily, elementalists.

Blanket statements about their role in Chosen-friendly societies are hard to make, due to the high proportion of elementalists and the extreme diversity of the substances they are able to control. There are often mismatches between the frequency of a particular specialty and the demand for it; the Citadel has one, and only one, voidstone elementalist, who is not only the only inhabitant of the Citadel, but possibly in the world, who can easily collect and work the strange material, and who lives off the rare commissions paid to him for empathic shielding arrangements. By contrast, there are many gravel elementalists, who might sometimes have an opportunity to use their talents in maintaining roads and paths or drainage ditches but might well find it more profitable to take up an occupation not which does not rely on the use of their magical abilities.