Wow, cool! It's always neat to see worldbuilding details!

Thank you! n.n

Neat, although I struggle a bit to understand the logic behind it. Feels a bit superficial.

Dont be too anxious, i am usually someone who likes to look *very deep* into how a system works.

Well, my goal isn't to be 100% logical n.n I'm intentionally trying to avoid the typical element oppositions and combinations in favor of different ideas.

Which parts were you looking at specifically?

Mainly Decay, Cold, Energy and Life, I struggle to see how it functions a bit. Also i wonder what stars have to do with Desires and Dreams

(I might be a bit too critical in general)

Okay, so, Oil/Life (alchemists call it oil and mages call it life) and Energy are contructive combinations. They combine upwards towards Union, which is the balance of all the worldly elements. Energy is the power of lightning, force, and motion, it's the combination of Earth's strength and Air's fluidity. Life is the power of flesh, spontaneity, and essence. There's a concept in Chinese elementalism that Fire represents action and that's part of what I'm pulling from. Combining the activity of Fire with Water's life-sustaining properties.

On the opposite side, Decay and Cold are destructive combinations. Fire oxidizes and corrodes, Earth rots. These powers coming together create a magic that tears down and reduces things to nothing. Cold is ice magic but it also represents stagnation and death. Not literal death magic but stasis. The powers of Water and Air together drain life from everything they touch. (This is what I'm trying to do with flipping the elemental combos on their head, find new ways they combine for better or worse n.n)

I think you're right that the chart implies the Arcane elements are related and I should probably change that to dotted lines n.n; Stars, Dreams, and Desire aren't related, they're all from different sources. Dreams and Desire come from within and Star is... something else. In Aristalle the stars don't stay in place, they move around every night and take different shapes. Because of that, people have learned that the stars actually tell the future, and stargazers like my snow leopard Vyrsa practice a unique form of magic that comes from stars!

Thanks :D

Systems that use elements as a basis are always fun to dig into. I'm curious; are the derived combinations exhaustive, or are they more examples of what traditions can come from combining the base four elements?

Also you have light connected to Fire here but no arrow indicating whether it's derived from or generates it. Presumably it's an example of a single element tradition?

Part of me wants to say no, Fire/Air and Water/Earth aren't combinable (mostly because I think those combos are unsatisfying, yay mud XD) but I don't want it to be a "hard" and closed system, so I'd leave it open enough that something could be there. It would probably be more destructive combos though, if anything.

If there's more I WOULD add it'd be more elemental aspects like Light. When I started making the chart and organizing things I thought I'd have more of those surrounding the four basic elements (I originally envisioned Decay and Cold as that before making them destructive derivatives). Then I wound up with Light being the only one so far XD It exists within the umbrella of Fire but can be considered its own power.

Wood's the one that comes to mind when I think of the pair of earth and water, though I've started drifting toward a five or six element cycle these days. Fire and air would probably have to be something like lightning, though that's just me thinking of the way air can be used as a vector for plasma.

But definitely enjoy doing elemental aspects as well. It's hard to do them when you're doing combinational stuff, I find, since figuring the line between what falls under an umbrella and what needs to be between always gets me.

Yepyep, I'm also familiar with the Chinese elemental cycle, and I borrow a couple ideas from it, like the idea that Fire is the catalyst of action and Earth borrows some aspects of growth from Wood but also largely represents change (Cerine is very familiar with earth aspects in her alchemy XD)

I've never really liked the "plasma" idea that comes from combining Fire and Air, it starts feeling too sci-fantasy, so lightning is covered by Energy since lightning bolts are a discharge between the sky and earth!