Fire is an element of excess - it exudes pure destructive power and is often symbolic of conquest and total power. It's cast most efficiently from the palms, feet and lungs. It is the most difficult factor to control but the easiest to pick up on for novices. True mastery of it takes much longer than many believe - it is the only practice that is, for the most part, oral history. While it has extensive documentation, it is the most ancient practice of all Factor-Arcana and perhaps all Arcana, and so much of its progress has been lost to time in ages long passed. Tyrants and harbingers of death throughout history have boasted their infernal affinities, of which nothing has proven to strike fear more resolutely into the hearts of peasants than a dark cavalryman, pointed spear trailing a flag of flame in its wake. 

This is perhaps why the Exodus Engine was selected by the gods, one soul reincarnated over and over, its affinity so powerful it is etched into the flesh of the vessel it next appears in.

Ice is an element of patience - those who are willing to persevere will be preserved by the cold. It's cast most efficiently from the shoulders and forearms. Fear of the cold is not common, feeling “predictable” and barricaded away from humankind by the annotated edges of a calendar. The cold will come, and the cold will go. But step into the domain of ice and snow and escaping is a fanciful, foolish notion. Harnessing ice as a factor is considered by some to be the most difficult, with schools and mentors and no easy route, as with pyromancy. The types of mentors that teach cryomancy are of the highest level, while the type of people who teach pyromancy are self-taught, or taught by drunks in taverns who themselves are self-taught. The discipline of learning cryomancy is so high due to an academic system formed around it. Cryomancy apprentices come out with full mastery, while some pyromancers go their entire lives without coming close to mastery in any regard. This is why many consider it more powerful. 

Bring on a blizzard and wait long enough and not a thing on Draconem can possibly survive it.

Lightning is an element of urgency - it is quicker than the eye and its effects are undeniable. It's cast most efficiently from the fingers. It is paired often with swift feet and swifter strikes, but on top of it all, the ability to stun an opponent. A well-placed surge may lock up the muscles of an enemy, making them unable to coordinate a strike or dodge. True masters can push their bodies beyond their usual natural limits, sometimes stronger, sometimes faster, sometimes more dexterous - sometimes, they can even afford these benefits to others. Those who benefit are nearly impossible to hit and are known to be behind you, blade in your back before the light reaches your retinas to denote they had moved at all. 

There are whispers, though, that summoning storms and calling lightning down from the heavens is within the parameters of affinity.

Ethereum, or “Ghost” is an element only by a technicality. People have taken to referring to it as its own sect of Arcana, though the way it intersects with existing Arcana is comparable to that of elements, so it can only really be called as such until better language is developed for it.

Ghost is less an emitted element and more a tranformation, often overlapped with Epoch-Arcana - becoming incorporeal or intangible, and sometimes even invisible. It has existed for a very long time, through spells like blink. It is slowly being realised that this is also the matter by which plane shift occurs - how one crosses between the bright and dim realms. In the same way a sword is made of steel, it is theorised that a soul is made of Ethereum - something one cannot hold, but can create or become. Little is known in the way of how to intentionally call upon it outside the bounds of what is already used commonly, such as blink, but scholars and researchers are in a desperate race to be the first to gain mastery or to even visualise what mastery would appear like.