Questions about Occults

1. The energy used by the animals to use magic comes directly from their lifeforce, basically the invisible gravity of their existence on this plane is being used to conjure, create and manipulate. Things like fire that wouldn't necessarily work underwater in the real world use this energy to exist in that space, albeit for not very long. Using magic is literally knocking on death's door, the longer and more magic used, the more likely death is going to catch you knocking and be pissed about it. The reason for this is because without limitations that threaten one's life, anyone could set the world on fire, flood, destroy, without being stopped. God or not, too much magic use will kill anyone.

A form of magic that doesn't rely on lifeforce possibly exists.

2. Kind of like a person realizing a talent or interest, it can come to someone in many different ways. It can be in there form of a nightmare, it can come right before someone dies, it can come to one who was just born, or never come at all. It's not entirely random, just comes to the who try more often than not. It's a nature vs nurture thing where your outside influence affects your element just as much as who you are. Manipulating elements around you instead of creating it yourself could be a smart vehicle into using less of this lifeforce. It wouldn't hurt to carry something related to your element with you in a pinch.

3.Absolutely! You can go as in depth as possible with each element, including just bein as literal as possible. As a fire occultist, perhaps you can control heat itself and be able to strip the body warmth out of another being to kill them, even in sunny weather. You could also probably just boil the watee inside of them too. As a water occultist you could not only manipulate the blood of another being but change any forms of hydrogen or oxygen and cause all of the cells in the host to expel their water at once, resulting in an incredibly slow and painful death. Or maybe even just splashing water onto someone and manipulating the two elements making up water to turn it into hydrogen peroxide and then burning your victim alive with it. A nature occultist could manipulate chloroplasts to change the color of any local fauna, or even manipulate the natural insect neurotoxins in some plants to affect a different species entirely- thus completely ruining a plant and wood source for the species trying to use it. Perhaps your nature magic can find a seed stuck in the enemy's fur and force it to root and grow backwards inside of them. As you can see elements are extremely dangerous things to be toying with.

I would imagine this is fairly specialized, like yeah, I can control fire, but I can also control intensity and color of light as well -Heat not so much. Game-wis there will be branching ability trees for each element, so that each element isn't strictly offensive or defensive, but could be played any way you decide to for that chsracter, so you will train with your element to influence it's powers and ability.

4. There's a will there's a way. In the same vein as having loose interpretations of a single element, these can be manipulated to beat 'type advantages'. Yes, a fireball would destroy a plant, however some plants are naturally fire resistant! Yes, a wall of water might not do much to a nature users' trees, but saltwater or otherwise extremely cold water would definitely cause lasting damage. Fire might be extinguished from water, but some flames can burn so hot it'll convert the water to steam instantly, or like lava, just turn it into rock. Where the user lives, what's available around them, and their own skills influence these advantages and weaknesses.

You had a lot of really great questions I enjoyed answering these! Also I apologize for any misspellings mobile tends to rly suck when it comes to legibility