The world of Gaya is a beautiful but dangerous place. Nominally, much of the world is ruled over by nations of various races -- adaptive Humes, magical Elves, skilful Dwarves, fearsome Orcs, diverse Beastkin, and the dexterous Alfanac. Other races exist, but they are small and often scattered minorities.
(A race unique to Gaya, Alfanac have no central homeland despite being a major race; instead mingling with the other races, primarily Humes, Elves and Beastkin. They are diminutive, about as tall as Dwarves but slender, resembling an anthropomorphic cross between cats and desert foxes, but with long rabbity ears.)
However, outside of their protected enclaves, the lands and seas are dominated by monsters. Some animal, some plant, many intelligent; all dangerous. Death and devourment are not the only fate they threaten the hapless with; many seek to expand their numbers through transformation. And daily they encroach on the settled lands.
Adventurer academies are the main source of trainees who strive to prevent these creatures from eradicating civilization and even push back into the darkness. Most graduates either join the local Adventurers Guild or Hunters Clan, or a local army; though some go solo. Ultimately many end up joining the monsters in the wilds; but some survive and become famous heroes -- or villains.
The Guilds and Clans are loosely organised into the world-wide Adventurers League, whose most noteworthy contribution is the ranking system. Missions and hunts are ranked from G to S based on projected difficulty, while adventurers themselves get a secondary sublevel to show their advancement within a rank from 10 to 1, so that adventurer ranks run from G-10 at the lowest to S-1 at the highest.
G-rank is used for students, apprentices and trainees and missions appropriate for them. An F-rank is a beginning adventurer, and A-rank is generally considered to be the best. S-rank is beyond the best; few S-rank heroes exist, and S-rank missions would be those threatening global catastrophe.
Fortunately there have not been any of those in many years. In fact an exciting new era is starting, with the invention of guns, steam engines and airships. True power however still rests with magic, drawn from the nine elements -- Fire, Water, Thunder/Lightning, Earth, Wind/Air, Ice, Light, Dark, and Passion -- and channeled through spells, tekhniques, and bonds with Guardian Spirits, magical beasts, or the land itself.
The first six are the basic elements, the building blocks of the world. They generally offer offensive and defensive spells, with a cycle of strengths and weaknesses against each other: Fire is strong against Ice, Ice against Wind, Wind against Earth, Earth against Thunder, Thunder against Water, and Water against Fire. With these elements, if an element is strong against another offensively, it is also resistant defensively; elements are also resistant to themselves.
(So for instance, a Fire attack would deal more damage against an Ice creature; and both Fire and Ice attacks would deal less to a Fire creature.)
The remaining elements are more spiritual; Light representing (roughly) positive forces of hope and healing, with spells focused around healing, protection and exorcising demons and the undead; Dark/Shadow representing negative emotions and death, as well as deceit, with a huge arsenal of spells relating to status ailments like Blind and Silence. Light and Dark are both strong against each other.
Passion represents emotion, sex and the raw vital energy of Life itself, its spells overlapping a bit with both Light and Dark as it offers healing and status magicks. It is also the basis for animal communication and transformation. But it is most heavily associated with lust and fertility. It has no strengths or weaknesses versus the other elements.
Spells are generally the most powerful and direct -- and flashy -- way of calling on the elements; they are the purview of Mages and to a lesser extent hybrid classes (e.g. the Magic Knight). Tekhniques are para-magic skills utilised by all job classes. Similar to them, but much more powerful, is the Soul Release: a powerful ability unique to an individual that drains one's energy and is used as a last resort; adventurers typically only develop a few of these ultimate expressions of their potential in their lifetimes.
Most adventurer academies offer only training in a few job classes. However, the more prestigious, such as the great Rosehill Academy in Merria, offer every job class, even the most exotic -- as well as education in reading, writing, arithmetic and other basic skills. A list of the job classes offered at Rosehill: