Elemental Adepts have the ability to channel one of the Four Elements- Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Generally speaking, any given character can only channel one element.

Gaining the ability to channel an element costs 10 points for the level 1 elemental adept talent. It is possible to increase a characters’ adept level beyond 1, but not at character creation.

Each adept gains three basic powers just for having an Adept Talent. Each power takes a concentration action and a fatigue point to activate, and the talents typically scale with Talent level. The Focus talents do not scale with talent level, but can be used to increase an attribute up to three times by taking consecutive focus actions. 

example: Earthbob the Fire adept can increase his HT score by +2 by taking a concentrate maneuver and spending 1 FP. The next round, he can do it again, and then again a third time. At this point, Earthbob has +6 HT, and that bonus will last one minute. Before that minute expires, a single concentrate manuever will renew the +6 HT bonus for another minute at the cost of 1 FP.

Adepts can also take other advantages that fit thematically with their elemental power, with a 10% discount due to the power source (a common GURPS pattern).

example: Tanglesteve the Air adept can fly. He has the Flight advantage with the Air Adept Power discount, for a total of 36 points. The power works fine most of the time, but if Tanglesteve encounters someone who can suppress air powers, his ability to fly will also be suppressed.

Adepts who don’t want to buy advantages with character points can instead purchase runes from runesmiths that emulate advantages and magical spells. Those runes need to be empowered and activated each time they are used.

example: Grunk the Water Adept wants to be able to breathe underwater. Rather than buying the Doesn’t Breathe (Gills) advantage for 8 points, he could pay a runesmith to tattoo him with a water breathing rune. He can charge and activate it himself, and the duration of the water breathing effect depends on the skill of the runesmith.

Runes that affect a person generally have to be on the skin of the person - they can be temporarily inscribed or tattooed. Runes can also be written on paper or carved into objects, if they have outward-facing effects.

example: While Earthbob the fire adept could just spend 1 FP and fling a 1d fireball at his foes, he really wants to do more damage, and possibly with less FP cost. He hires a fancy-pants runesmith to make him a wand of explosive fireballs of doom. The runesmith, being a level 4 talent with a number of skills, is able to craft him a wand that can fling explosive fireballs that do 4d points of damage. Each time Earthbob wishes to use the wand, he must charge it (a concentrate maneuver and 1 FP), and then activate it (another concentrate maneuver). When activating, he rolls against his Fire Rune skill. If he succeeds, the rune remains charged and does not need to be recharged again (saving FP). On a critical failure, Earthbob has damaged the wand and needs to have it fixed before he can use it again. Sorry, Earthbob!

Runes must be charged before use, which requires a concentrate manuever and 1 FP. Activating a rune requires the appropriate elemental rune skill, which is IQ-VH and defaults to IQ-5. The elemental rune skills all require either the linked Elemental Adept talent OR the Runesmith talent. In both cases, the user’s talent level is added as a bonus to rune skill checks.

A level 1 rune (inscribed by a level 1 runesmith) is relatively inexpensive - either 50 farthings for a paper rune or 100 for a rune carved in wood/stone or a tattoo. Higher level runes written on paper typically cost 5 * 10^L, and more permanent runes cost twice that. At the start of the game, nobody can buy runes that are higher than level 1, as high-level runes are fairly rare.

Some runes (noted in the rune description, and these are runes which are hard to create) can be activated by anybody, or are continuous, requiring no activation. Those tend to be boring.

Finally, Blue Quartz can be used as a source of energy for fuelling Runes. If properly attached to a rune, Blue Quartz can contain FP energy that will serve as a battery, allowing a rune to hold more than 1 FP of charge, effectively at least.

The Improbable is the earliest example of this technology, and has a storage capacity of 40 FP tied to the runic power network that keeps it in the air. It can hold any mixture of elemental power (20 units of fire, 10 of water, 5 each of air and earth, or some other combination), and can be charged or discharged as needed.

Specific rune activation sequence
Air powers and runes
Earth powers and runes
Fire powers and runes
Water powers and runes