#as in do ALL moonshadow elves share at least some qualities of the moon association? because like

[kradogsrats]

Can humans connect to all primal sources while elves can connect to only one?

Well, let's look at the combined evidence:

Callum has connected to two primal sources, and they've been kind of arbitrary. Like presumably if he'd started with a Sun primal stone, he would have first connected to the Sun, since him having that primal stone experience is a not really insignificant part of him connecting to the Sky primal. When he connects to the Ocean primal, it's explicit that he has been focusing on it for a while, but I don't remember him expressing why he chose Ocean over others. Basically, I don't think there's anything preventing a human from connecting to any individual primal source.

We have never been told that elves cannot connect to multiple primal sources, only that they are naturally connected to one, and humans are naturally connected to zero. We were told that humans cannot connect to even a single primal source, but that was factually incorrect both past and present.

However, we have seen exactly one character in any canon material who is connected to multiple primal sources, and that's Aaravos. Startouch elves are pretty clearly something... else, so he's not really a representative sample of "elves."

Actually, in canon material, there are also very few magical artifacts that combine magic from multiple primal sources, and no known multi-source spells.

After Callum connects to a second primal, Rayla's reaction is lighthearted joking. Granted, there's a lot going on at the time, and she's the last person who would doubt Callum's ability to do the impossible, but I would expect her to acknowledge if that was something that no elf primal mage has ever done before.

Pyrda, one of the suggested player characters from Tales of Xadia (who are heavily implied to all be "canon" characters), is a Skywing elf mage "eager to experience a wider variety of primal sources" and who "believes her destiny lies in preserving the balance of magic." This could mean that her goal is to connect to other primal sources and learn their magic, or it could just be to study them and see other mages use them (or maybe someday try them herself with a primal stone). On her starting character sheet, she only has access to Sky magic.

The Tales of Xadia rules explicitly state that only human characters can be dark mages and only elves can be primal/rune mages, when discussing the character vocation—which is part of the character's background, describing essentially their career focus (i.e. are they a cook, a guard, a sailor, a mage, etc.). However, it doesn't say anywhere that vocations can't be changed as part of the character growth process, since character growth can include adding new distinctions and vocations are a type of distinction. Additionally, the actual mechanics of magic are based on a combination of a magical specialty and spell assets—for example, Pyrda has a Sky magic specialty and a Sky magic spells asset with two spells specified. Specialties and assets are also things that can be added via character growth, and there's nothing anywhere that says you can't add a Sky magic specialty to your human or other elf character.

And the Tales of Xadia rules have to accommodate Callum, because he literally has his own character sheet in there as an NPC catalyst. His vocation is "aspiring rune mage" and he has a Sky magic specialty and a Sky magic spells asset. The Tales of Xadia rulebook is pinned between s3 and s4, timeline-wise, so that's Callum at the end of s3 (his spells asset includes Manus Pluma Volantus). If a game started at the beginning of s1 with Callum as a player character, I would expect that his character sheet would undergo a few key shifts at moments of magic-related character growth: gaining the Sky primal stone as an asset, losing the primal stone as an asset but gaining the "aspiring rune mage" vocation, gaining the Sky magic specialty and initial Sky magic spells asset (with Aspiro and Fulminis), and finally improving the Sky magic spells asset with the addition of Manus Pluma Volantus.

Personally, I take the ToX rules as more suggestions about canon than necessarily 100% accurate reflections of it, because designing balanced game mechanics is very different from general worldbuilding. Also, ToX is very much written in a "do whatever the hell you want" way, strongly encouraging storytellers and players to expand or ignore things at their discretion.

Anyway, my belief is that elves can connect to multiple primal sources, just as humans can, but it's extremely rare. Elves are born with a connection to a primal source that they innately understand, and it's much easier and more worthwhile to focus on strengthening that connection than trying to establish another. (I also think it's harder for elves to connect to a second primal source than it is for humans to connect to a first one.)

Like, ignoring the whole discussion of talent versus practice, say you're a natural athlete—you're just good at any sport you try. You could pick one and with a reasonable amount of effort be Olympic-level good. At the same time, you're a really bad artist. It's not something you ever focused on, and maybe you're not a very visual person to begin with. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from working incredibly hard on being an artist, and you'd probably be able to get as good or better than someone who naturally has the qualities that make them good at art—but you still may never catch up to someone who has those qualities and has put in the same amount of effort as you have. Same thing in reverse—a naturally gifted artist who's uncoordinated and not very physical can train to become an athlete, and can conceivably become a good athlete (maybe not Olympic-level, but good). It's just... not a lot of people do that, because we generally like doing things we're good at and that are easy more than doing things we're not good at and that are hard.

There also don't really seem to be a lot of scenarios where an elf would be pressured by their community to focus on another primal source (the way that a child here in real life might be pressured by their family to be good at sports or math rather than art, or vice versa depending on their family makeup). We know... basically nothing about elf interbreeding, but it seems safe to assume that at least one parent would have a matching primal source connection with the child. Furthermore, most of the elf communities we've seen so far are very segregated, so you're just very unlikely to be part of one where you'd feel isolated because of your primal connection and pressured to pursue another. If you're a Moonshadow elf surrounded by other Moonshadow elves, and all the Moonshadow elf mages you know are Moon mages, and you're good at Moon magic because you have a Moon primal connection yourself... it just takes a pretty rare person to decide they want to be something completely different and put in the effort to actually make it happen.

I mean, heck, part of the reason Callum pursued his Sky primal connection so much was that he had experienced Sky magic and was good at it in a way that he didn't feel good about other activities. He could have stuck with his sword training and probably eventually gotten good at it (if he genuinely put in the effort rather than half-assing it because he's bad at it and hates it), but he didn't.

So basically I would say that yes, elves can connect to multiple primal sources, but it's a) hard, b) has few role models or societal pressures that encourage doing it, and c) most people just don't put that kind of effort into shit without quitting, whether because they're discouraged or because they have to do other things to survive.