Tried the same thing several more times -- rebooting, moving to a nearby square, etc, did not help. I had not changed my DEP setting since before the beta, and DEP errors were few & far between until recent updates (1.08.whichone?). Also, I had embued heroes earlier in the same game.
Gave up on that hero, but several turns later it happened on another one. Then I turned DEP off for Elemental, tried to imbue him again, and it just CTD-ed all by itself even without DEP.
crash zip file http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8928343/Elemental1_08-2010-09-19T19-59-28-750.zip
debug.err http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8928343/debug-again.err
save-game from just before it happens http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8928343/QuickSave%20again.EleSav -- try to imbue the loner next to the sovie & her stack. Also, in the same game there is a food resource in the middle the captured city of Exih. It only shows in the cloth-map, not zoomed-in, and I haven't been able to click on it to develop it. It was like that when I took it.