Gems

Amber

Malleability	C
Hardness	E
Sharpness	E
Magical Conductivity	D
Enchanting Difficulty	E
Elemental Affinity	Wood; Water; Druidry; Elementalism

Quartz

Malleability	C
Hardness	C
Sharpness	B
Magical Conductivity	C
Enchanting Difficulty	D
Elemental Affinity	Earth; Fire; Elementalism

Onyx

Malleability	D
Hardness	C
Sharpness	B
Magical Conductivity	A
Enchanting Difficulty	D
Elemental Affinity	Fire; Earth; Elementalism

Jade

Malleability	E
Hardness	B
Sharpness	C
Magical Conductivity	E
Enchanting Difficulty	C
Elemental Affinity	Water; Earth; Elementalism

Malachite

Malleability	A+
Hardness	B
Sharpness	B
Magical Conductivity	B
Enchanting Difficulty	C
Elemental Affinity	Earth; Blight; Sorcery; Elementalism

Diamond

File:Diamond.npg
Malleability	E
Hardness	A
Sharpness	A
Magical Conductivity	D
Enchanting Difficulty	B
Magical Affinity	Blood; Fire; Sorcery; Elementalism

Fairy Tear

Malleability	A
Hardness	B
Sharpness	S
Magical Conductivity	C
Enchanting Difficulty	S
Magical Affinity	True Potential Unknown.

Void Diamond

File:Voiddiamond
Malleability	E
Hardness	S
Sharpness	A+
Magical Conductivity	A
Enchanting Difficulty	S
Magical Affinity	True Potential Unknown.

Bloodthorn

Malleability	C
Hardness	B
Sharpness	S
Magical Conductivity	C
Enchanting Difficulty	A
Magical Affinity	True Potential Unknown.

Hello! If you're reading this, it means I'm writing a book. How exciting! Well, let's begin with a simple introductory paragraph. Ahem. I am Tikale, a wildkin. I'm new to this whole thing, but whatever, right? We all start somewhere. Anyways, in this book what you'll be reading are my interactions with quartz, amber, onyx, diamond, etc, etc. It'll be boring, probably. The fact you're reading this is evidence enough it will be. Anyways, let's begin. So, like a lot of you, my parents first came here to settle elsewhere, though a bit earlier than you lot, I think. My father was an older man, probably in his forties. Hardy old bastard, though I barely remember him beyond his smile, and my mother cursed like a sailor. As my Da tells it, The Physician as most folks done know him, our caravan gets destroyed.
It sucks, but I barely remember it myself. He found me in the snow, and since then we been pretty inseparable. He wears this elk mask all the time, but he's not that inscrutable. He's..he's a good man, and a greater dad. I couldn't have done half the stuff I done did without his support. So this is partly dedicated to his old butt, partly because people are always confused about gemstones or stuff. I won't be too pedantic here. I'm just a dumb idiot after all, but I wanted to produce something before he or I croaked.
Now, the important stuff. Gemstones. So, you have your basic gemstones, right? Quartz, Onyx, Jade, Amber. Then you got your uncommon one's, Diamond and Malachite. Then finally, you got the big one's. you have Void Diamonds, Fairy Tears, and Bloodthorns. These are the one's we're going to focus on in this book. The basic premise is. The following pages are fairly boring technical aspects of what gemstones are and the general thesis of the book, which is simply, 'What are gemstones, really?'

Common Gemstones

Amber

Hello! If you're reading this, it means I'm writing a book. How exciting! Well, let's begin with a simple introductory paragraph. Ahem. I am Tikale, a wildkin. I'm new to this whole thing, but whatever, right? We all start somewhere. Anyways, in this book what you'll be reading are my interactions with quartz, amber, onyx, diamond, etc, etc. It'll be boring, probably. The fact you're reading this is evidence enough it will be. Anyways, let's begin. So, like a lot of you, my parents first came here to settle elsewhere, though a bit earlier than you lot, I think. My father was an older man, probably in his forties. Hardy old bastard, though I barely remember him beyond his smile, and my mother cursed like a sailor. As my Da tells it, The Physician as most folks done know him, our caravan gets destroyed. It sucks, but I barely remember it myself. He found me in the snow, and since then we been pretty inseparable. He wears this elk mask all the time, but he's not that inscrutable. He's..he's a good man, and a greater dad. I couldn't have done half the stuff I done did without his support. So this is partly dedicated to his old butt, partly because people are always confused about gemstones or stuff. I won't be too pedantic here. I'm just a dumb idiot after all, but I wanted to produce something before he or I croaked. Now, the important stuff. Gemstones. So, you have your basic gemstones, right? Quartz, Onyx, Jade, Amber. Then you got your uncommon one's, Diamond and Malachite. Then finally, you got the big one's. you have Void Diamonds, Fairy Tears, and Bloodthorns. These are the one's we're going to focus on in this book. The basic premise is. The following pages are fairly boring technical aspects of what gemstones are and the general thesis of the book, which is simply, 'What are gemstones, really?'

Quartz

Then, you have Quartz crystals. What you don't know is that quartz actually are a combination of different types of crystalline structures. So, we'll start with the basics here. There's two ways quartz are formed. Firstly, molten magma. That's right. The eruption of the Caldera creates some of these things! Spirits preserve us. So, basically, you'd have to understand magma, right? Well, I'll tell you how. There's a lengthy discussion on the process of magma, lava, etc. Now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the meat of it. So, Quartz. You have blue quartz, amethyst, rose, citrine, a diamond-like quartz -- do not mistake it for a diamond, I know it's confusing, but this is identified as a distinctly different process from diamond creation. Trust me -- and others. You can also find some quartz in ores and rock! Always be on the look out for them seams, you never know if you'll strike it (relatively) rich!

Onyx

Now, for Onyx, well, you're in luck. I touch a little on this in the previous entry, as it is a striking similar formation to quartz, but it has some extra stuff that changes it to this particular gemstone. With that out of the way, let's get to what makes this unique. What many people don't know is that Onyx is actually not always black. That's just the usual type. You also get coloration. Red, green, all kinds of unique colors can form. The key to seeing what actually is onyx is it's striation lines. They're parallel, and not all over the place like in agate quartz or the like.

Jade

Finally, we get to the green stuff. Jade. That's actually a misnomer, the green stuff. There's milky white jade, there's black jade -- once again, fall under the 'what does the line look like?' and you'll get your true answer. Jade's actually kind of formed in mineral seams and the like. You most likely noticed them upground? Well, that's due to Sarea's unique place in the cosmos. Congrats. We're fucked.

Uncommon Gemstones

Malachite

Malachite. Precious malachite.This one is kind of simple. It's like jade, but it's got a unique branding around it and is often found underground, in stalagite formations, in seams along where the water is hot -- not just hot springs hot, but boiling-your-skin hot! -- and is distinguished by this really whacky band around the rock. Pretty simple. You'll find these alongside copper deposits and around hot water frequently, sometimes infrequently elsewhere. The magic of our beautiful land never ceases to amaze, sometimes.

Diamond

Diamond. The beauty of the gemstones. Prettier than anything else on this list, and a girl's best friend. You've all seen diamond. You know what it looks like, the color, the shape, how weirdly hard it is. Would you guess that diamonds have actually been brought up to the surface by volcanic eruptions? Yes! That's right. That's why you can sometimes find them under Caldera or around on the surface, where high temperatures basically helped turn abunch of rock stuff into it. Wild. Anyways, people keep thinking this stuff is easy to break, but naw. You need special tools, you need magic, you need things that can cut into it. Don't fuck with diamonds unless you got the tools

Rare Gemstones

Fairy Tear

Fairy tears. Let's start with this gem. So, my theory is this. Let's actually consider for a moment, that this rare gemstone appears like the tear of what you'd consider fairies or 'fae.' You've seen Faerla around. I don't know anything about them, so I won't speculate too much, other than apparently they know more about the Faewild than we do, and we know this stuff comes from another plane, right? Well, here's my theory. It goes like this. So, with the encroachment of Faewild on the borders of Sarea, the boundaries between the world's are weak, so you get this stuff sometimes. My theory is that, since the boundary is weak in the Caldera, the stuff actually started forming some thousand years ago. The reason we haven't seen them in such quantities before is that they've only now started to form in the rock seam This isn't unique among gemstones, but what's odd about them is how light they are to the touch, how they seem to react on a pin's edge. Just by touch, you can tell how they'll aid you, but be mighty careful. The art of gemslotting allows us to mostly avoid this problem, because we get rid of all the impurities that it has -- and make no mistake, it's got a lot of impurities, a lot of fae fuckery. Sometimes you can see images swirling in the gemstone if you look hard enough. These little swirls are how you tell a true fairy tear from another fake one some merchants try to sell you on the market. It's not all that sharp, surprisingly, but it is endlessly malleable. You could probably make a gemstone sword out of it, in all honesty. It..practically begs you to make something out of it. It's like it wants a form, a function; and so it attends to its holder's will, in a way. What it does to a weapon is incredible, basically sharpening all of your senses to superfine points.
Be wary, friends. Do not dally around it for too long, lest you fall asleep and dream and endless dream, where the true Fae will catch you.

Void Diamond

Now, we'll move on to Void Diamonds. This one, I've got some more concrete ideas about. I think void diamonds form, well..largely like regular diamonds do, but during the process of crystalline formation and heat tempering, what happens is that void magic or creatures begin to form or take birth, beneath the Caldera, from the plane they come. As these creatures which the Spirits of Caldera have fought against time and again form, their magic 'leaks' into the surrounding area. What we know is, a thousand years ago the Spirits imprisoned them and some dude who was with them. That doesn't prevent leaks. In fact, imperfections are common among diamonds. These diamonds just happen to carry the corruption of the Void with them. Regular diamonds are hard as hell, so when these things appeared and increased that, it made one's job as a gemslotter insanely difficult. Anyways, my belief is that over those thousand years, Void magic corrupted the normal process to create diamonds, slowly turning what we know as those beautiful, spirit-given Diamond gemstones into these horrible amalgamations that thrum with a forbidden kind of power. Luckily, with some diamond cutting tools you can get at these rock seams with relative ease. The problem is, you do not want to handle these with pure hands. You want gloves, you want caution. Do not touch them.
They're corrupted. It takes hour of a craftsman's work with these things to shave off that corrupted essence and make gemstones that are hardy and able to deflect blows from weapon and magic alike. The gemslotted versions are basically like making imitation diamonds. Hard, difficult, incredibly time consuming, and ultimately give you the power without the corruption...mostly. There is a theory that this still gives off very minute amounts of corruption, but that the Spirits and energies around us slowly absorb that corruption overtime. It would likely take one a long, long time to get anywhere near corrupted through regular use, I reckon.

Bloodthorn

And finally, bloodthorn. Prickly little gemstone this is. It is sharp, possibly the sharpest thing on this list. Unfortunately, due to its nature, you should not make cutting tools out of it. It seems to just suck blood like those stories of the undead or whatever, and at an accelerated rate. My theories for this are, well..actually related to the void diamond. I think that the blood of those spirits who first fought the Void creatures actually started to mix with the earth and innate magical energies and overtime, started to form cry--bahaha I'm joking with you. Blood doesn't work like that. I think it's actually just crystalline structures that, honestly, started off like typical quartz. Heat treatment, boiling waters, and stalagmites that, over the years, were exposed to unique magical energies within the Caldera itself. I think the Caldera created these to arm its defenders, relating to my theory on how golems and elementals are formed. I believe that what occurs is, once magma has flowed from recent eruptions, the magma ends up turning the rock into obsidian -- that's what happens when magma goes over land, it creates obsidian-like rock, it's a whole thing, let's see...
A twenty page thesis on magma creation follows.
Anyways, once this rock has formed, essentially the Caldera's stalagtites and mites undergo a sort of mutation from years of undersea magma, drippings from the surface, and undergoes a unique crystallization process that actually involves...quartz. See, I think the crystallization process that quartz undergoes is actually how bloodthorn is formed, but somewhere along the line when the magma actually creates it, this crystallization process is interrupted by an eruption, and obsidian forms within it as its base. So what you get is actually a quartz gemstone that's undergone rapid mutation by the introduction of a new element. Thus why you see its red coloration, its heat treatment, and the black base-line. It's actually obsidian that has undergone a crystallization process!