Have you ever wondered why we give such importance to gemstones?
They touch our minds. Gemstones are symbols of wealth, markers of high fashion, and icons of envy and greed. Great value is assigned to these stones regardless of their actual rarity. Their beauty encapsulates us. Watches and gowns, cars and technology: symbols of great prosperity alone to those who wield them, yet they are bedazzled all the same. Only this can elevate you. Bring your face to the limelight.
They touch our hearts. We associate gemstones with feelings of success and desire. We construct tools out of a rare few of them. We look to fiction and see examples of things that should be coveted: precious treasures to be plundered. Massive diamonds and glowing crystals are forlorn by those who own them as if the meaning of their very existence is to be wanted. Only this can make your dreams come true. Heal a broken heart.
They touch our souls. Historically, cultures have associated their shape, size, and colour with spiritual awakening. Vast theologies have been constructed to find a use for marvellous crystals, and maps have been charted of the body's gates and openings, signifying stones of all varieties as the bridge through which one can heal their entirety. Civilizations have always desired nourishment for the soul. Only this can fulfill the ultimate desire. Transcend mortality.
Gemstones are synonymous with high society, the rich and the monarchy, which is partially why they're so incredibly rare in Bromeilles.
A Measure in Abundance
If you were to acquire an enormous hammer and crack open the tallest mountains in Bromeilles, one would find a profound lack of gemstones. There would be a few, for sure—tucked away in amalgamate heaps, incoherent in placement and composition—but rarely enough to justify the dangers of excavation. This is because there are no gemstones in Bromeilles.
That's hyperbole.
But there really are fewurally-occurring gems on the continent! Not before The Storm Eternal and not in the four-hundred-odd years after the fact. Gisele De Roy argued that anything resembling a gemstone was swallowed before it could be pushed upward through the crust, a consequence of the continent's fractured state; The Magician Keryllion claims that it is simply the will of chaos. Luck functioning to its ultimate conclusion.
Of course, there are sources of fine stones in Bromeilles. The beauty of the high cities would suffer in status without them, nor would The Artisinal Schools have access to ripe new conduits.
They're called Tear Stones, and they fall from the sky.
Falling Stars
Records detailing the presence of tear stones have existed since before The Storm Eternal, with spottings noted in everything from Eldermen stories to cave drawings. The name 'Tear Stone' is a sanctioned nickname for the objects, tales claiming that the stone's design and the oddities of their condition are the results of The Moon's crying. Themselves indistinguishable from meteorites (also common sights in Bromeilles), tear stones are one of the few orbital objects visible through cloud cover.
One astronomist, Charles Billard, makes a note of a falling jewel in one of his premier journals:
"...Perspiring atop the observation post, it was not long—shortly after nightfall—until we first saw the object. Carving its way through the clouds like a blade through the skin, its silver streak was clearly visible, the head a glistening bolt of light. Its entire structure was clearly visible until a count of sixty-seven seconds, whereupon its tail was swallowed by the storm. Our guetteur measured flickering for an additional fourteen seconds, at which point it disappeared across the horizon..."
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Silverbolt, Savior's Told, Oh Beauty Can't You See?
"The Silence Of A Falling Star" by Randy Urban |
The 'tears' are, up-close, reminiscent of arthouse projects. Warped chunks of rock buffed and bleached by the upper atmosphere, momentarily turned to slag by the impact, with craters all throughout its surface. Gemstones are generally immediately visible at this stage. Similar to one you would blast out of the ground, they are fused to the rock and one another. Unrefined, they possess an otherworldly beauty.
Rarely longer than a metre, tear stones are at most 40% jewel and 60% rock.
Falls are uncommon affairs. A given night may have zero and a dozen unrelated events, with few tear stones throughout the night or several in quick succession. Unlike the meteoroids which share space with them, tear stones often make landfall far from civilization and are otherwise small enough to be redirected.
Artisinal Shapers will often report being offered bribes. Few will admit to actually taking them, but there is great wealth to be made in cultivating tear stones; no more organizations uninvolved with The Republic.
Strange Gems, Stranger Things
In addition to their inherent scarcity, the variety of jewels found in tear stones is abundant, with several dozen recognized stones in possession by The Republic.
Besides their aesthetic desires, several groups ranging from The Artisinal Schools to druidic sects expropriate certain gemstones because of their inferred supernatural abilities. Some may be important or necessary for a particular ritual or simply a valuable conduit for use during spell casting. In contrast, others whisper of innate magical talents within the stones. Such claims aren't entirely unfounded, and several expeditions have been funded by The Artisinal Schools and Covens alike to retrieve whole tear stones.
It is possible for Artisans to construct an artificial gemstone through the work of The Occult. Still, such a process is tedious and dangerous and usually lacks the innate tinge of magic in natural jewels. These jewels are still perfectly useable as conduits.
Truthfully, the word 'gemstone' is inaccurate compared to our world. Other materials such as bismuth and amethyst—a metal and crystal, respectively—are also available in tear stones and are referred to colloquially as gemstones. This doesn't mean that the materials themselves aren't also classified into their respective categories or that these materials don't possess some unnatural qualities of note, but that Bromeillan understanding of the term 'gemstone' is founded mainly on the phenomenon of tear stones.
This also doesn't mean there aren't gemstones already in the ground. There are, and plenty are the result of long-forgotten tear stones finally unearthed. The occasional "natural" gem is also findable within the continent's crust, though they are few and far between, and hardly possess any of the extraordinary qualities of their cousins.
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