[RPM] Gem Lore, Lapidaries and Precious Stones as Traditional Trappings

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I don't know about "well written" but the standards for this seem to be George Frederick Kunz _The Curious Lore of Precious Stones_ (a 19th century work that Dover keeps in print) and Scott Cunningham _Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem and Metal Magic_ (a more modern work aimed at the Wiccan community).

But keep in mind that premodern gems are basically classified only by color and transparency, so the meanings assigned will typically be the same as the meanings assigned to the color in the same tradition, and the overlap with modern conceptions of what gems are which may not be very good.

Right, Cunningham was available in Kindle form and I'm in the process of learning modern stone magic.

I suppose I'll have diamonds be magical enhancers in general. Diamonds are different from other precious stones in being a highly unusual form of a pure element, which is also the element that makes up all life. Diamonds can be associated with projective energies or receiptive ones, depending on what we choose to emphasise. They're forged in fire and look and feel like ice.

Diamonds are colourless. Diamonds are all colours. Diamonds are life, the building blocs of it encased in crystalline matrix. Diamonds are death, composed of dead bodies buried for untold aeons and burned until none of the processes of life are possible any more.

Diamonds store, focus and enhance magical energies. They are batteries for mystical workings and whether good or evil depends on the flavour of the energies collected.

Sound about right?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Sound about right?

Sounds about the best reasoning I ever heard.
Most sources are primarily based on color alone.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Sounds about the best reasoning I ever heard.
Most sources are primarily based on color alone.

Well, feature 34 gigantic diamonds that are fairly glowing with arcane energy, and you'll find yourself having to justify a lot.

Like where they came from and how they work. Not to mention what they were actually meant to be used for, because the PCs, even in their most narcissist moods, don't really believe that what might be over $100 million in magical tools was meant to be used against them, by some cult they've never heard of. One villainous caster did start to draw on the diamonds, but only after they'd invaded the Bad Place where he kept his spellcasting sanctum, and he even apologized to his sacrifice/victim that this was not how it was supposed to go.

As best the PCs can tell, such a concentration of magical energy must have been intended for an absolutely huge ritual, the sort you'd perform at a carefully chosen place and time to maximize your potential bonuses. And, well, it's currently the 28th of December in play. Midnight on New Year's Eve sounds like a pretty good time to cast any ritual that brings in something from Outside, like the villainous occultist tried to do with his panicked drawing on the gemstones.

[lwcamp]

How do artificial gems work? I mean, you can pull a flawless ruby crystal the size of a trash can out of a melt of aluminum oxide and a bit of chromium. We can even produce artificial diamonds using carbon vapor deposition; this is more challenging, but 10 carat cut diamond gems have been made from synthetic stock and the upper limit is only going to grow as interest in bulk diamond for industrial applications grows.

Luke

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

How do artificial gems work? I mean, you can pull a flawless ruby crystal the size of a trash can out of a melt of aluminum oxide and a bit of chromium. We can even produce artificial diamonds using carbon vapor deposition; this is more challenging, but 10 carat cut diamond gems have been made from synthetic stock and the upper limit is only going to grow as interest in bulk diamond for industrial applications grows.

Luke

They don't, obviously.

They might be able to hold magical energy the way any ordinary Charm object might, but mystical potency is strongly correlated with whatever intangibles that cause humans to value certain stones far above others.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Icelander

They might be able to hold magical energy the way any ordinary Charm object might, but mystical potency is strongly correlated with whatever intangibles that cause humans to value certain stones far above others.

So what happens if a fake, manufactured gem is passed off as real, and believed to be so?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

So what happens if a fake, manufactured gem is passed off as real, and believed to be so?

Either something anti-climactic, when the gem fails to produce any effect, or something very dramatic, if, say, massive amounts of magic energy are focused through it and the inauthentic stone proves utterly unable to handle even a fraction of that power, exploding into a terrible magical botch and/or razor sharp shards of manufactured diamond.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Icelander

... but mystical potency is strongly correlated with whatever intangibles that cause humans to value certain stones far above others.

We might have misinterpreted this to mean that human belief in a stone's value is what imbues it with power, when you meant that a real gem's intangible qualities is what gives it both magical power and high human regard?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

We might have misinterpreted this to mean that human belief in a stone's value is what imbues it with power, when you meant that a real gem's intangible qualities is what gives it both magical power and high human regard?

Yes?

Honestly, from the perspective of thaumatological theorists in the setting, how would one know the difference?

Magical effects are persistently not replicable in a scientific context. Any kind of instruments meant to collect data on magical processes or objects tend to interfere with whether magic does anything all.

There are occultists who deny entirely the hypothesis that human belief has anything to do with preternatural phenomena. Any correlation between human belief and the shapes of supernatural beings, rules of magic, etc., they chalk up to magic in previous eras having shaped human expectations and legends.

Basically, when magic seems to actively resist scientific measurement and analysis, it's really hard to separate the personal prejudices and peccadilloes of occultists from their theories about how magic works.