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[Unofficial Lore] Crystalarium: A Brief History of Crystals


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Crystalarium: A Brief History of Crystals

 

Crystals! What better place to learn about crystals than the Crystal Empire? Hello! My name is Lucky Lustre and I am an arcanomineralogist and mineralogist. That is someone who studies both magical and mundane minerals and their myriad number of uses! I hope you will forgive this mare’s rambling as I try to teach you a little bit about the more magical gems and minerals that you may stumble upon in this wonderful world of ours! Most ponies are aware of your typical gemstones or crystals such as rubies, sapphires, pearls, or quartz. But how many of you know of Thaumite? Magicite? I won’t belittle your intellect by saying ‘I bet not many!’, but for those who haven’t I’ll do my best to enlighten you on three of the most important ones!

 

First we will be discussing one of the most versatile crystals known to ponykind: Thaumite! Thaumite is a fascinating crystal comprised almost entirely of crystallized magic. Scholars and arcanomineralogists such as myself are left a little stumped on the origins of this crystal, but the common belief is that the core of our planet is comprised of a type of magic and that thousands and thousands of years ago, the magic in this core was much much stronger than it is today. That this magical force rolled through the hills and mountains of the world before it finally settled down beneath the surface. This theory is somewhat supported by the existence of leylines, streams of strong magic that flow below the surface of the earth.

 

When this magic seeps up through the stones and reaches the air, it can sometimes crystallize. Thaumite, much like the magical aura of various ponies, can come in a wide array of colours and shapes. Some even come up as multi-coloured! A number of different things can affect the colouration of Thaumite, the most common among them being what spells are most often cast nearest to the source of the crystals. For example, if an outcropping of Thaumite were to sprout up near a village where a majority of the unicorns living there were practitioners of Fire magics, they would come out as bright and vivid reds and orange with the occasional blue and whites, and be shaped akin to flames. Whereas if the villagers practiced Water magics, they would be shaped like droplets or cresting waves and be the colour of the oceans or seafoam.

 

Thaumite is a very magically conductive crystal and is often the basis for your day to day thaum-batteries that power a wide variety of household magitech! A well made thaum-battery supplied with the right power can last upwards to twenty years without needing to be recharged or replaced. Larger chunks of thaumite are sometimes used in airships or military vessels, be it was weaponry or to power lighting or air supplies or the like.

 

But magic powered batteries isn’t all that Thaumite is good for! Far from it! In places like Neighpon’s Polohama Dome, home of the famous Golem Battles, Golem Trainers use various rune-etched elemental Thaumite to enhance the abilities of their Golem! Though usually at the cost of another, for example strength costs speed whereas magic capacity could cost strength and so on and so on. Also in Polohama and a few of Neighpon’s larger cities, you’ll find bright neon or holographic signs, also powered by Thaumite! Some ingenious potion makers can even grind down chunks of Thaumite to create brews that restore magical energies! Each day ponies are pushing the limits of what Thaumite can do in new and fascinating ways!


 

The second crystal we’ll be looking at today is Magicite! Magicite is a pony made crystal of very similar nature to Thaumite. By focusing the magic of a spell in a certain way where the aether of the spell becomes exceedingly thick, the spell can be made to crystallize in a way much like its natural counterpart! Magicite can be used in many of the same ways that Thaumite can, but with a few caveats! While it can be used as a battery, it has only half the life expectancy of Thaumite and needs to be replaced or recharged somewhere between every five to ten years, and specifically with a spell similar to its creation, or else it could shatter. When used for Golems, its benefits are much stronger, but so too are its downsides, and thus a professional Golem Trainer must often weigh the pros and cons of Magicite over Thaumite very carefully.

 

Most ponies prefer Thaumite over Magicite for those various reasons, but this isn’t to say that Magicite is any lesser of a crystal or that its uses are limited. One of Magicite’s excellent uses is as a Spell Catalyst. Let me give you an example. Two unicorns are going to duel, they challenge each other to use the same specific spell, a fireball. They both create staves to help empower their spell further! One makes a staff with an orb of Thaumite, the other crystallizes his fireball spell into a crystal of Magicite. When the time for the duel comes, the one with the Thaumite staff holds their own very well until the one with the Magicite staff completely blows them away! Why is this you may ask?

 

Thaumite can hold and use magic wonderfully. It makes for great spell storage for charms or staves it’s true. But the advantage of using Magicite specifically is, when used as a spell conduit for the same spell that created it, the Magicite can amplify the power or range or what have you of the spell by up to tenfold! While Thaumite may beat it out in the sheer number of uses, Magicite clearly has it specific advantages over it!

 

A third in this trio of magical crystals exists, but is not only far less common, but much less practical for day to day use: Aetherite. Aetherite could be called the ‘pure’ form of Thaumite. Found deep, deep underground very close to leylines, Aetherite is a much more highly concentrated crystallization of magic. Where Thaumite has time to filter, so to speak, through the ground, Aetherite contains much more aether within itself than its counterparts. Such a high concentration of magic isn’t very practical for things like thaum-batteries or Golem cores or the like.

 

Aetherite reacts much more quickly and often much more violently when used. Spells contained within them and then unleashed are extremely powerful, but in most cases cause the Aetherite to shatter after one use. More often than not, Aetherite isn’t used for anything except in extreme cases where you need a high volume of power or destruction. Some mining companies use Aetheric TNT in their mining operations. Never for Thaumite though, as Aetherite explosions create a chain reaction in Thaumite, causing it to violently erupt as well if caught in the blast.



 

Now with all the stress and strain a lot of these crystals come under, a lot of you may be wondering what happens when one of them inevitably breaks. Just as each of the crystals have their unique uses, each has their own reaction to structural damage.

 

Thaumite is the safest amongst them, when a Thaumite crystal is damaged, the magic just slowly leaks out of the crystal in a relatively harmless fashion, sometimes causing mild magical malfunctions such as changing colours of things near by, small and short lived fires, or other things based on what sort of magic was contained in them. If broken outright it does the same but in a large burst as well. Now don’t you worry about a thing though! Most every one of your household objects that holds a Thaum-battery is well insulated, and should a crystal break or crack, the magic will be safely contained inside the battery’s shell without any damage to you or your property. Unless you’ve tampered with it of course. And Golem Cores are MUCH more well protected, and thus pose even less of a threat.

 

Magicite has a much more volatile reaction when damaged. Being made from specific magic, the spell used will quite literally ‘continue’ where it left off. But not just as it normally would. Each chunk of the crystal that’s formed will react and continue as it were an individual spell. So imagine a crystallized fireball suddenly breaking and now there’s about twenty of them zipping past your head! That was a fine mess I tell you. Just like Thaumite though, the conventional Magi-batteries or Golem Cores are well insulated and unless an extremely large crystal or an extremely powerful spell was used to create it, you have little to fear from damage to Magicite.

 

Aetherite on the other hoof is the one you need to watch out for. Most uses of Aetherite require it to detonate and cause swaths of damage, and this makes it extremely volatile and dangerous. A mistimed explosion of Aetherite has been the cause of many mining injuries and has likely cost many military manufactures exorbitant amounts of bits. The one thing keeping Aetherite from being almost entirely unusable is its toughness. On its own, Aetherite is very strong and one would be hard pressed to damage it with an average spell. In fact it would really just absorb the magic more than likely, and make itself stronger. No, to be able to really set off Aetherite one has to hit it in just the right spot. Most accidents caused by Aetherite came from the very...very unlucky.

 

I hope that this little lesson has sparked an interest in you! To go out and find even more information about these wonderful crystals. Or at the very least gave you a bit of a better understanding for them!

 

~Crystalarium

Lucky Lustre

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