Ink and watercolour plate of rift crystals: a tall double-pointed blue crystal with a bright vein, a cluster of violet and blue crystals on a lump of rock, and a broken crystal spilling sand like an hourglass.
Illuminated plate

History

Rift Crystals

Volatile crystals that grow around corrupted Rifts: potent sources of power for spells and airships alike.

  • The Goblin Invasion

Description

Crystals often form around corrupted Rifts. They are excellent sources of power for spells, but volatile: it takes great skill or recklessness to use them, and a large one is dangerous even when it holds no spell at all. Some yield to only one element at a time, betrayed by their colour.

A related mineral, the same stuff as hourglass sand, forms the time crystals; broken open, they restore a time traveller's hold on their timeline.

Historical context

During the goblin invasion the invaders harvested crystals from the corrupted Rift in the Healand Mines and used them to power their airships. A vast, warped crystal in the Pinewood ruins left the town seemingly lifeless until the stranger shattered it, although Aurelius conceded afterwards that studying it first might have been wiser. In the mines, crystals fitted to old mortars channelled the stranger's lightning into a far more powerful blast.