Shardminds

“And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters.”

-- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion





The gemstone dancer performs with impeccable grace, his every move dazzling the crowd with refracted light. Within a cave of glowing quartz, crystalline guardians meditate on the secrets held by each facet. A lone figure struggles from a steaming crater, angular limbs still forming as she gathers newborn thoughts into a desperate warning.

Beauty From Disaster

It is a fact of magic known even to the layfolk that crystals have power. Precious stones are perfectly suited to absorbing the arcane energy that permeates the world, and the purest expression of this magic is the shardminds.

Intelligent and analytical, these gemfolk are born from disturbances in the magical weave; the aftershocks of divine intervention, magical disasters, and aberrant invasions. Such snarls literally crystallize in the material realm, forming a new shardmind.

Born fully-formed, and imbued with knowledge absorbed from the cosmos itself, new shardminds are well aware of the disaster that birthed them. While a few may choose to simply flee, most take it as a pre-destined purpose, a responsibility placed on their shoulders by the very cosmos.

Clear As Crystal

Shardminds are creatures of pure mentality. With no flesh separating thought from action, they behave under a reflexive, almost naive purity of logic, and many have trouble parsing metaphor or even dishonesty. Moreover, the gemfolk tend toward extremes of emotion. A shardmind that is needled by its companions will not get annoyed, but instead remains calm until it becomes genuinely enraged.

Though birthed by anomaly or disaster, shardminds are quick to seek meaning in everything. Many obsessively dedicate themselves to a specific field of study, convinced it holds deep truths. A shardmind always tries to seek explanations for the events around it, and if no reason can be found becomes dismissive or even angry.

Those shardminds who lose faith in the rational nature of events often seem depressed, focusing on abstract knowledge to insulate themselves from the world.

Diamonds Are Forever

Each shardmind is a construct of countless gems, bound into humanoid form by a nervous system of arcane force. Blind to hunger, thirst, or pain, they live at a remove from the physical: out-of-body experiences are common amongst shardminds. Though their wounds glow with leaking energy, short of violence a shardmind is utterly immortal.

While most shardminds are singular creatures created by unlikely accidents, cosmic events can create whole bands of shardminds, and older gemfolk often experiment with imbuing crystal with life of its own. Shardmind communities are small, and usually hidden in contemplative hermitage.

Hidden Gems

Shardmind adventurers are not as uncommon as their low numbers might suggest. A shardmind spawned by unusual circumstances is inevitably drawn to explore and understand the nature of its birth, and will soon find itself caught up in any adventure that results.

Older shardminds may still be driven by their birth, or simply seek to perfect their chosen art or science, exploring obscure styles and lore with the help of their comrades.

Still other shardminds may decide to leave a hidden commune, seeking to pursue a particular theory with data cultivated from outside. Of these, a few even become enamoured with a world of constant puzzles and paradox.

Shard Names

Shards are telepathic and clear-minded, and their names generally resemble distinct, chiming sounds. If translated into mortal tongues, they form a curious and sometimes clunky descriptor, often involving colour or some physical quality paired with a more abstract concept.

Those who join larger societies dominated by other races may pick up nicknames and titles, a process most shards welcome as an expansion on their original name.

Shardmind Names: Blunt Artisan, Caprice of Yellow, Emerald Tower, Furious Singer, Helpful Shadow, Instigator in Onyx, Kindly Sharpness, Perfected Blade, Quiet Canyon Blade, Seven Fires, Viridian Dice, Wheel of Blazing Light