More about gems

[ccstat he/him]

I've been reading some of the other threads on gemstone economics and properties. They have sparked a few intriguing questions for me about the world and magic.

 

First question: Do all gemstones on Roshar come from gemhearts? 

I didn't think so at first, but I can't recall any mention in TWoK of mining gems. The Davar quarries are for marble. It could be that all gems are harvested from large chulls or other large animals. Extant big gems may be "left-overs" from the greatshells of past generations (thought to be extinct after Aimia was razed).

We know from WoB that gemhearts are a sort of leak from the spiritual realm into the physical. Given that, I might go so far as to suggest that even if a gem were mined out of the rock on Roshar, it would not hold stormlight the same way that gemheart-sourced gems do. 

 

Second question: Are gemstones immune to soulcasting?

Large gemstones are extremely valuable, yet (as far as we know) nobody has ever created them via soulcasting. If they are the same kind of minerals we find on earth, that makes them essentially rocks. That means soulcasting them should be possible using Topaz, associated with the essence of rock/stone. Amethyst could handle any trace metals for color, and diamond could do quartz/glass/crystal. In combination that should be all the qualities of every gem. Even if the fabrial soulcasters can't do it, I doubt the chemistry of the transformation is beyond a talented surgebinder. So why don't we see boulder-sized emeralds/diamonds/whatever? Such gems would be invaluable for storing huge amounts of stormlight*, or simply for getting rich (disregarding inflation). If the Davars tried this with marble, surely someone else would have thought of it using gems.

That leads me to conclude that there is something special about gemstones magically that prevents them from being soulcast. And it can't just be the ones infused with stormlight at the time, though I'm sure that's a factor. So it makes sense to say soulcasting cannot create gems from other materials, nor interconvert from one gem type to another. (Nor, presumably, turn gems into anything else, though I'm less sure of that interpretation. It may be the destination material that matters more than the source.)

 

*Yes, I know that the cut rather than the size of gem may correlate to total stormlight capacity, but if you cut said giant gem into a bunch of little ones, you could get the same effect.

[Arook he/him]

Just a thought to add there are other smaller animal that have gem hearts too just not huge ones.

 

 

 

 

*Yes, I know that the cut rather than the size of gem may correlate to total stormlight capacity, but if you cut said giant gem into a bunch of little ones, you could get the same effect.

Size matters a great deal for soul casting in that the bigger the gem the less likely it is to break. Also to cut a gem into smaller parts you would have a loss of material, there for less stormlight could be held. 

 

One thing to also factor in is are gem hearts flawless or do they need to be cut down to remove flaws before they can hold stormlight?

[DocHoliday he/him]

It is stated, by Dalinar I believe, that gemstones cannot be Soulcast for some reason.

Going off the idea that gems are rocks, it SHOULD be possible.

So . Perhaps your idea about gemstones= gemhearts might have merit.

[Kier he/him]

Its actually shallan second chapter of part 3. She is talking about soulcasting jade opal and marble for her family and mentions that you can't soulcast gems, that was said to be impossible.

[Natans he/him]

It's possible to soulcast onix too.Like in the Dalinar Pure Lake Vision.

[DocHoliday he/him]

Its actually shallan second chapter of part 3. She is talking about soulcasting jade opal and marble for her family and mentions that you can't soulcast gems, that was said to be impossible.

Ah, TY for the correction.

[name_here]

Well, obviously if gems could be Soulcast at a profit, which seems like it would otherwise be plausible in light of what we see done, Roshar could create an unbounded number of gems, potentially allowing them to capture effectively unlimited Stormlight and create a post-scarcity economy where everyone gets everything they want. Out-of-universe, it's pretty difficult to tell a recognizable story in such a setting. In-universe, the explaination is probably that the Stormlight has to come from one or more Shards, and letting the gemstone supply get out of hand could drain them badly enough for the other Shards to kill them. So they locked out making gems with Soulcasting. I think the lockout actually implies that the gems are actually ordinary aside from the nature of their creation, since otherwise I don't see why people couldn't Soulcast gems that wouldn't hold a charge. If it's a simple hard lock you could probably make the components and then synthesize a gem with that, but that's a fairly difficult process Roshar probably can't manage at the moment. I guess hypothetically you could sequentially Soulcast separate components into place, but instead of focusing on the whole object changing into what you want you'd have to place something like 10^20 impurities in the correct place to get a kilogram of ruby. That's not happening.

 

Not being able to mine gems, combined with the extinction of other Greatshell types, would have caused deflation prior to the hunting of Chasmfiends. No one comments on this happening, but then again our viewpoint characters aren't economists and mostly can't read, and the prior major extinction was performed by Dalinar and friends, so they might not have noticed before the Chasmfiends were found.

[ccstat he/him]

Its actually shallan second chapter of part 3. She is talking about soulcasting jade opal and marble for her family and mentions that you can't soulcast gems, that was said to be impossible.

Thanks for the reference, I was having trouble finding that.

 

It's still ambiguous whether there are non-gemheart gems to be mined, but the context of that quote suggests that maybe they do exist?  She's talking about making fake marble deposits to mine and says you can't make a fake gem deposit, possibly implying that one might expect to find gem deposits in the ground....

I'm not convinced either way. I would like the gemheart-only idea to be true because it would fit well with the magic system and have additional cool implications, but I can't talk myself into either position yet.

[Gloom he/him]

I'm certain that gems can be mined, I don't have any evidence except that they are a natural part of the formation of a planet. That being said, Roshar has little to no tectonic activity, so gem mines may be quite rare.

[The Count he/him]

@Natans: Should probably put Spoiler tags on that as we are in the SA forum, not the WoR.

 

As for Gems, I do not think that all gems come from Gemhearts, just that Gemhearts are especially big and are flawless.

 

If gems only came from creatures, then I think the Alethi would be MUCH more voracious in hunting and killing creatures for wealth rather than sport.

 

I think gems must also come out of the ground just like on earth.

[hoser he/him]

OK, I get why they can't soulcast gems to keep the stormlight a limited resource.  With animals growing gemhearts it could still be a growing resource. 

 

Another fix would be to have the amount of stormlight trapped per highstorm diminish as the supply of gems increases. 

 

Can Elantrans transmute matter into gems?  I could see a quite useful trade setup if the Rosharians have anything the Elantrans want.  It must be really hard to buy Christmas presents for an Elantran. 

[name_here]

OK, I get why they can't soulcast gems to keep the stormlight a limited resource.  With animals growing gemhearts it could still be a growing resource. 

 

Another fix would be to have the amount of stormlight trapped per highstorm diminish as the supply of gems increases.

 

Well, gems used in high-drain applications shatter and become useless, so they leave circulation. And getting gemhearts from animals is going to be a logistic function under the best practically achievable conditions while Soulcasting gems would be unbounded exponential growth if it made more gems than it destroyed. So with gemhearts and Soulcasting the supply could remain more-or-less constant.

 

Having the amount trapped by a given gem diminish would seem to require continuous monitoring, and capping the total might cause Highstorms to fall apart before hitting the mountains, with devastating ecological impact.

[hoser he/him]

I don't agree with some of what you said here, but I don't want to spend too much time building up a model that is almost certainly different from Brandon's.  I think, details aside, we have a similar understanding.

Well, gems used in high-drain applications shatter and become useless, so they leave circulation. And getting gemhearts from animals is going to be a logistic function under the best practically achievable conditions while Soulcasting gems would be unbounded exponential growth if it made more gems than it destroyed. So with gemhearts and Soulcasting the supply could remain more-or-less constant.

 

Having the amount trapped by a given gem diminish would seem to require continuous monitoring, and capping the total might cause Highstorms to fall apart before hitting the mountains, with devastating ecological impact.

Shattered gems are recycled as smaller gems and eventually chips.  We have seen chips used by Kaladin as stormlight reservoirs to great effect.  Even if they weren't used, they would still absorb stormlight unless buried or stored inside.  So no, shattered gems do not leave circulation. 

Yes, if limited by animal populations, the supply growth will be slower than if gems can be created at will.  Chasmfiend gem-farming anyone?

One could have diminishing charge work without continuous monitoring.  For example: Charge = Gem size * constant * potential difference between source and destination.  With more gems in circulation, more stormlight would be in the physical realm and the potential difference between the physical realm and whichever realm the stormlight (investiture) is coming from would be less.  Analogically, potential is voltage, so you can think of the source realm as a battery.  When more stormlight is trapped in gems in the physical realm, the battery is less charged and it automagically charges gems less.  Voila, diminished charge with no monitoring. 

[Ironeyes he/him]

...automagically charges gems less.

Was that a typo or on purpose? 

[Shardlet he/him]

Shattered gems are recycled as smaller gems and eventually chips.  We have seen chips used by Kaladin as stormlight reservoirs to great effect.  Even if they weren't used, they would still absorb stormlight unless buried or stored inside.  So no, shattered gems do not leave circulation. 

 

Even so, a substantial portion of the gem is going to be lost during recutting and discarding of pieces unsuitable for other uses.

 

 

Yes, if limited by animal populations, the supply growth will be slower than if gems can be created at will.  Chasmfiend gem-farming anyone?

 

Yes, but how long does it take for a gemheart to develop to an economically advantageous level?  How old are the pre-chasmfiends, chasmfiends, and other greatshells?  Then you must consider keeping the greatshells from premature slaughter and illicit harvesting by rivals and thieves.  It would likely take a long time and a lot of seed money to get that industry off the ground.

[Cheese Ninja he/him]

Not entirely sure how much this will apply to the discussion, but there was a question about the gemstones in a reddit AMA back in April 2013.

 

Link Here.

 

ArsenoPyrite:

I have a technical question here re: gemstones in The Stormlight Archive. How are the lines drawn between different types of gem? Emerald and Heliodor are both varieties of the mineral beryl. Emerald can get its color from trace amounts of chromium, vanadium and/or iron. Heliodor gets its color from iron combined with microscopic crystal defects. So, is the line between these two defined by color? If so, would a heliodor lose its usefulness if it were heated (which would turn it colorless or pale blue). Is it defined by trace elements--in which case, how do you deal with emeralds, or with aquamarine (the blue variety of beryl, which can also contain chromium or vanadium in small quantities and is mostly colored by iron). Sorry for getting so technical, but this gem nerd needs to know!

 

mistborn (Brandon Sanderson):

I actually spent a long time working on this while building the world. You'd probably be amused by how long I spent on it. Chemically, many of them are actually very similar, as you pointed out. I tried doing the book originally with them all being different, not using any that were basically the same crystal with different colors, but it didn't work out. There weren't enough, and so I had to stretch to make it all work.

So, I went back to the original, and decided that color was enough to differentiate them. Just as steel and iron are very similar in the mistborn world, Emerald and Heliodor can be very similar--but produce different effects. The idea here is that the physical items (like the metals or the crystals) provide a key by which magical interaction occurs.

So, in a long winded answer, a gemstone with an impure color would be considered like a bad alloy in the Mistborn magic--it either wouldn't work at all, or would work very poorly. The chemical and color signature needs to be of a specific variety to provide the proper key to accessing the power of transformation.

 

It's interesting because BS states that structurally, emerald and heliodor are much the same, but that color alone makes a difference.

 

Also, while diamond is said to be able to Soulcast quartz, and Amethyst is a a variety of quartz, I doubt that it's possible to Soulcast amethyst, given Shallan's comments.

[hoser he/him]

Was that a typo or on purpose? 

On purpose.  In the privacy of my own mind, I think I are clever. 

 

Even so, a substantial portion of the gem is going to be lost during recutting and discarding of pieces unsuitable for other uses.

 

Yes, but how long does it take for a gemheart to develop to an economically advantageous level?  How old are the pre-chasmfiends, chasmfiends, and other greatshells?  Then you must consider keeping the greatshells from premature slaughter and illicit harvesting by rivals and thieves.  It would likely take a long time and a lot of seed money to get that industry off the ground.

Sure.  My points are:

1. The supply is not fixed.
2. Shattered gems do not go out of circulation. 

I did not mean to make a representation about exact rates of creation and destruction. 

 

As for Chasmfiend gem-farming, it was a thought that amused me and that I thought others might enjoy,not a serious business proposal.  Really, my initial thought was that it would be an elaborate form of ritual suicide.  In addition to the problems you mention, until we know what pre-pupation Chasmfiends are like and what they eat, I recommend we hold off on the business plan.

[Swimmingly he/him]

This is a world with an abundance of gemstones and glowy magitech. They WILL make laser guns of some sort at some point, which will kill innocent Chasmfiends with ecologically unfeasible abandon.