The Yellow Crystals Fields

There is something about areas that have been corrupted the demonic powers of sorcery that occadionally leads to the growth of formations of pale yellow crystals that can grow to enormous size. The crystals are extremely hard and almost impossible to remove once they have started to appear.

Instead of feeding on the sorcerous power lingering at the sites of demonic rituals, the destruction of powerful demons, or the lairs of ancient sorcerers, the growth of the crystals appears to actually increase the corruption of the surrounding area. While the initial spread of the crystals can happen quite rapidly over the span of just months, the growth seems to slow down and stop eventually. If this were not the case, some sages think the crystals could eventually take over the entire world, and would likely have done so long ago.

But even if they don’t pose a serious threat to the world as a whole, the areas covered by the hard yellow formations are left as otherwise barren wastelands. In many places corrupted by sorcery, the demonic influence seems to slowly ebb away over the course of man centuries and eventually become barely detectable. But as far as everyone’s been able to tell so far, the crystaline formations are eternal.

The crystals have some limited uses in a number of sorcerous rituals, but their incredible hardness makes it very difficult to remove large chunks of it. The corruption around them also makes them dangerous to carry, so there is little trade with these crystals among alchemists.

4 thoughts on “The Yellow Crystals Fields”

  1. Why, oh why am I reminded of Tiberiun from Command and Conquer when I read about these crystals?

    1. 10 minutes into the process of making this I realized “I just made yellow Tiberium…”

      But it’s cool, and everything else in my setting is nabbed from other places as well. So yellow Tiberium it is!

      1. Could expand it some if you take inspiration from Tiberium. Monsters and creatures are created by the corruption crystals. Wander into the nearby ‘green’ area. Grab a handy dandy mutant maker and that’s it or grab the stats for a monster and say it is a different monster. GURPS said so back in the heyday of its RPG. “Grab the stats of a tiger and use them as the stats for a purple lizard that attacks the players on an alien world.”

        As for corruption….you may be able to crib off Fallout. Either as a negative modifier to HP or you have a corruption factor that slowly grows over time but can be fixed or cured.

        1. The crystals appear in locations of demonic corruption, and corruption is the cause of undead.
          The main inspiration behind all of this is the Zone from Stalker. There’s not just mutants and radiation, but also annomalies that cause the laws of physics to go crazy. The crystals are mostly an additional visual effect to that.
          Though if removed, they still radiate demonic energy, so not something you want to carry around in your pocket.

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