I realized after I looked at the quartz, that I hadn't asked him about the particurs of the quartz. Oh, quartz crystal goes by many names depending on the color of the crystal. I had assumed, incorrectly, that it'd be the same here. That doesn't seem to be the case, as I'm looking at varying degrees of colored quartz, ranging from an off-yellow to clear to milky to violet. I'm not sure about what exact minerals cause the yellowish or milky colors, but violet quartz, or amethyst, is that color because of iron impurities.

  I had initially pnned on just pulverizing all the quartz, but now I might want to resider. The clear and milky quartz I feel should be fio just pulverize to use for making gss, but the yellow and violet quartz I'm surprised are just tossed in here. Thinking about it, I don't actually think I've seen any jewels worn by anyone who's visited the isnd. I hadn't really realized that sort of thing was missing until just now. I suppose if they don't value the different kinds of quartz, then it makes sense why they don't have different words for them, they're all basically the same material.

  After I sort them, I should talk with Konkur to try to uand why crystals don't seem to be sidered valuable. They're already detly sorted, but there is some amount of mixing that has occurred. I presume they were just piled as they were mined, so simir crystals ended up together. That makes the process retively easy, and I should only have to take a day or two to get them sorted. Then another day or so to pulverize the pure and milky ones.

  After I finished handling the quartz, I made my the mountain, to talk to Konkur, and potentially start helping with excavating the vein. Normally, si's wihe mountain is pletely snowed in, and we just avoid going up it. However, Konkur's team didn't want to just do nothing during the season, so they dug the snow out on the upper portion of the mountain, and made it up to the cave. Though it seems every week they have to spend ara day of time just keeping the path clear on the and again on the way down, so they don't spend quite as much time mining as they would during other seasons.

  I asked Konkur for more details about the quartz when I made it up the mountain, and why they didn't care what color it was. He said that different colors of quartz are useful for identifying what metals might be in excess in the area, so they do care like how the purple quartz indicated there is iron, and the yellowish cloudy quartz was due to sulfur. He said there are a few different yellow quartz causes, but it was fairly easy to determihat this was due to sulfur.

  As I discussed further, I learned some iing history of the retionship between crystals and the races on the mainnd. It seems that, besides the mana crystals, there are a few crystals that have different effects when exposed to mana, but generally they aren't sidered useful. Though crystals like gypsum and quartz don't have any really unique mana iions, quartz seems to be mildly insutive to mana. I'm just going out on a limb here to guess why gemstones don't seem to be popur, but if some crystals i dangerously with mana it might be enough reason to not wear one. If, for instance, a crystal could explode into shards when exposed to mana directly, it'd be dangerous to the wearer, and also might make anyone nearby nervous. It'd be like wearing a hand grenade as a fashion statement. Though that's just a guess.

  He did list a feles, though I couldn't really trahe dwarven name of most of the minerals to any sort of particur crystal image in my head based on his descriptions. Though one did stand out somewhat, and I suspect it was fluorite. That mineral seems to give off different effects on it's surface when it is different colors, which would mean different impurities seem to effect how it handles mana. Not many colors have affects, but one seems to emit heat. Another is simply sidered "cursed", as people would die when exposed for too long. Though the "curse" definitely sounds a lot like cer, which makes me very nervous about ionizing radiation beied.

  This opened up a whole new again that I had in the past about what exactly mana is. I'd sort of put it in the bay mind and fot about it. On the surface, it's easy to just say, living things use mana, rocks seem to block mana, the suns produce it, and mana crystals be used as a battery for it. The fact that most other chemistry seems normal seems to indicate that atoms haven't ged much, though the mana crystals are definitely new. The fact that they grow octahedrally isn't normal. I'm pretty sure the oh crystals that were octahedrons didn't start that way, and only ter formed octahedrons after being cleaved, though I don't know that for sure.

  If that is the case, then there is something else going on that is new chemically, or maybe not chemically but magically. Mana is very weird, it seemingly make both materials and energy, though I haven't seen any evidence of a reverse situatio, where mana is made from either of the other two. I suppose it makes sehat if living creatures utilize mana to make materials and energy, then there should be some natural chemicals or materials that also do that.

  I guess outside anics, crystallierials are sort of simir in their inclusion of unnatural atoms within a rger of other atoms. I asked Konkur if he knew of any "pure" crystals that produced effects when exposed to mana, but he didn't know what I meant by "pure". I tried to expin to him that the colors of crystals are due to tiny amounts of other materials trapped within the crystals, and the iron trapped in the quartz is what tur purple, and that the clear form is the "pure" form, but that didn't help him ahe question, as he had no way of knowing what the pure form of the other crystals was.

  It was unfortuhat he didn't know that, because I'm starting to suspect certain behaviors for mana that might help to not only expin more of how it works, but also allow us to utilize it better if we could figure it out. If, for instance, pure crystals don't produy effects when exposed to mana, we could make certain assumptions about how mana behaves on a macro vs micro scale. Though Konkur did say that quartz seems to be mildly mana insutive, insutive effects aren't necessarily iions, they could simply be deflective on an atomic level. For instance, if sili tends to deflect mana in the general dire it received it at, then you'd get an apparently insutive property if mana behaves like a particle or a wave.

  It'd be quite plicated to attempt to figure out exactly what is going on within the crystals though. I'd first o determihe base crystallierial, then figure out what inclusions do what within that structure, and finally figure out how to grow those particur crystals. It could be incredibly valuable to do so, but it might also be dangerous, and it'd be quite plicated. I'm actually quite nervous about going the way of Marie Curie due to some of my experiments.

  After the discussion, I left with more questions than answers about crystallierial alongside a realization that separating the amethyst was basically pointless because I won't be able to do anything special with it. Once melted down and reformed into gss, I doubt the amount of impurities will do much to color the gss even. Though it might make it slightly lower quality as a result.

  The excavation team still had three days on the mountain before returning to the city, so I decided to observe the w mine and help with excavation until then. The mine's design was quite iing. I'm assuming it's dwarven in in. It sists of a spiral staircase going around the outside of a tral hole. When I asked about it, it seems that as the veis wider lower down, they have to cut a aircase at that width, and take out the upper staircase portions from the top to prevent colpse. Looking down from above, it just looks like a carved out der surrounded by stairs that desd well over fifty feet.

  The tral width at this point is about twenty feet across, aures a treadwheel e he top to lift excavated material out of the hole. Acc to Konkur, they're going to o do a bunch of non-excavation work soon, as the vein has started to snt at an increasing angle as they've gotten deeper. What they pn on doing is just tinuing this spiral width until the vein is no longer within the area of the mihen they'll dig horizontal shafts into the vein. After that portion is excavated, they'll lower the spiral again, and tinue making horizontal shafts. Each time they do so though, the amount of non-vein material will increase. In dwarven mines, after a certain point, they would cut a new horizontal shaft into the mountain, y new mi lines, and begin the process again from the new depth.

  Well, it all depends oher or not ores are found I suppose. Right now they're still just excavating quartz and a small amount of gypsum. With my help, they excavated almost triple what they normally do, but it's still all quartz that's being excavated right now. Well, it's amethyst, and the color is being more vibrant, so I'm hoping that they'll run into an iron mineral soon. I'm going to return with them to the vilge for their break, to talk with Zeb about the various stru ideas I'd had before. Then I'll return to help with excavatiohe mining team returns. I'll brira food with me ime so I stay for a longer period of time to work.