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Sapphire Dust

To make expensive things,
you must first have expensive things
with which to make your craft
shine.
Khuzdul Proverb

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Description

This is the dust from crushed sapphires. It glows with a unique magical aura. While it feels like sand (stone dust) it looks like ground glass and yet feels perfectly smooth when touched.

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History

Believed to be a key ingredient in the Khuzdul art of forging magical weapons and armor, no human chantry knows its secret. Khuzdul willingly buy bags of such for the price of an equal weight in sapphire, but are rarely willing to explain why.

What has been learned is that the dust is made, and not natural. No mage to date has made a treaties on the topic. The few that have begun such a task are often seen with new arms, armor or other gems in their possession soon before they give up the task and set themselves to something else.

Weaponcrafters and Jmorvians are often fascinated by the fact that the dust is broken in almost equal flakes that either would require great diligence or some mechanized process. It is assumed all Sapphire dust comes from Khuzdul held lands, but it is often found in small amounts (less than 25 carats worth) all over the island of Hârn.

Khuzdul use a different precious stone for each form of detection. The exact choice (why Sapphire is used to detect enchantment for example) seems arbritrary. Use of these dusts is acceptable only for apprentices or journeymen. A master craftsman Khuzdul who relies on the dusts for information would soon loose his guild status were other Khuzdul craftsmen to find out.

In the past, many Khuzdul craftsmen seem to have made a present of it to the craftsmen they met in their travels.

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Powers

It is the physical component for a Jmorvian spell that allows the caster to determine the enchantments within the object over which it is sprinkled. It requires 2d6 carats of dust for each casting.

The spell used upon the dust is Golden Eye (Jmorvian I) and Jorum (Neutral II). Both spells must be cast on every 18 carats of dust.

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This page was last updated on January 23, 2002
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