Episode 202 was so overwhelming I’ve decided to cut the material from Kunz’s “Curious Lore of Precious Stones” into many small pieces. Each has three or four types of gemstone. The first episode contains plot hooks which suit all stones – this one only those which suit each particular stone.
Agate
Kunz notes :
The author of “Lithica” celebrates the merits of the agate in the following lines:
Adorned with this, thou woman’s heart shall gain,
And by persuasion thy desire obtain;
And if of men thou aught demand, shalt come
With all thy wish fulfilled rejoicing home.
This idea is elaborated by Marbodus, Bishop of Rennes, in the eleventh century, who declares that agates make the wearers agreeable and persuasive and also give them the favor of God. Still other virtues are recounted by Camillo Leonardo, who claims that these stones give victory and strength to their owners and avert tempests and lightning.
The agate possessed some wonderful virtues, for its wearer was guarded from all dangers, was enabled to vanquish all terrestrial obstacles and was endowed with a bold heart; this latter prerogative was presumably the secret of his success. Some of these wonder-working agates were black with white veins, while others again were entirely white.
The wearing of agate ornaments was even believed to be a cure for insomnia and was thought to insure pleasant dreams. In spite of these supposed advantages, Cardano asserts that while wearing this stone he had many misfortunes which he could not trace to any fault or error of his own. He, therefore, abandoned its use; although he states that it made the wearer more prudent in his actions…In another treatise this author takes a somewhat more favorable view of the agate, and proclaims that all varieties render those who wear them “temperate, continent, and cautious; therefore they are all useful for acquiring riches.”
About the middle of the past century, the demand for agate amulets was so great in the Soudan that the extensive agate-cutting establishments at Idar and Oberstein in Germany were almost exclusively busied with filling orders for this trade. Brown or black agates having a white ring in the centre were chiefly used for the fabrication of these amulets, the white ring being regarded as a symbol of the eye.
A man in armor, with bow and arrow, on an iris stone, protects from evil both the wearer and the place where it may be.
Camillo Leonardo says that its many different varieties had as many different virtues, and he finds in this an explanation of the multiplicity of images engraved on the various kinds of agate, without realizing that the true reason was that this material lent itself more readily to artistic treatment than did many others.
Agates turn up in deposits in many areas of volcanic activity. In Mythic Europe, the best agates are cut in Oberstein (ruled by the literal “Lords of Stone”) in an area that might be in the Rhine Tribunal, but which I think I claimed for the Greater Alps in Sanctuary of Ice. The Lords of Stone are the ancestors of the Counts of Falkenstein, and I recall mentioning them, because there is an old roleplaying game of that name. Jasper and rock crystal are also found in abundance here. This town is, in the real world, now called Idar-Oberstein.
In Ars 5th edition, agate has the following material bonuses: : air 3, protection from storms 5, protection from venom 7. I’d suggest as additions, +3 bonuses for being convincing, luck, courage and dreams.
Amber
For the ancient Greek poets, the grains of amber were the tears annually shed over the death of their brother Phaëthon by the Heliades after grief had metamorphosed them into poplars growing on the banks of the Eridanus (the modern river Po). In a lost tragedy of Sophocles, he saw the origin of amber in the tears shed over the death of Meleager by certain Indian birds. For Nicias it was the “juice” or essence of the brilliant rays of the setting sun, congealed in the sea and then cast up upon the shore. A more prosaic explanation likened amber to resin, and regarded it as being an exudation from the trunks of certain trees. Another fancy represented amber to be the solidified urine of the lynx, hence one of its names, lyncurius.
The brilliant and beautiful yellow of certain ambers and the fact that this material was very easily worked served to make its use more general, and it soon became a favorite object of trade and barter between the peoples of the Baltic Coast and the more civilized peoples to the south. Schliemann found considerable amber from the Baltic in the graves of Mycenæ, and the frequent allusions to it in the works of Latin authors of the first and succeeding centuries testify to its popularity in the Roman world.
Probably the very earliest allusion in literature to the ornamental use of amber appears in Homer’s Odyssey, where we read: Eurymachus Received a golden necklace, richly wrought, And set with amber beads, that glowed as if With sunshine. To Eurydamas there came A pair of ear-rings, each a triple gem,Daintily fashioned and of exquisite grace.Two servants bore them.
Amber ingeniously carved into animal forms has been discovered in tumuli at Indersoen, Norway. These curious objects were worn as amulets, and the peculiar forms were supposed to enhance the power of the material, giving it special virtues and rendering it of greater value and efficacy.
Pieces of amber with singular natural markings were greatly esteemed, especially when these markings suggested the initials of the name of some prominent person. Thus, we are told that Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia paid to a dealer a high price for a piece of amber on which appeared his initials. The same dealer had another piece on which he read the initials of Charles XII of Sweden. When he received the news of this king’s death, he bitterly lamented having lost the opportunity of selling him amber for a high price. But he was cleverly consoled by Nathaniel Sendal, the relator of the story, who easily persuaded the dealer that the markings could just as well signify the initials of some other name. Sendal adduces this as a proof that the letters read on such pieces of amber were as much the product of the observer’s imagination as of the markings on the material. Those who secured amber so mysteriously marked by Nature’s hand probably felt that they had obtained a talisman of great power, especially destined for their use.
I’d note that there are also folktales which say that a faerie princess’s castle under the Baltic Sea was wrecked, and the pieces washed up on the shore. Amber is traded through much of Europe, and found in other places: the Tremere have a source, for example.
Ars Magica 5th edition gives the material bonuses of Amber as Corpus +3 and Controlling movement +3. I’d suggest sunlight, animals modelled in the amber, persons whose names are modelled in the amber, trade, controlling Baltic faeries +3.
Amethyst
While the special and traditional virtue of the amethyst was the cure of drunkenness, many other qualities were attributed to this stone in the fifteenth century. For Leonardo, it had the power to control evil thoughts, to quicken the intelligence, and to render men shrewd in business matters. An amethyst worn on the person had a sobering effect, not only upon those who had partaken too freely of the cup that intoxicates, but also upon those over-excited by the love-passion. Lastly, it preserved soldiers from harm and gave them victory over their enemies, and was of great assistance to hunters in the capture of wild animals. The amethyst shared with many other stones the power to preserve the wearer from contagion.
A bear, if engraved on an amethyst, has the virtue of putting demons to flight and defends and preserves the wearer from drunkenness.
Amethyst hearing 2, wealth and mercantile 2, dreams 3, poisons 3, versus poison, temperance 4, drunkenness 7, versus drunkenness 7. Violet Amethyst: ascendancy over masses 4, versus drunkenness 7
Additions suggested: bargaining, hunting, bravery +3
Beryl
Arnoldus Saxo, writing about 1220, after reciting the virtues of the beryl as given by Marbodus, after Evax and Isidorus, reports in addition that the stone gave help against foes in battle or in litigation; the wearer was rendered unconquerable and at the same time amiable, while his intellect was quickened and he was cured of laziness. In the old German translation of Thomas de Cantimpré’s “De Proprietatibus Rerum,” we read that the beryl reawakens the love of married people.
A frog, engraved on a beryl, will have the power to reconcile enemies and produce friendship where there was discord. A hoopoo with a tarragon herb before it, represented on a beryl, confers the power to invoke water-spirits and to converse with them, as well as to call up the mighty dead and to obtain answers to questions addressed to them.
Beryls are found in many places in Europe: Austria, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.
Aquamarine water +3. Beryl water +3, Chrysoberyl (Cat’s eye) versus malign corpus +3
Suggested additions: controlling lawyers 3. Note the particularly useful engravings.
Bloodstone
Bloodstones are, chemically, a sort of quartz, so they are usually a jasper. They have little red inclusions which reflect light, giving the names of heliotrope and bloodstone. The main source near Mythic Europe is Armenia. Wikipedia mentions a source in Scotland, but I’m not sure if it was used in 1220.
The heliotrope or bloodstone was supposed to impart a reddish hue to the water in which it was placed, so that when the rays of the sun fell upon the water they gave forth red reflections. From this fancy was developed the strange exaggeration that this stone had the power to turn the sun itself a blood-red, and to cause thunder, lightning, rain, and tempest. The old treatise of Damigeron relates this of the bloodstone, adding that it announced future events by producing rain and by “audible oracles.”
Damigeron also declares that the bloodstone preserved the faculties and bodily health of the wearer, brought him consideration and respect, and guarded him from deception.
A bat, represented on a heliotrope or bloodstone, gives the wearer power over demons and helps incantations.
In the Leyden papyrus the bloodstone is praised as an amulet in the following extravagant terms: The world has no greater thing; if any one have this with him he will be given whatever he asks for; it also assuages the wrath of kings and despots, and whatever the wearer says will be believed. Whoever bears this stone, which is a gem, and pronounces the name engraved upon it, will find all doors open, while bonds and stone walls will be rent asunder.
A historical instance of the use of the bloodstone to check a hemorrhage is recorded in the case of Giorgio Vasari (1514-1578), the author of the lives of the Italian painters of the Renaissance period. On a certain occasion, when the painter Luca Signorelli (1439-1521) was placing one of his pictures in a church at Arezzo, Vasari, who was present, was seized with a violent hemorrhage and fainted away. Without a moment’s hesitation, Signorelli took from his pocket a bloodstone amulet and slipped it down between Vasari’s shoulder-blades. The hemorrhage is said to have ceased immediately.
Robert Boyle, in his “Essay about the Origin and Virtues of Gems” (London, 1672, pp. 177-78), tells of a gentleman of his acquaintance who was “of a complexion extraordinary sanguin,” and was much afflicted with bleeding of the nose. A gentlewoman sent to him a bloodstone, directing him to wear it suspended from his neck, and from the time he put it on he was no longer troubled with his malady. It recurred, however, if he removed the stone. When Boyle objected that this might be a result of imagination, his friend disposed of his objection by relating the instance of a woman to whom the stone had been applied when she was unconscious from loss of blood. Nevertheless, as soon as it touched her, the flow of blood was checked. Boyle states that this stone did not seem to him to resemble a true bloodstone. It may have been that the cold of the stone congealed the blood, or that the flow was checked by exhaustion.
Kunz does not mention that bloodstones are mentioned by Pliny as causing invisibility. This is widely known: in the Decameron the stone has the same use.
Currently: Blood and wounds +4, but I’d suggest it should be higher. I’d suggest an addition of invisibility +7, controlling weather +3, controlling noblemen +3. Note the useful engravings, however: a demon with a high rank in Hell counts as a nobleman.
Games From Folktales 