Magic gems and blood slaves

The eight kinds of gem, where they come from, and what they pay for: rituals, forging, empowerment and battle, with blood slaves for Blood magic.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake9 min read

Gems are the manual’s name for the physical form of a magic path’s power. They are what the stronger magic costs, and a nation’s supply of them often sets the pace of its mages more than skill does. This page covers the types, where they come from, how you move them around, and what they are spent on. Everything is the manual’s own account; we have not re-measured it.

The types

There are eight kinds of gem, one for each path except Blood and Holy: Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral, Death, Nature and Glamour. Astral gems are also called pearls, which is why the manual speaks of converting gems to pearls. Blood magic has no gems of its own. It runs on blood slaves, which can only be gathered by blood hunting. A spell or item that needs several paths takes gems of each path, with one exception: a spell with several path requirements draws its extra gems from its first, or primary, path.

Where gems come from

The main supply is magic sites, and a nation’s home province holds some. Whoever owns a site is paid its gems each turn into the national treasury. The payment needs an unbroken run of friendly provinces between the site and a province that has a laboratory. Capture is enough to take the income: an invader collects the gems of a site he seizes, but cannot recruit the national units that site offers its own people. The sites table lists what each site produces.

A few magic items produce gems as well. The manual lists the Crown of Despair with one Death gem a month, the Crown of the Elements with one elemental gem a month, and the Crown of Pure Blood with five blood slaves a month. Other items, such as Fire in a Jar and Clam of Pearls, show “Temp” gems in their lines. The manual does not explain that word, so we leave it unexplained too.

The Conjuration spell Acashic Knowledge, despite its school, does not summon anything. It searches provinces for sources of gems.

A third source is alchemy, covered below. A fourth, for blood, is the hunt.

Holding and moving them

The magic resource treasury, on F7, lists every gem the nation owns and the monthly rate at which more arrive. The same figures sit in the national summary, in brackets after each gem icon. Gems the nation owns sit in the national pool, and a laboratory is the link between the pool and your mages.

Any commander may carry gems, whether or not he can use them, up to a limit of 40. The manual suggests sending a plain commander along with a mage as a “gem squire” to carry the extra. Gems can be shifted between commanders in the same province from the treasury screen or by clicking a commander’s item slot, and the right-hand column of that screen is the national pool, which is available only in a province with a lab. A “pool” button gathers every gem carried by commanders in a lab province back into the national store. The manual points out that this is especially handy for blood hunters, who often carry slaves they want in the pool.

Spending them on rituals

A ritual takes a month and a mage standing in a lab province. If it needs gems, they come out of the national pool automatically and no other source works. If a ritual fails to cast, the manual says the most likely reason is a shortage of gems of the right type. A ritual can be set to recast each month with the same mage for as long as the gems last.

Extra gems can make a ritual do more:

• Local enchantments with a limited life last one month per extra gem, and a few last up to three months per extra gem.
• Global enchantments are rituals too. Adding gems to the cast makes the enchantment harder to dispel. A mage can put in at most his path level times 100 gems. If the caster dies, the enchantment ends, and the manual notes that extra gems do not protect the caster from assassination.
• During a cataclysm game, casting rituals, forging items and empowerment can draw horrors to the mage, and the more gems used, the stronger the horror that may come.

Spells with a large fatigue cost need gems too. Any spell that costs 100 or more fatigue takes one gem of its primary path, and another for each further full 100. The manual’s example is a 700-fatigue spell, which needs seven gems, with more advisable for fatigue reduction. The spell and item tables use gems the same way, so read the cost off the spell’s page and the spells table.

Spending them in battle

A mage can burn gems in combat for two things: a temporary rise in skill, and less fatigue. The manual treats them as one release of power. Three limits apply:

• A mage can use only as many gems per turn as his current skill in that path.
• Each gem adds one level of skill in that path for that one spell. A mage can use this to cast a spell he would not otherwise have the skill for, to cut fatigue, or both.
• A mage cannot lift his skill by more than a single level through gems in total, and he gets nothing at all in a path where he has no skill to begin with.

The third limit sits oddly beside the first, and the manual does not say how the two fit together. Spells that give a path bonus for the whole battle are a different thing from gems, which last for one spell in one round.

You can script a spell the mage lacks the skill for and put the gems in his inventory. Without a script the computer uses extra gems to reduce fatigue, and the player cannot steer that, except through the “conservative gem use” box, which makes the mage spend only on scripted spells and as sparingly as possible, to save gems for later battles. The wider rules for casting in a fight are on Combat magic, and where a spell’s casters share their burden, see Communions.

Spending them on forging

A mage with the Forge Item order in a laboratory makes an item from whatever gems it needs, if the nation has researched the right Construction level and the mage has the required skill. The item’s path requirement sets its price in gems for each path it names:

• Path level 1: 5 gems
• Path level 2: 10 gems
• Path level 3: 15 gems
• Path level 4: 20 gems
• Path level 5: 30 gems
• Path level 6: 40 gems
• Path level 7: 55 gems
• Path level 8: 70 gems

The manual’s example is a sword needing Earth 4 and Astral 3, which costs 20 Earth gems and 15 Astral gems. Items of Blood cost blood slaves in place of gems, and a few items give their own price: one cursed familiar is listed at 75 blood slaves plus five Fire gems. A yearning artifact costs half as much. A mage can be set to forge the same item every turn. See Spell research for the levels and the items table for every price.

Spending them on empowerment

Empowerment is the one way to raise a mage’s path skill for good. The first level in a path costs 50 gems of that type, and each level after that costs 15 times the level you are aiming for. It is also the only way to learn a path the mage does not have. Items and spells that add path skill do nothing for a mage with no skill in that path.

Alchemy

Any commander with magic skill can give the Alchemy order in a lab province. It converts gems from one type to another at a rate of two old gems for one new one, and it works only into Astral or out of Astral. Going from, say, Fire to Water takes two steps, which can be done in one turn at an effective four to one. Two Alteration rituals, one Earth and one Fire, also exist; these turn gems into gold rather than into other gems.

Blood slaves

Blood magic spends blood slaves where other paths spend gems. Slaves are collected with the Blood Hunt order, resolved in step 18 of the turn. A hunter must pass three checks in a row: a level check of 10 per cent plus 30 per cent for each point of blood level, a population check of the province’s population divided by 75 per cent, and an unrest check that fails with a chance of the province’s unrest divided by 4 per cent. On success he finds a d6 plus his blood level of slaves, and unrest rises. On failure there are none and unrest rises by a smaller amount. The manual says magic site frequency away from its default shifts the average catch, and that a strong dominion persuades commoners it is an honour to be sacrificed.

Slaves can also be sacrificed to spread dominion for nations that do that; see Dominion. The Sabbath spells that match the Astral communion spells cost slaves to cast. Slaves, like gems, can be carried by commanders and kept in the national pool.

What the manual leaves out

• It does not say why a spell needing several paths takes gems from its primary path alone for fatigue but from all paths for item forging; the two statements are made in different places.
• Its battle gem rules (one level per gem, at most one level in total) do not agree, as noted above.
• It does not explain “Temp” gems on items, nor give a gem or slave cost for most rituals in one place.
• The gem carry limit of 40 is given for gems; it does not say whether slaves share that limit.