Gems

These are the gems that can be found in various ways and places in the lands. Nearly all of the gems have a hardness listed. The numbers range from 1 to 10, with 10 being the hardest gem(s). A diamond with a rating of 10 would be impossible to carve into a specific shape or design. When requesting your alterations, please ensure you have the gems you want used in them.

Agate
Type, Colors: Banded, Blue Lace, Moss
Hardness: 6.5 - 7.0
Agate is a variety of chalcedony (a family of microcrystalline quartz) that displays an incredible variety of color patterns -- generally curved bands of regular or irregular formation. Agate is a very common stone that is often used in jewelry. Agate can be flecked with color and is often banded, exhibiting layers of quartz. Agate can be polished to a high gloss, and it is often used for ornamental purposes. Agate will chip and crack rather easily. Since agate is porous, it is often dyed to enhance its natural color. Often treated agate is sold as Black Onyx.

Amber
Type, Colors: Orange
Hardness: 2.0 - 2.5
Amber is translucent fossilized tree resin (from conifers). Amber is flammable. Rubbing amber produces static electricity. It used to be thought that amber possessed magical powers that protected the wearer from evil. A hard translucent fossil resin that takes a fine polish and is used chiefly in making ornamental objects. It is slightly brittle and emits an agreeable odor when rubbed. As amber is soft, it can be easily scratched.

Amethyst
Type, Colors: Purple, Violet
Hardness: 7.0
Amethyst (Greek for "not drunken") is a form of the mineral quartz, and is a relatively common gemstone. The ancient Greeks believed that amethyst made one immune to the effects of alcohol. A variety of quartz, differing from common quartz and rock crystal chiefly because of its violet to purple color, which is caused by the presence of compounds of iron or manganese. Amethyst is sometimes heat treated to create Citrine. When exposed to strong sunlight for extended periods, amethyst may fade in color.

Aquamarine
Type, Colors: Blue-Green
Hardness: 7.5 - 8.0
Aquamarine is a transparent, light blue or sea green stone that is porous. Heat-treatment turns greenish stones bluer. A variety of the mineral beryl that is blue, blue-green, or green. This form of Cryptocrystaline Quartz contains inclusions of small crystals that reflect light and give a range of colors. Aquamarine often occurs in very large sizes, usually with very good clarity.

Aventurine
Type, Colors: Green
Hardness: 7.0
Aventurine is a more or less colorless chalcedony that contains uniformly dispersed flakes of greenish mica, thus giving the stone a characteristic speckled green appearance known as aventurescence. Aventurine (sometimes known as goldstone and sometimes mis-spelled adventurine) is a shimmering quartz stone that ranges in color from yellow to red to light green to light brown. The shimmer is caused by tiny metallic particles (mica) within the stone.

Azurite
Type, Colors: Deep Blue
Hardness: 3.5 - 4.0
Azurite is a beautiful copper-based blue mineral that is often used in jewelry. Azurite has also been used as a dye for paints and luxury fabrics. Azurite and malachite have been used as pigments. Both minerals have a fine vitreous luster, and when properly polished they are highly ornamental.

Beryl
Type, Colors: Golden
Hardness: 7.0 - 8.0
A mineral consisting of a silicate of beryllium and aluminum of great hardness and occurring in green, bluish green, yellow, pink, or white hexagonal prisms. Beryls are a family of gemstone that include emerald, aquamarine, beryl (green), red, morganite (yellow), and heliodor (pink).

Bloodstone
Type, Colors: Dark Red
Hardness: 7.0
Bloodstone, also known as heliotrope, is a dark green chalcedony or jasper with flecks of red. Bloodstone is porous and relatively soft.

Bull's-Eye
Type, Colors: Mahogany Brown
Hardness: 7.0
Deep brown varieties of tiger's-eye are called bull's-eye or ox-eye (See tiger's-eye).

Carnelian
Type, Colors: Red
Hardness: 7.0
Carnelian or cornelian is a reddish brown chalcedony. In ancient Rome, it was often used in cameos and intaglios. A hard touch chalcedony that has a reddish color and is used in jewelry. This translucent stone has a waxy luster.

Cat's-Eye
Type, Colors: Green
Hardness: 7.0 - 8.5
Any of various gems (as a chrysoberyl or chalcedony) exhibiting opalescent reflections from within. A marble with eyelike concentric circles. Cat's eye is a yellow to green-yellow to gray-green stone with a bright, pupil-like slit that seems to move slightly as the stone is moved.

Chrysoberyl
Type, Colors: Yellow
Hardness: 7.0 - 8.5
Chrysoberyl is a hard stone that ranges in color from yellow, to brown, to green. Some chrysoberyls include alexandrite and cat's eye. Chrysoberyl is also exceptionally tough (resistant to breakage), so it produces some extremely durable gems.

Chrysolite
Type, Colors: Pale Green
Hardness: 7.0
Chrysolite is a name used for many stones. It can also refer to peridot. Long ago, the name was used to refer to almost any yellowish gem.

Chyroprase
Type, Colors: Green
Hardness: 7.0
Chrysoprase is the most valued variety of the mineral chalcedony (microcrystalline quartz) that contains nickel, giving it an apple-green color. Chrysoprase is porous and translucent.

Citrine
Type, Colors: Honey Yellow
Hardness: 7.0
Black quartz changed in color by heating into a semiprecious yellow stone resembling topaz. Citrine (from the French for "lemon") is a rare, yellow type of quartz, a semi-precious stone. Although citrine may occur naturally, much is produced by heating amethyst under controlled conditions (overheating drives off all color, leaving colorless rock crystal).

Coral
Type, Colors: Black, Pink, Red, White
Hardness: 3.5
Coral ranges in color from pale pink (called angelskin coral) to orange to red to white to black. In jewelry making, coral is either carved into beads, cameos, or other forms, or is left in its natural branch-like form and just polished. It used to be thought that coral protected the wearer, so it was a traditional gift to children. An organic gem material composed of calcium carbonate (calcite). Although soft, coral is tough enough to be worn in jewelry.

Crystal
Type, Colors: Vitreous
Hardness: 7.0 - 10.0
Quartz that is transparent or nearly so and that is either colorless or only slightly tinged.

(GLASS) Crystal is high-quality glass containing at least 10% lead oxide. Lead added to the melt produces very clear glass resembling rock crystal. Crystal is colored by adding various metallic oxides to the melt.

(NATURAL) A crystal is a solid whose atoms form a very regular structure. Some crystals include quartz, diamond, and emerald.

Diamond
Type, Colors: Adamantine, Black, Blue, Muddy Brown, Pale Pink, Yellow
Hardness: 10.0
Native crystalline carbon that is usually nearly colorless, that when transparent and free from flaws is highly valued as a precious stone. Diamonds are precious, lustrous gemstones made of highly compressed carbon. Diamonds are one of the hardest materials known. While diamonds are tough, they can be chipped along sharp girdles or facet edges. Diamonds are also highly heat resistant, but they can be burned if subjected to prolonged high heat.

Dreamstone
Type, Colors: Cloudy White, Misty Black
Hardness: Unknown
Unknown

Emerald
Type, Colors: Bright Green, Dark Green
Hardness: 7.0 - 8.0
A rich green variety of beryl prized as a gemstone. Any of various green gemstones. Emeralds are a very hard, green precious stone. Flaws and cloudiness (called jardin) are very common in emeralds, so many emeralds are oiled, irradiatied, and dyed to improve their look. Emeralds (and all forms of beryl) have large, perfect, six-sided crystals. Emeralds were long thought to have healing powers, especially for eyesight.

Garnet
Type, Colors: Bright Red, Green, Honey Yellow, Rose Colored, Violet Red
Hardness: 6.0 - 8.0
A brittle and more or less transparent usually red silicate mineral that has a vitreous luster. Garnets are any of a group of semi-precious silicate stones that range in color from red to green (garnets occur in all colors but blue).

Hawk's-Eye
Type, Colors: Blue-Gray
Hardness: 7.0
Hawk's eye is a green, gray or blue variety of quartz that has parallel, fibrous inclusions of crocidolite that give it a greenish cat's eye effect. This mineral has a silky luster. It looks a lot like Tiger's Eye, and often occurs with it in the same rock, but the internal structure is different.

Jade
Type, Colors: Black, Blue, Emerald Green, Green, Lilac, Pale Blue, Red
Hardness: 6.0 - 7.0
Either of two tough compact typically green gemstones that take a high polish (jadeite and nephrite). Jade is a semi-precious stone that ranges in color from green to white to lilac to brown to almost black. Translucent jade is more highly valued than opaque jade. The Chinese have prized jade for thousands of years and regarded it as having medicinal properties when worn or ingested as a powder.

Jasper
Type, Colors: Brown, Mottled, Red, Yellow
Hardness: 6.5 - 7.0
Jasper, in contrast to chalcedony, is an opaque and more coarsely grained cryptocrystalline quartz. Like chalcedony, it may be patterned or uniform in color. Jasper is found all over the world; it is often striped, speckled, and multi-colored. Jasper is sometimes dyed to resemble lapis lazuli.

Lapis-Lazuli
Type, Colors: Deep Blue, Gold Flecked, White Veined
Hardness: 5.0 - 6.0
A semiprecious stone that is usually rich azure blue and is essentially a complex silicate often with spangles of iron pyrite. Lapis lazuli is a rich blue opaque, semi-precious stone that has been used in jewelry since ancient times. Ground-up lapis lazuli was once used as a pigment for oil paintings. Lapis lazuli is often dyed to deepen and improve its color. It chips and scratches easily. Water can dull its sheen.

Malachite
Type, Colors: Deep Green
Hardness: 4.0
Malachite is an opaque semi-precious stone with layers of deep green and light green. Malachite was used as jewelry thousands of years ago by the ancients Egyptians. Malachite is sometimes coated with colorless wax, oil, or hardening agents to increase its durability and enhance its appearance.

Marble
Type, Colors: Black, Gray, White
Hardness: Unknown
Limestone that is more or less crystallized by metamorphism, that ranges from granular to compact in texture, and that is capable of taking a high polish.

Moonstone
Type, Colors: Pearly Gray, Silvery White
Hardness: 6.0
A transparent or translucent feldspar of pearly or opaline luster used as a gem. A colorless to yellowish gray, highly translucent to semitransparent variety of feldspar that reflects light in a distinctive shimmering phenomenon known as adularescence. Sometimes, moonstone cabochons display a well-defined cat's-eye effect (a bright line caused by reflection from tiny parallel inclusions).

Obsidian
Type, Colors: Black
Hardness: 5.0
Obsidian (also called Apache tears) is a volcanic glass that is usually black, but is occasionally red, brown, gray, green (rare), dark with "snowflakes," or even clear. It is brittle and heat sensitive.

Olivine
Type, Colors: Green
Hardness: 6.5 - 7.0
A usually greenish mineral that is a complex silicate of magnesium and iron.

Onyx
Type, Colors: Banded, Black
Hardness: 7.0
Onyx is something of a catchall term that usually refers to dyed black chalcedony ("black onyx"), but it is also used to describe other colors of dyed chalcedony. Onyx is a semi-precious stone that is black and white, generally arranged in layers. It is a form of agate with parallel banding.

Opal
Type, Colors: Black, Fire, Milky White, Scarlet, White
Hardness: 5.5 - 6.5
A mineral that is a hydrated amorphous silica softer and less dense than quartz and typically with definite and often marked iridescent play of colors. Opals are semi-precious stones that are luminous and iridescent, frequently with inclusions of many colors ("fire"). There are three major types of opals: common opal, opalescent precious opal (white or black, with a rainbow-like iridescence caused by tiny crystals of cristobalite), and fire opal (a milky stone that is firey orange to red in color with no opalescence). Many opals have a high water content - they can dry out and crack if they are not cared for well (opals should be stored in damp cotton wool). Brittle and heat sensitive. May crack or craze spontaneously as the water content evaporates.

Pearl
Type, Colors: Black, Grey, Pink, White
Hardness: 2.5 - 4.5
Pearls are organic gems grown within oysters and a few other mollusks. Pearls are formed when a foreign object (like a tiny stone) has made its way into the mollusk's shell. The mollusk secretes nacre, a lustrous substance that coats the intruding object. As thousands of layers of nacre coat the intruder, a pearl is formed; this process takes up to seven or eight years (an oyster's useful life span). The most valuable pearls are perfectly symmetrical, large, naturally produced, and have a shimmering iridescence (called orient luster).

Quartz
Type, Colors: Rose, Smokey
Hardness: 7.0
A mineral consisting of a silicon dioxide that occurs in colorless and transparent or colored hexagonal crystals and in crystalline masses. Quartz is a crystalline mineral that comes in many forms, including amethyst, aventurine, citrine, opal, rock crystal, tiger's eye, rose quartz, and many others.

Rhodocrosite
Type, Colors: Pink
Hardness: 3.5 - 4.5
Manganese carbonate with iron and calcium. Rhodochrosite is a mineral whose color ranges from rose to pink to almost yellow or brown. Although it is very pretty, this stone is soft and brittle; it is used in jewelry and for carvings and figurines.

Rock-Crystal
Type, Colors: Vitreous
Hardness: 7.0
Rock Crystal is clear colorless quartz. Its value tends to be very low, except for large flawless pieces, which are rare. Rock crystal is the purest form of quartz and a semi-precious stone.

Ruby
Type, Colors: Astrae, Deep Red
Hardness: 9.0
A precious stone that is a red corundum. Rubies are precious stones and a member of the corundum family. Rubies range in color from the classic deep red to pink to purple to brown. Rubies are extremely hard; only diamonds are harder. During the renaissance, people thought that rubies could counteract poison.

Sapphire
Type, Colors: Astrae, Canary Yellow, Deep Blue, Green, Pink
Hardness: 9.0
Sapphire is a precious gemstone (a type of corundum) that ranges in color from blue to pink to yellow to green to white to purple (mauve sapphire) to pink-orange (padparadscha sapphire). Six-sided asterisms sometimes occur in star sapphires (caused by inclusions of tiny, thin, parallel needles of rutile). Sapphires are related to rubies. Sapphires were once thought to protect the wearer from poisonous creatures.

Sard
Type, Colors: Yellow-Brown
Hardness: 7.0
Sard is a darkish brown chalcedony similar to carnelian but of less intense color. This brownish-red, opaque gemstone was once used extensively for seals and was carved using intaglio. Sard was named for Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia.

Sardonyx
Type, Colors: Brown
Hardness: 7.0
Sardonyx is an agate with alternating straight, parallel bands of reddish brown and, usually, white. Sardonyx is a semi-precious stone that is formed by two layers, a red-brown layer of sard and a gray, white, black or brown layer of onyx. An onyx having parallel layers of sard.

Spinel
Type, Colors: Blue, Red, Violet
Hardness: 7.5 - 8.0
Spinel is a very hard semi-precious stone composed of octahedral crystals. Spinel ranges in color from red to black to yellow, frequently resembling rubies. Iron and chrome are components of spinel, giving it its color.

Sunstone
Type, Colors: Golden, Golden Yellow
Hardness: 6.0 - 6.5
Sunstone is also called aventurine feldspar (a variety of oligoclase). This gemstone varies from golden to orange to red-brown, and can be transparent or translucent. Sunstone is metallic looking due to sparkling red, orange or green crystalline inclusions (these are hematite or goethite crystals).

Thyites
Type, Colors: Blue-Green
Hardness: 5.0 - 6.0
Thyites is the ancient Greek name for turquoise. Turquoise is a non-translucent, porous semi-precious stone that is usually cut as a cabochon. Turquoise was first found in Turkey, hence its name. Turquoise is found in desert regions worldwide. Over the years, the stone absorbs oil from your skin and it will change color slightly.

Tiger's-Eye
Type, Colors: Golden Yellow
Hardness: 7.0
Tiger's eye is a yellowish-brown to reddish-brown gemstone that has a silky luster. This gemstone has bands of yellow and brown; when viewed from the opposite direction, the colors are reversed. Tiger's eye is usually highly polished and set as a cabochon (or cut as a bead) to display the stone's chatoyancy (light reflected in thin bands within the stone). This stone is sometimes heat-treated. Green-gray varieties of this stone are called cat's-eye quartz. Blue-gray to bluish varieties are called hawk's-eye. Deep brown varieties of this stone are called bull's-eye or ox-eye.

Topaz
Type, Colors: Blue, Pink, Vitreous, Yellow
Hardness: 8.0
Topaz is a very hard gemstone that ranges in color from brown, to yellow to blue to pink. Irradiating common yellow topaz usually creates pink topaz. Other colors are often created by heat-treating topaz.

Tourmaline
Type, Colors: Black, Blue, Green, Rainbow Hued, Red
Hardness: 7.0 - 7.5
Tourmaline is a dichroic gemstone that comes in many, many different colors; it also appears to have different colors depending on the angle at which it is seen. Tourmaline has the greatest color range of any gemstone – the lighter colors are more valuable than the darker colors. It ranges in color from pink to green to red (rubellite) to purple to blue-green (indicolite) to colorless (achroite) to black. A mineral of variable color that consists of a complex silicate and makes a striking gem when transparent and cut.

Zircon
Type, Colors: Blue, Green, Red, Violet, Yellow
Hardness: 6.0 - 7.5
Zircon (zircon silicate) is a lustrous gemstone that comes in colors ranging from golden brown to red to violet to blue. Pure zircon is colorless, but most zircon stones are brown. Zircon stones can be heat-treated to become blue or colorless; sometimes, heat-treated stones revert to their original color.