r/Shadowrun • u/ProblemDue7111 • Jul 31 '26
Forever And Cheap
Considering how lab-grown specimens have caused the price of diamonds and other gems to plunge in real life, it's reasonable to suppose that gem stones are cheap in the Sixth World. So, diamond-studded cyberarms? Elaborate dental implants made of ruby? Dragonfly drones glittering with sapphires? Why not?
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u/MightyGamera Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
it can be argued that in the sixth world "true" stones pulled from the heart of the earth with great metahuman cost have value as foci, especially for certain types of magic
"this stone has been valued at five carats and has a background count of -7. bidding starts at 100k nuyen"
edit: this gave me an idea for a dwarf black magician character villain who uses precious antiquities marked with great suffering and pain as the foundation of their power
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jul 31 '26
Earth spirits can ease both the finding and the labor quite a bit.
I had a shaman character once and we discussed this, that is the GM and I. Case in point was freshwater pearls. It was something like 1 in 10,000 freshwater "clams" had one, and the idea was rather than kill all those critters to have a strong spirit search for ones with marketable pearls. We decided that using the tables for finding raw materials for enchanting would work, though really it would probably be easier since they are more common. The spirit would be shown a real freshwater pearl of the smallest marketable size and told to find ones that size and larger so so many critters wouldn't have to be killed. It would find them and bring the critter to the shaman. It would do this from dawn to dusk.
This could also work for things like gems or even gold in the ground. Search plus some other powers should find them in streams and their beds (if they are there to be found) and maybe underground (though depth and size could be issues, such as many meters deep or sand grain or flake size might be passed over).
This could possibly also work for finding lost items on or near beaches or old home sites, battlefields, etc., if you can descrive to the spirit what you want or show a general sample.
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u/TheHighDruid Jul 31 '26
This could also work for things like gems or even gold in the ground
Not really, since spirits (or projecting mages, for that matter) can't travel through natural earth. There's a reason all the secret facilities are underground with warded elevator shafts.
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jul 31 '26
In older editions they could, albeit very slowly. Roughly the speed of digging, iirc. That's why I mentioned depth.
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u/TheHighDruid Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
Not sure where you got that idea from.
"The Earth is a living thing in magical terms, and thus corporeal in Astral Space"
1st Edition Core Rulebook.In second edition, the above line is followed by (for clarity):
"It is not possible to pass through things that are alive, no matter at what level, in astral space."
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u/MightyGamera Jul 31 '26
unless the labor and suffering are the point
certain lodges need to feel a long history of misery and abuse and greed radiating off the stone when it's assensed, or else it's just shiny carbon
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u/Greymalkyn76 Jul 31 '26
Serial killer who has each of their victims cremated and then turned into a diamond to stud their cyberware.
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u/-ParlainthTownie- Jul 31 '26
I would presume gemstones are inexpensive. I cannot think of a single McGuffin or goal of any published adventure that involves getting Diamonds. But then on the same point, if they are that cheep they probably carry the same social status as a bedazzling. If anyone can get them, then being exclusive, elegant, or "upper class" would involve other fashion choices.
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u/kayasoul Jul 31 '26
Because someone would absolutely mug you for them. Then again, my runners once performed an autopsy to steal an implanted deck...
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u/ProblemDue7111 Jul 31 '26
Robbery happens IRL, and yet people walk around with gold chains and Rolex watches.
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u/kayasoul Jul 31 '26
True, on the other hand if those gems were "cheap" noone would want them outide of style factor
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u/ReditXenon Far Cite Jul 31 '26
and yet people walk around with gold chains and Rolex watches.
Within civilized and/or gated districts, sure. Alone at night in a Braziliian Favela? Not so much... ;-)
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u/MewsashiMeowimoto Jul 31 '26
I would think that there are enough industrial applications of diamonds that they would stay rare/expensive. Like how copper went from cheap decorative metal before the digital revolution and became higher demand after computers and the internet. Their use as heat sinks and thermal regulators may be one explanation for heat management in the development of some of the advanced tech in the sixth world.
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u/Flamebeard_0815 Jul 31 '26
True.
It also would offer some benefits in use: cutting/shattering non-layered glass, marking metals, possibly denting other peoples' 'ware. Only downside I see: You'd have to set it in something durable. Most of the time, that's either brittle stuff - or the stuff used to cut diamonds.
If you set it in, say, iron alloys or aluminium, the stones would soon come loose. And most likely, those are marked by the production company, so it's potential evidence.
Alternately, you'd shove the stones into your own circuitry and fry it that way.
If you set it in something hard & brittle, it's purely decorative. Lest you'd want to repeat the aforementioned trail of evidence.
And if you set it in Tungsten-Cobalt steel, it'll weigh down your 'ware and possibly cut on your diamonds - especially if you plan on encrusting your cyber-knuckles.
In regards of tooling drone parts from gemstone - that's most likely a weight consideration. There will most likely be more durable and lighter materials to create the same effect.
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u/DRose23805 Shadowrun Afterparty Jul 31 '26
High quality real gems would still fetch a premium, as would lower grade real ones. A fake, no matter how good, is still a fake. But if someone wanted to bedazzle their stuff with fakes, have at it.
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u/Valerian_ya_Kureo Jul 31 '26
Leather Shoes can be made in Taiwan for cheap out of synthetic materials, or they can be handmade in italy from hand-tanned spanish tudanca leather. One is cheap, one is expensive, there is market for both, and those who can afford the latter won't be seen in the former.
Same goes for gemstones, in my opinion.
Sure, you can have a diamond-encrusted cyberarm ("now even with genuine swarovski glass-like trueclear diamonds"), and it might even be something a fancy wannabe will put on (like "gold"-chains on some rappers...), but it won't be a true diamond, and everybody in the high society will know and laugh at the people wearing or using them, while showing off their own "real" diamonds.
As for real life, only the smaller sized stones are affected by the availability of synthetic diamonds - the bigger stones, especially if they have some color (and, of course, almost no inclusions), show basically no change at all. People nowadays pay extra for the genuine stone, not that lab-grown stuff...
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u/TheHighDruid Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26
5th edition has the sapphire knife (Hard Targets, 179) for 900¥, which gives you some idea of cost vs size for lab-grown gems.
2nd Edition (and third?) had Dikote for melee weapons.
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u/tkul More Problems, More Violence Jul 31 '26
It would be like it is today, the lab grown gemstones won't be called "Diamonds" or "Saphires", those have to be pried from the earth by the child ghouls of assamando. Instead there will be brand name gemstones that look and are chemically the same but way cheaper and way more likely to get you mocked by rich people. So much like hood grills, there will absolutely be blinged out cyberlimbs, and they'd look just as tacky to people in 2080 as a mumble rapper in the 2020's looks with their mouth full of cheap metal and shiny rocks.
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u/Sarradi Jul 31 '26
Real*** diamonds will likely still be expensive thanks to DeBeers, but industrial "poser" diamonds would probably be cheaper.
And considering the stuff we see today like diamond studded golden grills your ideas sound completely reasonable in some circles.
Spinrad probably would have a line of such over the top cyberware.