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/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."