Crystals, what can’t they do? If you need to trap an ancient evil, power up a doomsday device, or send a small child on a series of world-defining fetch quests, crystals have got you covered. One might say too well covered.
I think crystals have become a lazy McGuffin in lieu of any other power source for magic, robots, or rituals. Here’s a d66 list of alternative energy sources to help you escape from the crystal caves:
11. Blood vials. Life essence, drained thin and red.
12. Star fragment. Cast off skin of a cosmic body, glowing with otherworldly light.
13. Imp in a hamster wheel. If idle hands are the devil’s play things, then busy feet are the devil’s business.
14. Dinosaur Bones. Hidden within the earth, remnants of the forms of extinct megafauna. Bird bones will do in a pinch.
15. Ectoplasm. Spiritual residue from hauntings, things powered by this have eerie afterglows and erratic behavior.
16. Hair of an Elf. Rich and radiant, worth more than if it was spun from pure gold.
21. Ahab’s Hatred. Pure and fanatical energy, enough to drive a man to the end of the world. Enough to make a man grand, godly, and un-godly.
22. Moon Fragment. Stones from Earth’s sister, wanting to return to their progenitor.
23. Goblin in a hamster wheel. Nobody work ‘arder than da green guys.
24. Bark of the World Tree. All the world's fates are written on the bark; to change the bark is to change the fabric of life.
25. Raw Amber. Crystalline tree life-fluid from primordial titans.
26. Another monster. Need to trap a fiend? Hire an archfiend? Need to power your staff of fireballs? Enlist a very small dragon.
31. Faerie Dust. Twinkling, tricksy magic from twinkling tricksy folk.
32. Fruit of the Jub Jub Tree. Fiercely guarded by the bipedal jubjub bird, naturally. Swelling with ripeness, fit to provide nutrients for months.
33. Skulls of Saints. Divine in life, with all impure thoughts driven from their mortal vessels, they are doubly divine in death.
34. Money. A commodity so powerful as to make the world turn.
35. Electro-plasma. Residue from when a ghost is hit by lightning. Shockingly efficient.
36. Vibrant Song. Choral resonances coupled and folded over each other in spiritual unity.
41. Oil & Steel. That which powers machines and gives metal thoughts. Steel to construct and replace flesh.
42. Uranium. Hey, if it works in real life, why can't it work in fantasy land? Give your demon a uranium reactor core, see who cares.
43. Mathematical certainty. Nothing more irrefutable than a well postulated formula. Nothing holds greater weight in the courts of order.
44. Never melt ice. Frozen in the deepest heart of the northern most polar, this ice never thaws in the face of the hottest flame.
45. Giant Hamster in a hamster wheel. When a hamster, imp, or goblin won’t cut it.
46. Rasputin’s seed. Potency sourced straight from a warlock. Comes in a small flask
51. Tris(bipyridine) ruthenium (II). Small, red crystals that amplify any light shown on them. A common catalyst for alchemists.
52. Lost innocence. The kind found discarded after a coming of age story. Fragile and ephemeral.
53. Mirror that’s seen the face of god. Looking into it, it seems to only reflect your visage.
54. Philosophical zen. Power found in asserting “All things are as they should be, and all things will be as they must.”
55. Chains forged in the fires of Mt Doom. Hellish steel, imbued with the hatred of the flames that forged them, strong enough to restrain a god.
56. Dream of the sleeping leviathan. As the leviathan sleeps, the world turns. As it dreams, it reshapes the turning of the world.
61. Small tornados. Marginally easier to control than wind elementals, pure rotational energy.
62. Gravity. The force to push and pull, typically given only to heavenly bodies.
63. Tears of the Monarch. Whose golden brow gives us succor, and who weeps for wretched humanity.
64. Books of Knowledge. Wizards and the illiterate hoard these for the same reason: not for the ink on the page, but for the power within.
65. Experience points. If leveling up via XP turns a common farmhand into a potent fighter, would else can raw experience do?
66. Friendship. There’s nothing more powerful.
