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Amber is a lustrous, honey-golden stone. The most
valuable pieces of amber are transparent, but translucent and cloudy
amber also exists. Sylvans say that there are other types of amber,
including brown, green, blue, and black, but only the golden shade
is honored as "true" amber by the other races. Many pieces of amber
contain insects or small fragments of leaves imprisoned within their
substance. Amber cannot be faceted. Amber is
found worldwide. It is mined along with other gems in parts of the
forested lowlands of Highmount, and dwarves have occasionally
mentioned encountering it far below the earth in other places.
However, establishing a mine solely to retrieve amber is not
profitable, considering that amber can be acquired much more easily
when it washes ashore on both coastlines.
Amber possesses power over the spirits of the
earth and is often used in spirit summoning magics.
Unlike most stones, amber will burn in a candle
flame. When it burns, it produces a white smoke and a sweet scent
reminiscent of pine resin. Priests of Imaera say that amber stones
are the Arkati's tears, shed when she witnesses the disruption of
the natural cycles by intervention of the mortal races or by
intervention of the Arkati of Lornon.
Amber is also unusual because it will float in
salt water. Among the Ashrim, a customary gift for a first-time sea
captain was a piece of amber jewelry, ideally a medallion carved
with the image of his ship. The sentiment ran that, just as the
waves brought the amber to the shore, the captain's ship would come
home safe and sound.
Sylvan legend holds that Imaera sometimes sends
spirits in the form of animals into the forest and marks them with a
necklace, an earring, or another ornament made of amber. To attack
such a spirit would be a grievous crime against the Arkati who sent
it, and therefore they are sacrosanct. The sylvan who receives an
amber talisman as a gift from such a servant is destined for true
greatness.
Many followers of Sheru also take an interest in
amber. They draw an analogy between insects trapped in amber and
minds trapped in nightmares. Iron-strung amber medallions that
contain flies or butterflies are particularly popular.
Tinkerers among the Withycombe gnomes have
discovered that, if a piece of amber is rubbed with a cloth, it will
then attract tiny objects like scraps of paper, a property which has
led to a number of peculiar experiments. To date, none of these
experiments have proved particularly useful, but there is always
tomorrow.
Amber is a very light stone, a solidified, fossilized resin of
now-extinct conifer trees. It's color is usually honey brown.
Sometimes insects or pieces of earth or leaves are present in the
amber. The fossils are mostly insects such as gnats, flies, wasps,
bees and ants. Occasionally more exotic insects are trapped in the
amber such as grasshoppers, preying mantises, beetles, moths,
termites, butterflies, etc. Other non-insect animals are found in
amber too such as spiders, centipedes, scorpions and even frogs and
lizards.
Amber is the first and oldest geological specimen to be used in
jewelry. Archeologists digging primitive sites near the Baltic sea
have found evidence of amber jewelry that is approximately 40,000
years old.
Amber has some unique properties. An ethereal oil can be distilled
from it, though a good size specimen may only yield minute amounts.
When dissolved in oil of turpentine or linseed oil, it creates a
premium varnish. Amber-lac or amber-varnish is extremely hard and
imparts a dark rich color to the wood.
The Greeks called amber elektron,
the word from which electricity was derived because it becomes
electrically charged when rubbed with a cloth and can attract small
particles. They thought it was pieces of solidified sunshine,
believing solidification occurred when pieces were broken off as the
sun sank into the sea.Amber was in fashion among Roman
women, who had the habit of carrying a small piece in the hand for
the odor it emitted when warmed in this way. During this time,
according to Pliny, a small figure carved from the material would
cost more than a healthy slave. The Romans even sent armies to
conquer and control amber producing areas.
By the year 1400, certain orders of knights controlled the trade of
amber and unauthorized possession of raw amber was illegal in most
of Europe.Among other beliefs, amber has been assumed to
alleviate goiters.
Because of the small insects that could have been trapped inside,
amber has helped paleontologists to reconstruct life on earth in its
primal phases, and more than 1,000 extinct species of insects have
been identified this way. |
