How Rare Is The Gideon Gemstone In Canon Lore?

Gideon gemstones feel like the sort of thing that legend-makers tuck into the corners of a world and then dare anyone to find—precious, weird, and almost never seen. In canon, they're treated as extraordinarily rare; not just because they’re physically scarce, but because the conditions to form one are written as almost mythic. The rock itself is described with a handful of consistent traits: an inner lattice that refracts not just light but faint pulses of ambient energy, a near-impossible hardness, and a faint hum that sensitive folk claim can attune to a person’s intent. All of that makes them prized by scholars, monarchs, and thieves alike, but the central point in canon is this—Gideon gemstones do not form in ordinary geological time. They’re tied to singular events: meteor-impacts that cross leylines, the dying breaths of ancient titans, or specific rites performed at places where reality thins. Because those catalysts are rare, so are the stones.

If you look through the canonical records (the chronicles, temple registers, and a few adventurer’s journals that are treated as reliable in-world), only a handful of confirmed specimens are ever documented. The lore tends to list three or four named stones with well-known provenance—each one has a whole story attached, like being embedded in a hero’s weapon or locked away in a vault under oath. Beyond those, there are fragmentary references: a map note here, a smuggler’s ledger there, and a few court records where nobles fight over a shard. Importantly, the canon underlines that even when a Gideon gemstone appears, harvesting or splitting it is dangerous and often destructive; many historical attempts to cut them ended in disaster or in the gem’s loss of power. So rarity is a twofold thing—few are created, and even fewer survive intact through human hands.

Culturally, that scarcity magnifies their effect. A single gem can shift politics, empower cults, or become a bargaining chip in peace talks. The canonical tone often leans into the idea that the world rearranges to protect or hide these stones—guard orders, secret cabals, and entire legends about guardianship crop up whenever one turns up. On a more practical note, rumors multiply: impostors, dull glass trinkets, and fake relics flood markets, which makes actually finding a real Gideon gemstone even tougher for anyone who isn’t steeped in historical details. Personally, I love how the canon balances tangible scarcity with mythic weight—the gems are rare in a way that feels earned, not just arbitrary, and that makes any mention of one in a story feel electric and fraught with possibility.