When you deal with diamonds and other precious resources, it is vitally important to have methods available to determine the legitimacy of the resources you’re handling. ConCorp handles thousands of diamonds and other ores every day and using the ritual outlined below, we have been able to avoid handling illegitimate goods.
The is old, old magic, something I came up with a long time ago, before the Vex, when I w as doing all I could to stop Scar handling any of the blood diamonds that the logfellas were trying to pay him off with. It’s a simple process, though not a quick one, and requires some precise timings in order to make sure you get the correct results.
The materials are vitally important. You need the purest quartz to make a 3x3 square floor, and then you surround that with diamond block walls to make the pool itself. The diamonds must be touching the water. Now, around the diamond blocks, add a layer of pillar quartz blocks, oriented in an east-west direction so that the carvings are facing and aligned with the sunset.
Now once you’ve got that all set up, you wait til sunset to test it with legitimate items first. Throw them in the water and if they’re the real deal, they’ll simply float in the center of the pool. Any other result is proof of the illegitimacy of the items in question and those items should be discarded immediately.
Honestly, when the idea came to be in a dream, I was so sure it wouldn’t work. Why on earth would throwing diamonds into a pool of water that’s surrounded by quartz and diamonds work? I had always sensed some magic in diamonds but had never been able to tap into it. I only knew of quartz as a natural amplifier that improved the power of my magical experiments. But I thought it worth a try, and I was so surprised to discover it worked.
It wouldn’t be until later, when I joined the Vex, that I finally began to understand the currents I was tapping into. It felt so good to know my methods had been sound, even if I didn’t know why.
The ritual works a little differently now, of course. It doesn’t need invocations to the Vex, offerings of cake, and a little Vex magic added to the water to work, but I find it adds some comfort to it. It isn’t just me throwing diamonds into the water and hoping for the best. it’s adding extra layers of magic to it.
Indeed, one of the most peaceful aspects of the ritual is waiting for the sunset, just watching and waiting in the dusk light, seeing how the sun is reflected in the water. I often feel the Vex very strongly in those moments.
The timing of sunset is one I’m still not sure I can explain though. I know the sunlight needs to be reflected in the water at a particular place, but what that does yet I still don’t know. I just know it doens’t work at any other time of the day. But I do know it works if you do it right, and that will save you from handling illegitimate diamonds. You’re welcome.