Etherite Construct

Lorcan peered up at the night sky. Pulling the shemagh away from his mouth, he breathed in the cold air. The stars were unusually bright this night and he could trace the plough easily in the blackness between them. Glancing back at the spice train behind him, he waved them on and started down a long dune. The trading post was close.

He wasn't even halfway down the slope when a cry arose from behind. Men shouting for people to take cover and to look out from above. He crouched beside his camel and stared wide-eyed at the sky, desperately looking for any danger. But all he could see was a shooting star, trailing above them. Then to his astonishment it turned in the air and started to descend on their position. Moments later the crystal shards came and all chaos was let loose.

Explosions lit up the trading caravan, bright flashes of light as crystal missiles were indiscriminately flung in all directions. Screams of the wounded and dying filled the night air, and panicked animals struggled to break free of their harnesses to escape the disorder. Lorcan managed to glimpse two white burning eyes and a mouthful of long fangs as the hostile creature flew by. And then it was gone again, as quickly as it had come, flying away through the night sky until it was merely a shimmering line across the blanket of night. But when Lorcan looked to his people again, they were in complete disarray, many of them lying dead on the cold sands. When the cosmos was borne into creation and the stars were placed into the heavens, everything had its place and travellers crossed the known worlds by the shapes they had joined together in the sky. As centuries passed, some of these stars were destroyed, either striking other objects or simply their light dying away, obliterated into tiny pieces. Meteors lit up the night for evermore, tracing lines in the blackness as they shot through the sky.

Astronomers have studied this phenomenon for many years and attribute the trailing light to a gathering of crystal dust upon the meteor. A crystal that holds great value when it falls to the land and is acquired by the people. But then chaos arrived, angry that mortals should benefit from such riches thrown from the heavens. Uul breathed life into these dead rocks and created the Gem Meteor, a creature that soars through the sky and flings crystal shards from its body at anyone unfortunate enough to get in its way. These crystalline missiles splinter and crack upon impact, ricocheting into everything nearby and inflicting devastating damage. Sometimes the meteorites descend into such a frenzy that they become completely indiscriminate about who or what they fire their shards at.