"Ten billion years of our eternal empire, reduced to a few sentences."
—Sunrose Diamond
The Gem Empire (Gempire, if you will)- an ancient, ageless civilization, incomprehensible to the outside world... and also the native nation of our main cast.
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The Empire
In General
- Absurdly Huge Population: Asteria Diamond mentions off-hand having "67 trillion kids", aka citizens in the Empire. It actually makes sense upon further inspection considering that Gems, the majority population, are The Needless, and that old Gem production practices involved exploiting the total life potential of a planet. Combined with the hundreds (if not thousands) of colonies there are, and how long the Empire's been active, 67 trillion may be a tame number.
- Awakening the Sleeping Giant: The Empire generally keeps to itself as a neutral party, but other nations, whether on the planetary or intergalactic scale, are absolutely terrified of their involvement in any conflicts, since their technology and overwhelming numbers mean they'll be impossible to stop once they've made their judgement.
- Bazaar of the Bizarre: The bonemarket (read: Gem market) is a nomadic barter-only market and the primary way that goods change hands between Gems and other species. It's apparently infamous for selling unusual/esoteric products, up to and including bones, hence the name.
- Fictionary: While gemsong remains a Starfish Language for the most part, there's also a number of Gem-specific words and concepts that pepper the vocabulary of Gems and Gem-adjacent folks in a Gratuitous French fashion.
- Hegemonic Empire: The Era 3 Empire, thanks to Asteria Diamond's influence, operates on this method, using diplomacy, trade, and general charity in interactions with other nations to establish good relations and have a good image to others. Of course, this is largely out of genuine kindness, but it has the happy side effect of making others far less willing to lose their goodwill.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: Many Gem colloquialisms are related to rocks and cosmology.
- Team Switzerland: So far the Empire has acted like a neutral party since its introduction, only really caring about outside conflict when it affects them personally and trying to maintain friendly relations with as many parties as possible, even if said parties have problems with each other.
- Outside-Context Problem: Gems went through their entire space age without actual first contact and their society, technology, and even psychology are borderline incomprehensible to other species.
- Time Abyss: Gemkind is around 10 billion years old, with the current Empire being at least 4 billion years old.
- Truce Zone: The Empire has been shown to enforce neutrality on their guests and intervene when anyone tries to act on outside legal authority.
- You Are Number 6: Every citizen, Gem or otherwise, is given a facet number upon birth or naturalization, which is considered to be their legal name. It does not need to be their only name, however, as conventional names are still allowed with species who use individual names, and nicknames are completely acceptable forms of address.
Gems
Tropes concerning the Gem race in general.
- Alien Fair Folk: In-universe, Gems are conflated with figures of various human myth, even occasionally being referred to as such, due to their presence influencing human culture. When Steven visits the Maheswaran family in India, he's called a rakshesha, a Hindu folkloric creature used as a slang word for Gems due to the similarity.
- The Ageless: Gems do not age in the mortal sense, and will not die of it, but a Gem's appearance is dependent on their mental state, and thus a Gem's body can reflect mental aging to an extent.
- Bee People: Though not insectoid by any means, Gemkind and their society is vaguely eusocial in structure, with division of labor between biological castes with drastic dimorphism, the sterile general populace, and how reproduction relies on a very small caste. The Diamonds, the royal/reproductive caste, are also the largest Gem type, similar to insect queens.note
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: New gems are made by collecting the aura of all the Diamonds and inserting it into the ground of planets that bear organic life.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: Implied Trope. Gems, over the course of the series, hint at a psychology that is at odds with how humans function.
- Biologically driven concepts like sexuality and beauty are incomprehensible to them- "beauty" as Gems know it is defined by the unique skills, personality, and experiences of an individual.
- A Gem in Aliens Steal Cable is shown to have trouble understanding concepts like theft or trash.
- Not even Steven is safe from this, showing a slight disregard/non-understanding of human government authority in Diamond Drop (emphasizing that the general populace approved of his actions) and a benign The End Justifies The Means attitude (if everything was fixed in the end and people are safe, does it matter what happened?)
- Capital Letters Are Magic: Gems are always written as a proper noun.
- Gender Rarity Value: Steven is the only Gem with a biological gender, as well as the only one that defaults to male pronouns.
- The Diamonds, the only Gems that can create more Gems, are 4 in number.
- Hard Light: Gem bodies/clothing/summoned weapons are made out of solid light projections emitted from their gemstone.
- Heart Drive: The gemstone of a Gem functions as their CPU, forming their thoughts and bodies.
- Hive Caste System: Gems have an extensive variety of biological castes.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: The Gem race cannot sustain themselves, requiring the resources of life-bearing planets, essentially behaving as parasites to all life in the universe. This manner of lifestyle has presumably ended with the advent of Era 3.
- No Biological Sex: As Gems do not reproduce through sexual means, they possess no primary or secondary sex characteristics.
- One-Gender Race: Or rather, no-gender race. Though some Gem types superficially resemble human women, and gemsong translates their pronouns as female.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: Since mind dictates the body in the case of Gems, scarring and physical warping only occurs in cases of mental disturbance or trauma.
- Praetorian Guard: It's subtly implied, both in story and by Word of God, that the Era 3 Crystal Gems serve this function to "Asteria Diamond's" court, operating as his trusted council, guard and secret service all in one.
- Race-Name Basis: Gems are usually referred by their gem type, though there's seemingly some subtle distinction between individual Gems in gemsong, since it's shown that people can use the exact same name to call for different Gems without any confusion. Even Steven is referred to by his gem type by most people.
- Scary Teeth: Revealed in Like A Word, A Sound, A Song to have semi-retractable fangs strong enough to cut metal, with some Gems having multiple pairs.
- Starfish Language: The Gem language, gemsong, is a whalesong-like psychic language with no discernible structure. Due to its psychic nature, it can translate itself into the language of its listeners if a Gem so desires. Listening to it for long periods of time, however, can lead to sickness.
- Technically Naked Shapeshifter: The clothes they wear is part of their projected bodies.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Most Gems can shapeshift, though some castes made in Era 2 do not possess the ability due to resource scarcity.
Jets
An umbrella term for non-Gems who are Gem citizens or under the Empire's protection.
- Alien Abduction: The zumin (Zoomans in SU canon), who make up a decent chunk of the Jet population, are descended from misguided conservation attempts to save the human race from the effects of Gem colonization. After Era 3, the zumin were freed and given independent rights as citizens of the Empire.
- Artificial Hybrid: The largest demographic of Jets appears to be Steven's various accidental creations over the years, and their descendants. He mentions at one point that he's directly responsible for at least three evolutionary lines.
- Artificial Intelligence: There's allusions throughout the series that there are multiple types of beings (such as the wall and statue "Gems" seen in the show, the Prisms, and AI such as SHELL) who are not Gems but are made with Gem-like methods, and occasionally of enough intelligence to have full person rights.
- Meaningful Name: Jet is a type of organic stone that isn't considered a mineral or crystal but is still considered a "precious stone". Jets, the non-Gem citizens of the Empire, are not Gems, but are valued the same as any Gem citizen would be.
- Uplifted Animal: Some Jets, such as Lion and Wolf, did not come from inherently sapient species, but became sapient due to unusual circumstances, and were given personhood rights to reflect such.
- Voluntary Vassal: The Skrull and the Tantalog were formerly landless refugees who surrendered themselves to the Empire for protection against larger powers.
- Was Once a Man: Other Jets were once normal people but became "unbroken" (magical creatures like Lion and Lars) due to medical intervention.
