Gemstone Assault

Prepare to be jeweled.

Gems in the realm of fiction are often either a battery for some uberfied Doomsday Device or just some fancy-schmancy decoration. In at least several occasions, an Uncle Pennybags will simply show off the jewels in question as proof of his wealth. But some people prefer showing off their shiny jewels the violent way, mostly in the form of projectiles. And considering that they're much harder than ordinary rocks, painful injuries will most certainly ensue... big time.

May be the result of the ability to turn body parts into gems.

A Sub-Trope of Dishing Out Dirt, since gems are still from the earth.

This ability is often found among Crystalline Creatures and other beings with Gem Tissue, who are often able to fire parts of their bodies in this manner. Compare The Power of Glass (ability to form and manipulate glass), An Ice Person (manipulating ice crystals, among other cold things), Crystal Weapon (when the gemstone itself is shaped into a weapon), Power Crystal, Mineral MacGuffin.

Contrast Crystal Prison.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Female Titan (Annie) from Attack on Titan can crystallize her skin in order to protect her weak spot or enhance the power of her punches. With a crystallized fist, she can break the Rogue Titan's jaw off with one punch. Eren later gains the ability by being injected with the armor serum. This is also how the Wall Titans produced the Walls.
• Mars in Black Clover has Mineral Magic and a potent one in fact, usable for many different effects. He can form a crystal armor around himself, unleash sharp pillars, a crystal wall, and an enormous crystal sword.
• Delicious in Dungeon has treasure bugs which, indeed, look like treasure, such as coins, rings, and even a tiara. While there are some that look like cut and polished gemstones, they haven't been encountered yet.
• In Digimon Tamers, Renamon's signature attack is Diamond Storm, which would lead you to think it is this trope. However, this is subverted; the original attack name is "Fox Leaf Arrowheads," as Renamon is actually firing salvos of extremely sharp glowing leaves.
• Inuyasha: Housenki is an oyster demon with an affinity for jewels, who uses adamantine (the term "diamond" didn't exist at this time) for both offense and defense. The titular character's Tessaiga takes this ability, named the Adamant Barrage.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: Noriaki Kakyoin's Stand, Hierophant Green, has a technique called Emerald Splash, where it secretes green liquid from its hands that then crystallizes into gems which are then fired in rapid bursts.
• My Hero Academia has Yu Hojo, whose Quirk Crystallization allows him to produce crystals from his body, which he uses for both offense and defense. It's also part of his Dark and Troubled Past, as his boss once used him to produce gems to sell, only to abandon him once he figured out that the gems were monetarily worthless.
• Guren, a Filler Villain in the Naruto anime, had the ability to crystalize any material and turn it into weapons, such as creating snowflake-shaped shurikens from the moisture in the air.
• "Diamond Jozu" from One Piece can coat his body in a diamond shell and enhance his attacks with it.
• In Yes! Pretty Cure 5, Cure Dream gets a Mid-Season Upgrade called "Crystal Shoot", which lets her shoot a blast of pink crystals at enemies.

Card Games

• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The Gem Knight archetype are knights with gem-like armor. They can fuse together and become more powerful. Gem-Knight Crystal is their leader and he has the most fusions. The strongest is Gem Knight Master Diamond. He later becomes Cairngorgon, Antiluminescent Knight, and then El-Shadoll Egrystal.
  • There's also the Crystal Beasts (Gem Beasts in the original), a group of seven bejeweled beasts each representing a color of the rainbow. Their main gimmick is moving to the Spell/Trap Card Zone as Continuous Spells when they would otherwise be destroyed, which is depicted as transforming into their respective crystals. The ace of the archetype is Rainbow Dragon.

Comic Books

• Captain America: Diamondback uses diamonds as throwing weapons... fake ones, of course.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Scrooge McDuck has a private bathroom behind a Secret Door where the showerhead sprays cut jewels instead of water. Presumably the same ability that lets him dive into heaps of money unscathed turns being pelted with sharp rocks into a relaxing shower. His nephews attempt to use it to keep the Beagle Boys at bay, but it's not quite painful enough to work.
• The Flash: Golden Glider uses gemstones as weapons, ranging from fast-growing crystals to heavy leaden pearls.
• Guardians of the Galaxy: In Guardians of the Galaxy (2020), Star-Lord uses his Element Gun set to the element of earth to imprison a goddess with diamonds. Rocket asks why he never did that before, especially with the Guardians' cash-flow problems, and Quill admits he'd honestly never thought about it (though it does drain the gun's power-supply).
• Power Girl: Atlee has power over earth and can control any type of mineral. She once created a crystalline sphere for instance.
• Teen Titans: Kole Weathers has the ability to create and shape independent masses of silicon crystal, a power she gained due to her father's experiments on her.
• X-Men:
  • X-Men 2099 has Krystalin, a mutant capable of growing beautiful crystals out of airborne mineral content. When in a good mood, she just grows them around enemies to trap them but she is fully capable of projecting them as a torrent of razor-sharp shards.
  • Roxanne Washington aka Bling! (Yes, the exclamation point is part of her name) has diamond-like skin which grants her enhanced strength, durability and the ability to fire diamond shards as projectiles.

Fan Works

• Pokémon Wack: Utilized by many Crystal-type attacks, such as Crystal Throw, Diamond Tail, and Gem Scatter where the user uses crystals to attack enemies.
• Vow of the King: Isane's shikai, Kesshōgiri, takes the form of a dozen jade crystals which she can store kido spells in as well as shape how she pleases.

Film — Animated

• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree, when the Humane Seven start developing super-powers, Rarity's power is the ability to generate a sort of "gem barrier" that can be used both defensively and offensively.

Film — Live-Action

• Among a multitude of other techniques involving his crystals, the titular SpaceGodzilla in Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla can summon huge crystal missiles called Homing Ghosts by raising them from the ground, then hurling them at the opponent via his telekinesis. He can also have them rain down from the sky for good measure. Though they move slowly, the sheer quantity of these crystals make them extremely difficult to dodge.

Literature

• The Heroes of Olympus has Hazel, a daughter of Pluto who's the Roman god of death and riches, who can control and use gems and precious metals to attack.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Arena": Captain Kirk used a primitive cannon to fire diamonds at the Gorn. The novelization of the episode makes it clearer that he's using diamond dust as one of the ingredients in the primitive gunpowder he's made (diamond is a form of carbon and when finely divided burns just like coal does), so the diamonds are not only the projectiles, they're also the propellant.

Pro Wrestling

• Non-lethal, but injurious: MJF has used the Dynamite Diamond Ring, an implement he has won each of the three years it's been contested in AEW, as a weapon in quite a few matches.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In early editions, minerals are considered to be a "quasilement" — that is, a secondary element created from the fusion of an element with positive or negative energy. In this case, minerals are created by the meeting of earth and positive energy to create a "pure" version of the original element, with an associated plane between the elemental plane of Earth and the pole of positive energy, alongside an associated menagerie of mineral quasilementals, mineral mephits, and assorted Crystalline Creatures.
  • An amethyst dragon's breath weapon consists of a single giant, exploding crystal that they can spit with pinpoint accuracy.
  • The "Gembomb" spell does exactly that, enhancing low-grade gemstones with explosive power as projectiles.
  • Gem stalkers can fire the crystals growing from their bodies after imbuing with various magical effects.
  • One possible result of using a Wand of Wonder was firing a stream of ten to forty gems at the target, each doing one Hit Point worth of damage.
  • Greyhawk: Nystul's Crystal Dagger spell and its improved version, Nystul's Crystal Dirk, create temporary enchanted weapons that can stun undead and fiends. Otiluke's Diamond Screen is a relative of Blade Barrier, a glittering wall of summoned razor-sharp shards.
  • Tomb of Horrors: In the original module, one of the very few options to defeat the Demilich Acererak's Nigh-Invulnerability is for a Thief character to throw gemstones at him. Particularly sadistic since the gems in Acererak's crypt are some of the most valuable treasure in the module... and are destroyed if used to attack him.
• Grimtooth's Traps: One of the titular traps is a waterfall with a secret chamber behind it. Unfortunately for any character who tries to step through, the waterfall is made up of tiny diamonds. Anyone stepping through will be reduced to a misty red vapor.
• Pathfinder: A crystal dragon's breath weapon is a flurry of razor-sharp crystals.

Video Games

• In AMID EVIL, the Star of Torment is a crystal mace that fires nail-like crystal shards when swung. A killing blow will launch the target into the nearest wall and pin them there. With Soul Mode active, you can repeatedly make entire head fly off to blast enemies with crystal shards. The Crystal Masters of the Arcane expanse fight using an Evil Counterpart to the Star and a few ride a Power Up Mount that lets them use their maces' Soul Mode attack making them some of the most dangerous enemies in the game.
• Crystalisks in Borderlands 2 can launch a Flechette Storm of crystal shards at the player, or a timed, explosive crystal that acts like a sticky bomb.
• In Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, one of the weapons that you can get early in the game (provided that you stand still in a hole that you just made in the wall for several seconds) is the jewel knuckles, which will remain your most powerful weapon for some time.
• The Power Customization in City of Heroes allows you to change Earth-based Powers into Crystal-based Powers. It's purely cosmetic, however.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun has a critter known as "tiberian fiend", a horse-sized quadruped that attacks by throwing chunks of Tiberium crystals at its targets.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade has the Tiberium Flechette Gun, a small nailgun-like weapon that launches shards of Tiberium. It's good against everything except mutants, who it heals, which makes it a shame that it only appears after mutants take over for most basic enemies.
• In Dark Souls, Crystal Sorcery is the trademark of the Paledrake Seath the Scaleless. Some of the most powerful offensive Sorceries in the games include a spell that launches homing crystals at your foes and one that hurls an enormous crystal spear at them. Seath himself unleashes Crystal breath in battle that inflicts the extremely dangerous Curse status effect. In the first game, a skilled sorcerer drives himself insane studying Seath's secrets and manages to reverse engineer the Crystal breath (albeit without the Curse properties), creating the White Dragon Breath Sorcery. Said sorcery returns in the third game, though this time it requires transposing the soul of a man who delved too deep into Seath's archives and became a pale draconic abomination himself. A player who wants to use a Sorcerer build would do well to pick up Crystal Sorceries when they become available.
• Dead Rising lets you throw a bunch of diamonds at zombies. It's mainly just for stunning them, though.
  • With a high enough level (and some skill books in tow) gems become a a faster-to-find replacement for the shotgun.
  • In Dead Rising 2 you can combine gems with a leaf-blower to make an effective shotgun or with a flashlight to make a Laser Blade.
• In Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode, gems can be thrown with deadly effect up to and including severed limbs. Much like anything else in the game.
• Elden Ring: The mysterious Crystalians are golems made out of bluish crystal and make their weapons out of the same material. The ones with staves also wield magic that tosses shards of crystal at enemies.
• EXTRAPOWER: Star Resistance: Forcestar's unique ability is to produce up to three force gems that circle around him, blocking bullets up until they break. With three gems out at once, Forcestar can launch them forward to explode on the first enemy they touch, creating a massive radius of light that destroys all bullets within and deals massive damage to enemies. One of the most powerful abilities in the game, especially if your quick mashing makes the game launch two gem bursts at once.
• In Fallen London, a particularly expensive Diamond Ring ups your fighting capability as well as your persuasiveness. Anyone who's ever gotten punched by someone who didn't take off their jewelry can attest to why.
  A huge diamond always leaves an impression
• Final Fantasy:
  • The series has several weapons made out of gemstones, up to including the Diamond Sword.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, the first boss of Lake Bresha is a second encounter with the Manasvin Warmech, a scorpion-like mecha. The Warmech's most dangerous attack in this battle is to use its tail to fling chunks of crystal from its surroundings at the party.
• FTL: Faster Than Light
  • There are extremely rare weapons that fire human-sized chunks of crystal at enemy ships. These crystals can pass through low-level shields and will generally wreck ships like no one's business.
  • The Crystal race (obtained from a long sidequest) throw crystals as a ranged attack when facing non-adjacent foes. They can also coat doors in crystals to keep anyone from getting in or out of the room.
  • In fact, a ship made out of crystals is the reward for a ridiculously convoluted and RNG dominated sidequest, starting out the game with it will tear everything apart well into the late game.
• Gacha World:
  • Celestial Alice stretches her wings and crystals shoot out from inside her wings that deal damage to her enemies when summoned.
  • Tormentor Seiya slams his massive scythe-head shaped crystal flail that replaces his lost arm at his enemies when summoned.
• SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc.)'s Galactic Adventures. One of the available weapons was the Gemstone, which is fired as a missile. It moves toward its target (sometimes moving a space in the wrong direction) and detonates after moving six spaces, whether it has reached the target or not.
• In GemCraft series, you put your gems in towers and traps to shoot at monsters, put gems in amplifiers to increase the power of the gems in towers and traps, sacrificing gems to shrines for a massive attack, or just using them as a bomb to deal direct damage.
• Granblue Fantasy has De La Fille, who fights with seven gems which, depending on her version and uncap level, appear as regular gems, fruit-shaped, or turned into weapons. Her charge attacks involve using all of her gems for various kind of attacks.
• Hyper Light Drifter: The sharp spires of the western Crystal Landscape do not merely gleam, they grow explosively fast. At a touch, tiny shards turn into Spikes of Doom.
  • Those that do not impale the Drifter can engulf them in a temporary Crystal Prison.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: Some of Pit's weapon fire jewels, such as the Royal Blade and the Crystal Bow.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the Snow White D-Link's ultimate Finishing Move is Sweet Seven, which creates seven gems of different colors representing the Dwarfs and repeatedly bombarding enemies with them.
  • In Kingdom Hearts Union X, the Jewel Sorceress and Jewel Princess event Heartless can attack by lifting the crystals out of their headgear and firing them at the player for a giant Flechette Storm. They can also fire Magic Missile Storms from the Power Crystals that form their lower bodies.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby Super Star Ultra introduces Wham Bam Jewel. They use their gem hands similar to Wham Bam Rock from The Great Cave Offensive.
  • In Kirby: Planet Robobot, the four abilities present in the Team Kirby Clash mode get a fantasy makeover, with the Doctor ability resembling an alchemist and substituting gemstones for its usual pills in all of its attacks.
• Before he was reworked, Taric the Gem Knight from League of Legends wore armour made out of gems, carried a large gem-studded shield and wielded a massive hammer studded with sharp gems. His gems were the source of his magic and he could both stun enemies with a dazzling blast of light from his shield and cause his crystalline aura to shatter explosively, shredding nearby enemies, as well as buff up nearby allies with the power of his radiance. Truly, truly, truly outrageous.^note Post-rework as Taric the Shield of Valoran the gem theme was downplayed considerably, as his gem-studded armour and shield were removed and the crystal-studded hammer was replaced with a sort of three-flanged mace with a single gem floating in the space between the flanges. However he still has a number of gems that float above his shoulder which he uses as a focus for his starlight powers.
• The Crystal Knight enemies from the Lunar series can attack with crystal-like projectiles or drop on the heroes from above with its lower torso, which just so happens to be a pointy crystal.
• Mega Man:
  • Both Crystal Man from Mega Man 5 and Jewel Man from Mega Man 9 use gem-based attacks. The Crystal Joe from the former's stage also does this.
  • Mega Man X2: Crystal Snail's Crystal Hunter, although it's more of a Crystal Prison type weapon.
  • Mega Man X8 has Earthrock Trilobyte's Crystal Wall weapon.
• Diamond swords are high-tier weapons in Minecraft, second only to netherite swords, which are crafted from them. Other diamond tools (axes, picks, etc.) can also be used as weapons, with varying degrees of effectiveness.
• Monster Sanctuary has three attacks themed around gemstones, all of which are classed as magical and part of the Earth element.
• Rarity in the fangame My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic can delay gems, straight up launch them, cause them to erupt beneath her opponent, or just summon a massive storm below them.
  • Rarity (rechristened Generous Mare) also uses gems to fight in the fangame Mega Pony. She can use gems as explosive mines, launch them at the opponent, or surround herself with a shield of them. After beating her, Mega Pony gains the ability to similarly use gems as a shield and launch them at his foes.
• Within Nethack, gems can be thrown, but make bad improvised weapons. The main benefit is that valuable gems can be identified from glass by throwing them at unicorns, which also increases your Luck Stat.
• The Pokémon move "Power Gem" is this, though it involves channeling light via gems. Also, it counts as a Rock-Type attack.
  • There's also the event legendary Diancie, whose signature move Diamond Storm is a Flechette Storm of diamonds.
• The Crystallix armor in Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters allows Ratchet to deal crystal based strikes with his Omniwrench.
• RuneScape:
  • Players can craft gemstone-tipped crossbow bolts, which when enchanted with the corresponding spells grant them a number of effects in combat.
  • Gemstone dragons started off as the offspring of the crystal dragon created by Vicendithas, which he hid in Karamja in an attempt to keep them away from Kerapac. In combat, they can occasionally attack the player with a barrage of concentrated gemstones emerging from the ground, which deal massive damage unless the player dodges the attack by moving. They come in dragonstone, onyx and hydrix variants.
  • The Black Stone Dragon in the Dragonkin Laboratory is a gemstone dragon infused with black stone. To say that she exceeded expectations after her creation is putting it mildly: the black stone implants drove her insane as they allowed Xau-Tak to influence her, and by the time the player fights her they effectively do her a kindness by killing her.
• Both Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana have the spells Gem Missle and Diamond Shards (respectively), which first causes a large diamond to pop out of the ground and burst into smaller spinning gem fragments, finally shooting straight at the target one after the other. In the latter's case, when targeting enough enemies, the assault is so much, it causes slowdown.
• The Queen from Shatterline has an Orbiting Particle Shield made of spiked crystal shards, which she can shoot at you as a projectile attack.
• Oddly, Super Mario Bros.'s Daisy forgoes the Green Thumb she usually has in sports games for the power to cause crystals to rise from the ground and punch the ball with a crystal fist in Mario Strikers Charged.
• Several of Mimi's attacks in Super Paper Mario involve hurling rubees at you, which you're encouraged to pick up and throw right back at her.
• Chenjesu in Star Control are living crystals and make almost everything from crystals. Their ship weapon is "Photon Crystal Shards" — big gem-like bombs that are near-impossible to intercept, cause great damage with direct hits and even when miss explode in shrapnel.
• Temtem has the Crystal type. Most of its Temtem have Gem Tissue or are Crystalline Creatures, and its techniques involve pelting the target with summoned gemstones, or using them as shields.
• Diamonds are one of the most common bullet types in Touhou Project.
• Tyrian has the Secret Level GEM WAR, where you fight a bunch of ships that shoot destructible (and sometimes homing) gems at you.
• Unreal has the Stinger, the weapon shooting crystal shards like a machine gun. Unreal Tournament 3 merges it with the more standard Minigun into the "Stinger Minigun", primary fire shooting out bullet-sized shards like the old Minigun and Secondary Fire launching much larger chunks with a decent amount of knockback (and able to pin enemies to walls with killing blows) like the Stinger.
• Warframe
  • The Dagger-Axe skin for the Scindo replaces its blades with daggers made from rubedo.
  • Exergis is a shotgun-styled Corpus gun that generates radioactive crystals by sliding the handgrip and at the pull of the trigger shatters them into tiny, painful pieces.
  • Citrine, the geode Warframe, creates crystals and gems for all of her abilities. She can blast enemies with mineral shards, create a protective shell around allies, summon a prismatic gem that fires lasers, and encase foes in crystal.
• Many high level clubs in World of Warcraft are made of glowing crystals — sometimes the weapon consists of a handle with crystals floating around it. Somehow they are very efficient.
  • A few rock giants are actually made of crystal and may throw pieces at you or trap you inside gemstones.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night
  • Rin Tohsaka is a practitioner of Jewel Magic. Usually, the jewels are just charged up with a bit of magic every day to supply greater amount of energy when needed, but they also make good explosives. This also explains why she's such a miser: buying all those jewels is expensive, even for someone as wealthy as Rin.
  • Rin's Finnish Rival, Luvia, also uses jewels. This is because Rin's ancestor defeated the twin sister of Luvia's ancestor in the Third Grail War and stole their family's magic.

Web Original

• One Darwin Award winner met his death in a crystal cave. He tried to steal a beautiful crystal stalactite and managed to break it off the ceiling... while standing directly underneath.
• Magical Girl Policy: The leader of the Spirit Guard, Spirit Guard Valor, has an attack which allows her to use crystals to slice away her foes.
• In SMPLive, FitMC uses End Crystals as explosives, a tactic he picked up from his time on 2b2t.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Controlling crystals is an extention of earthbending. The Earth Kingdom's capital has a cavern beneath it with several crystals, where they see much use in combat in the Book 2 finale. Aang even makes a protective shell of armor out of them.
• Diamondhead in Ben 10 can naturally shoot out crystalline projectiles, create structures made out of diamond to protect him from attacks that surpass his insane durability and can shapeshift his limbs into weapons. Later shows give him the ability to make his projectiles volatile, create larger structures and the ability to telekinetically move them and the ability to encase his enemies in crystal.
• Both the heroes and villains of LoliRock have the power to summon crystals as their main methods of attack, with both a Projectile Spell variety and the ability to summon it out of the ground.
• King Sombra, the villain of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Crystal Empire", seems to have for his main power to grow huge, dark, spiky crystals out of the ground. Princess Cadance can also conjure spiky magical crystals at will for both offensive and mundane purposes, which fits her title as "The Crystal Princess". Twilight Sparkle has technically learned that magic, but it works by manipulating the crystals of the Empire, making it of limited utility elsewhere.
• The Crystal Gems of Steven Universe belong to a race of sapient gemstones who wield fantastical magic and decorative melee weapons with magical properties. However, they don't attack with their gemstones themselves, as their gems are their Heart Drive, and damage to the gem cannot be regenerated except by Rose Quartz's (and later Steven's) unique healing power. Instead, they can summon weapons out of said gemstones to fight with.
• Diaspro from Winx Club seems to have power over gemstones as she attacks Bloom with them each time they fight.

Real Life

• Obsidian, a type of volcanic glass, has been used as the cutting part of weapons. Amazingly enough, obsidian shatters in such a way that its edges are sharper than the sharpest metallic blade. It is occasionally used for surgical instruments nowadays since it leaves very clean and neat wounds because of that.
• Jade (particularly the nephrite variety) is unbelievably tough, so much that few forces possible for a human being can actually crack it, even today. (Strangely, despite its toughness, it's slightly soft. It can't be cracked but it can be ground to shape, by diamonds.) Jade is so invulnerable to impacts that ancient Chinese artisans would make anvils of jade for blacksmithing. Consequently, many weapons and even suits of armor have been made of jade, so much that jade is called axestone in some cultures[1].
  • The Māori mere is another such weapon made from jade.
• Using jewelry as knuckle-dusters seems a little financially counterintuitive, but it can be done, and leaves some painful-as-hell marks.

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