Gemstone Assault

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Prepare to bejeweled.

Gems in the realm of fiction are often either a battery for some uberfied Doomsday Device or just some fancy-pancy 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.

A Sub-Trope of Dishing Out Dirt, since it technically does count as a form of earth-based powers. See Elemental Embodiment for when the being itself is made out of jewels and decides to land a physical blow. Compare Rock Steady, though gemstones do count as a type of rock in a way. See also Power Crystal and Mineral MacGuffin. May be the result of the ability to turn body parts into gems. Contrast Crystal Prison.

Examples of Gemstone Assault include:

Comic Books

  • X-Men 2099 gives us Crystalline, a mutant capable of growing beautiful crystals out of nowhere. 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.
  • Captain America (comics) villainess (and sometimes girlfriend) Diamondback uses diamonds as throwing weapons... fake ones, of course.

Film

  • The 1950s B-Movie The Monolith Monsters is basically about an extraterrestrial mineral that grows into towering hundred-foot-tall crystals that fall over, shatter, and repeat the process with a new crystalline monolith growing from each piece. As a side effect, they petrify anyone touching them (or simply too close).

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

Tabletop RPG

  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • One possible result of using a Wand of Wonder was firing a stream of 10 to 40 gems at the target, each doing 1 Hit Point worth of damage.
    • In Dark Sun metals are scarce, so obsidian is a typical material for cutting and piercing weapons.
    • Greyhawk has Nystul's Crystal Dagger spell and its improved version, Nystul's Crystal Dirk. They 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.
    • Stormbringer/Elric!. Olab throw crystal disks at their opponents using a club-like launcher.

Video Games

  • 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.
  • Both Crystal Man from Mega Man 5 and Jewel Man from Mega Man 9 use gem-based attacks. In the Romhack Rockman 6: Unique Harassment, Jewel Man pays homage to Super Mario RPG's Culex and sics elemental gems at Mega Man as part of his first phase.
    • The Crystal Joe from the former's stage also does this.
  • Crystal Snail's Crystal Hunter from Mega Man X 2, though it's more of a Crystal Prison type weapon.
    • X8 has Earthrock Trilobyte's Crystal Wall weapon.
  • The Gem/Diamond Missile spell from the Mana series.
  • As one of the D-Link abilities in Birth By Sleep, Snow White uses jewels as weapons.
  • Final Fantasy has several weapons made out of gemstones, up to including the Diamond Sword.
  • The Jewel Bag from Dragon Quest.
  • The Crystal Knight enemies from the Lunar series can attack you with crystal-like projectiles or attack from above with it's lower torso, which just so happens to be a crystal.
  • The Pokémon move "Power Gem" is this, though it involves channeling light via gems. Also, it counts as a Rock-Type attack.
  • 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.
  • Dead Rising lets you throw a bunch of diamonds at zombies. It's mainly just for stunning them, though.
  • Some of the danmaku in Touhou is described as this. And a fair amount looks like it, since diamonds are one of the most common bullet types.
  • The Power Customization in City of Heroes allows you to change Earth-based Powers into Crystal-based Powers. It's purely cosmetic, however.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Unreal I has Stinger, the weapon shooting crystal shards like a machinegun.

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.
  • Shard, a supervillain from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, is made of living diamond. One of her powers is spraying a cone of sharpened diamond chips at her opponents.
    • The Sinister Circle is a group of mystically-inclined villains who each get their power from one of a set of magical gemstones. These guys are evil with a capital EVIL, to the point that even the degenerates in All Hallow's Eve and the Hellfire Club avoid them out of fear. Bloodstone lives up to his name with "blood control" powers; Diamond has force powers; Obsidian has darkness powers; and Tourmaline has fire powers.

Western Animation

  • The Swat Kats episode "Chaos in Crystal" had an escaped convict named Rex Shard use a Body to Jewel variant of this after becoming a crystal himself.

Real Life

  • Obsidian, a type of volcanic glass, has been used as the cutting part of weapons.
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