To some a source of great wealth, to most a source of power, to still others, an inspiring bit of the manifest divine worthy of the most religious awe (see: Mood Rings), the Borinyum Crystal or Krystal is the pinnacle, rockwise. Borinyum Krystals differ from all other known types of crystal in that, whereas all other crystals are as different, one from the other, as the zillion and three snowflakes in a blizzard, Borinyum Krystals duplicate themselves exactly and come in only 47 flavors or varieties. They also differ in the fact that they don’t behave the way crystals are supposed to behave. Example: The first Borinyum Krystal to be marketed commercially was the well known Tone Kone Krystal ®.

The small, faceted cone, nestled in a tiny bed of its native soil (see: Mitochondrian Krystal Belt), was first packaged and sold as a paperweight by the capsule industry, Krystals ’n Things ®. Shortly thereafter (thanks to the propensity of small sentients for putting shiny objects into their mouths), it was found that licking the top of a Tone Kone Krystal caused it to emit small, iridescent bubbles that rose contentedly ceilingward and, upon reaching their destination, popped with a pleasant-sounding “bip” that had a tranquilizing effect on the nervous systems of most carbon-based creatures. Another history-making Krystal is the Star of Ziham; named for marketing genius, Ziham Geђ Furtz, the man who set the small, star-shaped gems in pendants, diadems, and the infamous Mood Rings. Star of Ziham Krystals are now known to feed back emotions, intensifying whatever mood the wearer may be in. They are very dangerous and were much sought after during the Stagnation (peak experiences being somewhat rare during those cycles). In Cycle 143 IET, Ziham Geђ Furtz presented the Dread Dictator (see: Bajar, Ponious Augustus Henry Mohammed) with a platinum Mood Ring in the shape of a steel-taloned shreeguh clutching a Star of Ziham. It is said that when the Dread Dictator slipped the ring on his finger, the Krystal shrieked, turned dull brown and died. Bajar ordered Furtz executed and Mood Rings banned, the result being the nearly 12,000 religious cults built around Mood Rings and surviving to this malton unit. Finally, the K Krystal ®; In Cycle 150 IET, a maintenance worker at New Eden Multi Tech Labs, who went by the name of Lotti Bo Sugar, waddled into a laboratory where, only that up unit, Dr. Proserpina K. Dowd had been experimenting with a new type of Krystal, and changed, inadvertently, the course of our lives. Sugar (having the type of mind that becomes confused and disoriented in the presence of objects that are not positioned either in straight lines or at right angles to each other) picked up eight of the octagonal, fist-sized Krystals and placed them face-to-face in a small dish-drying rack at the back of the laboratory. Then, as if putting the period to the end of her Krystal statement, she switched on the radio at the end of the rack and “BOOM!” Hearing of the accident, Dowd shouted, “EUREKA!” and ran off to invent the Proserpina K Krystal Dowd Drive. After much digging and delving, Dowd found that, at the time of the explosion, channel 46 Valhala Beacon had been broadcasting the Amercadian Space Brigade Drum and Bugle Corps’ version of the Brigade Anthem, “Us Against the Void.” It would seem that this particular version of this particular anthem, when played into one end of a line of exactly eight K-Krystals, is converted by the Krystals into energy, which is then blown from the far end of the line. Dowd used the eight small crystals and a continuous loop recording of “Us Against the Void” to create the Krystal Drive, which replaced the standard plasma and ion drives in a matter of cycles and resulted in a fortune in royalties for the Brigade’s Drum and Bugle Corps.