An oblong crystal the was implanted in the forehead of its victim. It stretched from the top of the head to the bridge of the nose, withered the host body into a state of undead, and could not be removed without destroying the host (with Pelham being the sole exception).

Originally, these crystals were called “Shadow Crystals” due to their dark, foggy appearance. However, since these crystals have nothing to do with the Shadowlord or the Elemental Plane of Shadow, modern arcanists use the less-confusing term “Storm Crystals”.

Centuries ago, an evil sorcerer was imprisoned, his soul pulled from his body and housed in a great, flawless crystal. His presence darkened and tainted the crystal until it took on a black, translucent color. When the crystal was to be destroyed (thus permanently destroying the mage), he exerted his great will to hold it together. While he was unable to escape his prison, he did succeed in maintaining the integrity of his soul, despite the fact that the crystal was shattered into hundreds of shards.

The heroes who imprisoned him realized that his soul remained intact, so they began destroying the individual shards. They soon discovered, though, that when one shard was destroyed, the mage's soul fragment slipped into the remaining shards. If they continued destroying the shards, they would only concentrate his power and risk his release.

Thus, with no access to sufficient arcane skill, it was decided to separate and protect the shards in the hopes that they would never again be joined together.

Late in the eleventh century, Pelham unconvered one of the shards and, after experimentation, discovered it could be used as a focus for certain evil magics. Pelham devised a plan to summon Hades' storm cloud and expand it to subdue Lowland and perhaps Backbone.

When the Dark Mage emerged, he forced Pelham to hand over the shard. In his own twist of Pelham's plan, he gathered together most of the remaining shards. It was for this reason that he constructed the Sympathetic Search Device.

As he found the shards, he placed them in the towers around the world. Though he never uncovered all of the shards, he did construct several detaild maps which pinpointed the locations of the shards he had not found.

After the fall of the Dark Mage, his maps fell into Pelham's hands, who then gathered most of the crystals into his possession (except those that were not originally found by the Dark Mage).

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