⚠️ This article contains mild spoilers for Wingless in the Sky (Book 1), Acts 1–2. One major plot event (the theft of a Bloodstone) is described.
A Bloodstone is a Deepfolk life-extension artifact — the most sacred object a clan can possess, worth more than most surface nations, and the subject of a theft that nearly starts a war.
They are not impressive to look at. About the size of a man's hand, deep reddish-brown in colour — the precise shade of old dried blood — and heavier than their size suggests, as though the stone is denser than ordinary matter. Hold one and you feel it: a faint, steady vibration, barely perceptible, like a pulse so slow and deep it belongs to something larger than a living creature. Surface people who have held one describe the sensation variously as calming, unsettling, and impossible to forget.
Bloodstones emit a specific magical frequency that resonates with the silicon components of Deepfolk biology. In a healthy Deepfolk, the silicon tissues — bones, organs, the increasingly mineral substance that accumulates through a long life — maintain their cohesion naturally until approximately two hundred years of age. After that, the Crumbling begins: crystalline decay, progressive and irreversible, spreading from the extremities inward until the vital organs fail.
A Bloodstone interrupts this process. Its frequency stabilises the silicon tissues, preventing the crystalline decay that would otherwise set in. A Deepfolk who has carried their stone for decades builds a deep attunement to it; separation is not merely uncomfortable but biologically consequential, the stabilising frequency cutting off like a severed supply line.
The extension is significant but not unlimited. A Deepfolk without a stone lives approximately two hundred and fifty years. With one, they may reach three hundred and fifty — a century of additional life, no more. The stone does not halt the aging process; it delays one specific consequence of it. A Deepfolk elder at three hundred and forty is ancient, slower, considerably more stone than flesh. But alive.
A Bloodstone is not a universal tool. It must be created for — and attuned to — a specific bloodline. The magical frequency is calibrated to the precise silicon signature of the owner's genetic line; a stone keyed to one family resonates correctly only for members of that family, and fully only for the individual it was made for.
This has two practical consequences. First, Bloodstones cannot be transferred. The most valuable object in the world is also the least useful to anyone outside its intended bloodline. A stolen Bloodstone commands extraordinary prices on the black market, but any buyer outside the owner's family is purchasing an inert curiosity — beautiful, heavy, faintly vibrating, and medically useless to them.
Second, the stone must remain close. Within arm's reach is sufficient; it does not require physical contact at all times. But distance severs the effect immediately. A Deepfolk separated from their stone for more than a few days begins to feel it. A Deepfolk separated for weeks or months — especially an elder who has carried the stone for a century — begins to degrade.
The art of Bloodstone creation is ancient, partially lost, and jealously guarded by whoever still possesses it. Most surface scholars believe the craft survives only in fragments — old techniques preserved in clan archives, workable in theory but requiring materials found only at extreme depth and expertise that cannot be improvised.
Clan Abyss is suspected to retain the most complete knowledge. They have not confirmed this. They have not denied it either, which among Deepfolk is as close to confirmation as you will generally receive.
Creation requires months of sustained work under optimal conditions. The materials are rare: specific crystalline compounds found only in the deepest geothermal zones, combined with biological samples from the intended bloodline, worked through a process that takes as long as it takes and cannot be rushed. The success rate is low. Failed attempts produce objects that resemble Bloodstones in appearance and feel but emit no functional frequency — beautiful, heavy, and inert.
Approximately one hundred functional Bloodstones are believed to exist in the world. Most are centuries old. Most are clan treasures, passed from elder to heir within the same bloodline across generations. Some have been lost — to theft, disaster, or the simple entropy of time. None that have been lost to the surface world have ever found their way back.
Within Deepfolk society, Bloodstones occupy a category beyond ordinary value. They are not property in any sense that surface law would recognise; they are sacred extensions of the bloodline that carries them, custodied rather than owned, held in trust across generations.
Theft of a Bloodstone is classified in Deepfolk law as attempted murder — the reasoning being precise and unarguable: to take the stone is to begin killing the elder who depends on it. The penalty is proportional. In the case of a clan chief's stone, the insult compounds: it is simultaneously an attack on the chief's life, a desecration of a clan treasure, and a provocation of the entire clan.
Surface governments conducting diplomacy with the Deepfolk learn this early. The Midland Empire learned it at the Harvest Feast.
Within the Conclave, a small but persistent school of thought holds that a Bloodstone's attunement properties extend beyond Deepfolk biology. The theory runs as follows: if the stone can create a resonant frequency between itself and silicon-based tissue, a sufficiently skilled human heart mage might use one as a bridge — attuning to the stone's frequency and, through it, interfacing with Deepfolk technomagical devices that are otherwise entirely closed to human operation.
The appeal is obvious. Deepfolk technology operates on principles that human and Highfolk magic cannot touch; their devices require no individual magical talent, but they also respond to no external magical input. A Conclave mage who could attune to a Bloodstone and, through it, to a Deepfolk steam cannon or a combat exoskeleton, would represent a military and political development of extraordinary consequence.
The theory is taken seriously enough in certain Conclave circles to generate ongoing debate. It is almost certainly wrong, for two reasons that the theory's proponents tend to underweight.
The first is practical. Deepfolk do not permit their technology to be studied, acquired, or tested. The devices that would be needed to test the theory are not available. The few pieces of Deepfolk technology that have reached the surface through legitimate trade are functional objects with no military application; the genuinely dangerous devices — the cannons, the exoskeletons, the siege engines — have never been sold, never been gifted, and any attempt to steal them has historically resulted in outcomes that the Deepfolk regard as proportionate and the thieves regard as catastrophic. "Stealing Deepfolk military technology" is, in the field, a method of suicide distinguished mainly by its painfulness.
The second is biological. The Bloodstone's frequency is calibrated to silicon-based tissue. Human biology contains no silicon components. The resonance the theory depends on has no human analogue to attach to.
Neither objection has entirely quieted the debate.
⚠️ This section contains minor Book 1 spoilers.
Chief Barash of Clan Monolith's Bloodstone was stolen during the Harvest Feast in Maritana — one of the most diplomatically charged thefts in recent Imperial history. Barash is approximately one hundred and eighty years old; without the stone, the clock on his degradation begins immediately. The theft constituted both a grave personal attack on his life and a calculated insult to Clan Monolith. The scandal threatened to collapse the Deepfolk-Imperial trade relationship entirely.
Empress Maren took personal charge of the investigation.
This article is about an Artifact — Magic Object
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