Holy Snow Crystals

Holy snow crystals take shape naturally amid the snows of the Schmal Snowfield. Every piece carries a reflective surface broken into countless planes and angles that bend incoming light, with sharp corners, edges, and facets that point to a cubic or hexagonal structure and a clean, euhedral form. The individual crystals vary greatly in size and can gather together into rich veins.

Because the crystals work as an ingredient in magic potions, and because they surface nowhere outside the Schmal Snowfield, they carry tremendous worth. Their scarcity is sharpened by the ferocious monsters that haunt the digging grounds, so the promise of riches pulls in adventurers, and a second economy rises around them as traders follow to peddle goods and services at steep markups. Roughly thirty years after Himmel's passing, a cash-strapped Frieren's Party arrives at the snowfield, and Frieren explains to Stark that the mineral cannot simply be plucked from the ground, which is precisely why it fetches such sums. A look at the local market, where a loaf of bread costs ten times the usual price, drives the point home.

The party accepts a subjugation job from an adventurer who marks on a map a huge vein known only to the locals, asking that the monsters be cleared and a barrier raised to bar outsiders. After bringing down a wolf-like beast the camp's adventurers could not stand against, they make a rough camp and wake to find the towering vein ablaze in the morning sun. Frieren grants its beauty and remembers a similarly dazzling ore vein from her days with the Hero Party. Expecting it to be cut down for ore, she seals it behind the barrier, only to learn from the adventurer that preservation, not mining, had been the aim all along. Born in the region and drawn to his trade by that very sight, he is thankful the landscape of his home will last for those who follow.

Fortune-seeking adventurers are the crystal's chief pursuers, prying it from the Schmal Snowfield to sell at a premium. Frieren's Party joins in by clearing the monsters around one great vein and sealing it behind a protective barrier, acting on the wish of a local adventurer who hoped to guard the spectacle rather than harvest it.