What if by "upper crust gems," Bismuth meant gems that were actually formed in the upper layers of a planet's crust?
AHAH HOLY SHIT
-Attilee
hope you don’t mind if I riff on this ‘cause it got me thinking. Like, on the one hand, “upper crusts” sounds like a Gem way of saying “those stationed above us” especially in a negative way like Bismuth was using it, but also could have more literal meaning
What if, when a planet is first colonized, the first Gems made are rarer, more powerful, elite Gems? “Planted” first in the top layer. They’re priority so they get planted first and they suck up all the rare/uncommon minerals out of the Earth (perhaps they have to incubate rare Gems first to ensure the more common Gems don’t somehow use up the rarer material meant for elites)
as Gem production goes on, they keep digging deeper. All the rarer minerals in a planet that are used to make the elite Gems get used up for the Gems incubated in the upper layers so as production goes deeper they make more and more common Gems
so how deep into a planet a Gem is incubated could be related to their class, Gems incubated at the top are all rare or elite level Gems, while Gems incubated lower are common