Soul Gem
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A Soul Gem is a gem birthed from a contract with a messenger of magic. Proof that one is a magical girl; the source of their magical power.
The Soul Gem is the source of a Magical Girl's magical power, produced upon contracting by extracting the contractee's soul and giving it physical form. When they use their magic, experience strong negative emotions, or sustain physical injuries, the Soul Gem gathers impurities and becomes "corrupted". When "corrupted", the gem loses its shine and becomes progressively darker. The only way to rid it of its darkness is to extract it with a Grief Seed or Grief Cube.
Physical contact with the Soul Gem is required for a Magical Girl to transform. When not transformed, a Magical Girl's Soul Gem typically takes its default "egg" form, or may be turned into a ring at will to be worn for easier transportation. When in ring form, the band will display its owner's name written in Runes. When transformed, the gem will change appearance and become incorporated into its owner's costume. The gem's costumed form most often takes on the appearance of one of the two symbols, which may or may not be the same symbol repeated, on the top and bottom/center of the gem in its "egg" form (e.g. Mami Tomoe's becomes a flower, Rena Minami's becomes a music note, etc.).
A Magical Girl is capable of using their Soul Gem to perform magic when not transformed: they can merge it with a normal object to temporarily imbue it with magic, also transforming its appearance, which is then returned the normal when the Soul Gem is separated from it; and they can summon simplified forms of their weapons made of magical energy that extent from, and can be retracted into, the gem.
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Kyoko summoning a spear without transforming -
Mami summoning a small pistol without transforming -
Yachiyo summoning a halberd without transforming
A Magical Girl must remain within 100 meters of their Soul Gem or their connection will be broken, and the girl will instantly "die". If this connection is broken, it will only be re-established once physical contact between them has been made again. Once separated within 100 meters, a Magical Girl's body has approximately 48 hours until it begins to decay. While transformed, a Magical Girl may be separated from their Soul Gem and retain their life and magic provided the distance between them does not exceed 100 meters; however, if a Magical Girl is not already transformed and is separated from their gem while remaining within proper distance of it, they will be unable to transform and, potentially, unable to use their unique magic. The connection between a Magical Girl and their Soul Gem can be broken by another using magic while still within 100 meters of each other.
If the Soul Gem becomes too full of impurities and turns completely black, it will transform into a Grief Seed, and its Magical Girl will become a Witch. This will completely sever the connection to the Magical Girl's body, unless the Magical Girl was already using a Doppel at the time and leaving the boundary of the Automatic Purification System.
Soul Gems have a natural magic sense that allows Magical Girls to detect both generalized spikes in magic and specific magic signatures of Witches, other Magical Girls as well as other magical creatures. Additionally, by looking through the Soul Gem Ring, certain things that have been hidden by magic are made visible and this seems to be a way for Magical Girls to spread messages between each other.
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Mami detecting Gertrud's magic -
Iroha detecting Yachiyo's magic -
Madoka looking for magic messages through her Soul Gem ring
Trivia
- While assigning a real-life gem to liken to Soul Gems is impossible, as no known gemstone is able to have the same color variety, it is possible to make a few educated guesses on the other scientific properties of Soul Gems.
- Crystal habit is the natural shape a gem grows into when it has enough space. Prismatic habit forms long pillars like tourmaline, equant habit forms roughly cube-like or roundish shapes like garnet, tabular habit makes flat plates like ruby and massive habit has no visible crystal faces and the gem looks like a rounded or blobby lump, such as jasper or turquoise. Soul Gems perfectly fit within the massive habit category.
- Soul Gems have been shown to sink in water, so it can be verified that their specific gravity is greater than 1.0 (the density of water), which is also true with most other gems. Further determining the specific gravity of Soul Gems, which is how heavy a gem feels compared to water, isn't possible, but they appear to be similar to heavy gems in this aspect.
- Soul Gems haven't been shown to be scratched, meaning they would rank highly on the Mohs hardness scale. Hardness is a surface property determined by atomic bond strength and the scale runs from 1 (talc, easily scratched by a fingernail) to 10 (diamond, cannot be scratched by any other natural material). With this in mind, Soul Gems would be deemed to have excellent hardness.
- The pattern with which they break is very irregular, meaning Soul Gems have no cleavage (the tendency of a gem to split cleanly along flat, weak planes inside its crystal structure). Fracture is the property for how a gem breaks when it does not follow cleavage planes, thus a Soul Gem's fracture type would also be categorized as uneven.
- Luster describes how light reflects off the gem's surface. Vitreous luster is glass-like and the most common, adamantine is diamond-like and very brilliant, resinous looks like honey, and pearly shows a soft, rainbow-like sheen. With the exception of Yu's Soul Gem, which is either vitreous or adamantine, all other Soul Gems have been shown to be resinous. Aditionally, transparency tells how much light passes through, so transparent gems are see-through like glass, translucent gems let light through but blur the image, and opaque gems let no light through at all. Yu's Soul Gem would be transluscent until it is polluted, while other Soul Gems would likely be on the range between translucent and opaque.
- Usually, most Soul Gems have one color, with the exception of Rumor Mikoto's which has two. However, as her gem doesn't actually change color based on the different angles, it is not actually dichromic, but simply multicolored.
- Refractive index measures how much a gem bends light and in this aspect, despite their own inner light shining through, Soul Gems would have a low refractive index as light would not pass through them. The exception to this would again be Yu's glass-like Soul Gem.
- Importantly, toughness or tenacity is a gem's resistance to breaking, chipping, or crushing. This is different from hardness, as a brittle gem like diamond is very hard but can chip or shatter if hit hard. A tough gem like jade is softer but very difficult to break, even with a hammer. Soul Gems can be broken, but the toughness of a Soul Gem seems relatively high in this case as well, comparable to jade, as only acts of Magical Girl strength, or firearms have been the only tools shown to have broken them.
- Based on these properties, the closest real-world gem to a typical Soul Gem would be jade (specifically nephrite or jadeite). Jade shares the massive habit, complete lack of cleavage, uneven to splintery fracture, and exceptional toughness that makes it nearly unbreakable without extreme force. Its hardness of 6.5 to 7 on the Mohs scale means it resists scratching well, though it cannot compete with diamond. Jade also sinks in water and falls into the heavy specific gravity range. The main mismatch is luster since Soul Gems are described as resinous, while jade is greasy to vitreous. If the resinous inner glow is the most important visual trait, then opal or amber would be better matches for luster and low refractive index, but they are far too soft and brittle. So structurally, jade is the closest match, but no single real gem perfectly combines jade’s toughness with opal’s resinous light, not to mention the color variety unseen in any gemstone in the world.
See also: Lists of Soul Gems.
See also: Madoka Magica Trivia#Soul Gem and Grief Seed