Skyshards

Skyshards (sometimes abbreviated simply to "shards"), the colloquial name for the hearts of dead Stars, are a critical element of Camoran culture. Due to the rarity of wood, they are the only source of light and heat in the frigid Waste, and all six of the towers are dotted with fragments of them to provide ambient lighting.

Skyshards are gathered by Starchasers, an elite organization in the city that focuses entirely on this single task. Every Starchaser is Called, and must bind a neuma powerful enough to grant flight so that they can fly above the Aegis to retrieve the necessary hearts.

Personal Skyshards
Every Camoran citizen owns at least one personal Skyshard. They're cut and carried in a variety of ways, ranging from necklaces and pendants to stones set into walking sticks. The size and strength of a personal skyshard says more about the status of the owner than the cut and setting, but both sides factor into public perception.

If someone loses all of their personal skyshards, they are immediately demoted to drogher. This comes from the belief that if you can't take care of the gift of light and heat that you were given, then you deserve to live in the dark and cold. This makes someone's personal skyshard(s) the most important item(s) they own, and almost everyone has some amount of anxiety surrounding that fact.

The penalty for losing one's skyshard is waived for minors, in part because children's skyshards are smaller, weaker, and easier to replace, and in part because there is a certain expectation of carelessness from the young.

Household Skyshards
Just as all citizens own their own shards, each household has at least one much larger, less portable skyshard designed to keep entire rooms warm and well-lit. Poorer families are likely to have only one household skyshard that must be moved from room to room over the course of the day, and richer families will have one in each room, or even skyshard chandeliers.

There is no pelanty for losing one's household skyshard, and the poorest families in Camora simply do without. No one freezes to death without a household skyshard thanks to their personal shards, but it is certainly less comfortable.

Skyshards and Magic
Beyond their uses for heat and light, skyshards serve as a focus for personal energy. Even people without magic are able to use some of the focusing properties of skyshards, though usually with far less control than those with even minor magical potential. Anyone is able to make their shard glow if they focus or become very emotional, with fear as one of the primary triggers, but even children with minor magical potential are able to use their shards to create sounds and figments around their persons.

As magical potential grows, so does one's ability to use one's shard, but each shard can only channel so much power. Children capable of learning the arcane arts are trained on successively more powerful skyshards as their studies progress. Magical study (for those with a more powerful gift) is one of the few sure ways to obtain more powerful skyshards without directly purchasing them.

All arcane magic absolutely requires a skyshard to channel. Without the use of a skyshard, the raw power is channeled directly through one's own heart, causing damage at best and combustion at worst. The same is true if one tries to use a weak skyshard for a powerful spell - the shard will fracture at best and combust into a thousand shards of fast-moving shrapnel at worst.