[RFC][SI][Multi-Xover] Being You is Convalescence

[itsune9tl]

Funny thing about the Pie farm. Yes they grow Gemstones, Quartz, Ruby, Garnet, even the Occasional Diamond. But they Show the farm producing plain ordinary Stones (mind you, that could just be Seed Stock,). My bet is the farm makes most of it's money producing paving Cobbles and Pea Gravel for road maintenance, shaped Foundation Stones, and other stones for Construction needs.

[Black Aeronaut]

That's not a bad idea, and one I think I may have seen elsewhere in fanfic - not sure where though.

I still need to sit through the show, though, and take notes as I go along. That's the main reason I haven't made much progress on this - the fact that I haven't really found the time to do it. (It doesn't help that one of my brothers distracted me with X-Com: Enemy Within.)

[classicdrogn]

The outer stone casing might also just be the rock farmer equivalent of a fruit rind with all the flash bits insdie, like the big rock Rarity found when she discovered her cutie mark. That said, there is a fair bit more call for farm-scale production in more conventional stone, I expect, and "A bumper crop of rocks!" makes for a better joke anyway as anyone with so much as a little ornamental flower garden will understand.

[Black Aeronaut]

That's actually a thing in real life - Geodes, for example. Ironically, geodes need water to form, so I can easily imagine the Pie family being worried about proper irrigation and such.

[classicdrogn]

Oh, I know, though those are usually quartz-family stones at most rather than the diamonds or corundum family that most commonly spring to mind when someone mentions gemstones. I imagine big, optical-grade pieces of uncolored aluminum oxide could also be useful for making windows and lenses that are much more durable than normal glass, for that matter, with earth pony magic making it economically feasible in a way RL processes so far cannot be for all but the most demanding applications. (AlON windows can apparently be fabricated in up to 18x35" panels now, though they're still only about 85% as strong as actual corundum like the sapphire lenses I recall being mentioned on a Venus probe, and some super-deep diving ocean explorer robots.)

Actually, carborundum (which I always have check to see if I've conflated with corundum when one of them comes up) might well also be a desirable product for rock farmers, due its many industrial uses as an abrasive. Only a third of the pony population can just use external magic for shaping things after all, and that's before getting into how many unicorns actually have the talent or desire to work with that.

[robkelk]

carborundum (which I always have check to see if I've conflated with corundum when one of them comes up)

That's quite the conundrum.