Crystaling

Crystalings are roughly anthropomorphic beings made of magically-animated crystal.

Crystalings come in various shapes and sizes, most commonly seen around 1 meter tall. They have anthropomorphic shapes made of crystal that was warped into the shapes of a torso, limb parts, and often a mostly spherical head. The parts usually form joints shaped like ball-and-socket joints, though the joints don't touch very much because the parts are magically suspended. The arms of a crystaling usually end in sharp points of denser crystal that are meant for breaking rocks and digging. Some crystalings instead have those rock-breaking parts somewhere else on their body, such as on a horn.

These creatures are made of a variety of different mundane and magical crystals, and require at least some part of them to be magical crystal. They can gain different magical properties based on their magical parts. Some crystalings that have multiple kinds of magical crystals can have properties that interact or conflict, sometimes not for the crystaling's benefit.

Crystalings don't seem to be very intelligent. They have one main drive: to produce more crystalings by gathering enough crystal and then performing a kind-of ritual on the pile of crystals that seems to melt and reform them into the shape of a new crystaling. They are hostile to or fearful of most other creatures they encounter, incapable of cohabitation, with some very rare exceptions. It is possible for magic users through a complex spell to override a crystaling's magical driver and make it serve the magician.

Most crystalings were created by other crystalings, but rarely it has been observed that new crystalings will form without help in places that didn't have crystalings before where crystals are abundant.