Fire elemental gem

A Fire elemental gem was a magic item to summon and control a fire elemental.

Description
To create a fire elemental gem, a well-cut, faceted gem of red, pink, orange, or amber hue was used.

Powers
There were two versions of fire elemental gems. The first worked like a brazier commanding fire elementals. The difference between these two magic items was that the former allowed summoning a fire elemental from any fire source. The Second was a one-shot item that was cheaper but needed to be crushed, smashed, broken, or otherwise destroyed to work. On crushing a summon monster-effect that was stored into the gem was released and, because it was attuned to the Elemental Plane of Fire, a fire elemental appeared.

Once called, the fire elemental did not attack the user of the gem, provided the gem was openly shown to them, if the non-one-shot version was used. The background for this behavior of the fire elemental was that the fire elemental preferred returning to its home in the Elemental Plane of Fire over attacking the user. If the one-shot version was used, the fire elemental was like one summoned by a summon monster spell and therefore under the complete control of the user.

There were no requirements to use a fire elemental gem.

To create a fire elemental gem, a summon monster III spell or higher was needed, depending on how strong the elemental to be summoned was supposed to be.

History
Fire elemental gems were magic items associated with the drow. The one-shot version was frequently used by surface drow.