[HoneyBadger]

So, on this line of thought, what was the thinking behind allowing alchemization of earth and fire gems, but not the others?

I'm assuming fire gems represent garnets, earth topaz, air diamond, water sapphire, nature emerald, death opal, and astral pearls.

If I had an opinion that anyone wanted, I'd make it so you could alchemize fire, earth, air, water, nature, death, and astral gems, with elemental gems given preference over nature and death, and nature and death preferred over astral (say 15 for elemental gems, 10 for nature/death, and 5 for astral) with a bonus of 1 gold for every level in that path your Pretender has.

That gives a little bonus for the elemental paths, which are weaker in the long term than death/nature, and a bonus for death/nature, because they'd be rarer than astral gems, since the astral gems (logically) would be more common than any other gem.

This would give *all* the other magic paths a little boost, compared to blood, which wouldn't hurt a thing.

I get that the explanation is apparently (al)chemistry functions in such a way, in the Dominions universe, that fire gems and earth gems are the only ones that can be extracted for gold, but that doesn't really answer the question in a thematically interesting or satisfying way.