Purpose: Retrieve poofed gems and gem shards that have been left behind.
Weapon(s)/Power(s): Senses life within a gem (used to help differentiate a living gem from a rock), mild body morphing/stretching abilities
As they deal with the loss of gems quite often, Marekanite has been built to feel dulled emotions compared to the average gem, helping "unnecessary" emotional connections to gems. As a result, they are often quite stoic. However, they are quite interested in organic life, fascinated by how "alive" every part of an organic being is.
I had been thinking about what death is like for gems. Of course, that would be shattering. Then, I began thinking about the people who's jobs are to deal with death: morticians. What if there was a mortician-like gem? That's how I came up with Marekanite.
My decision to make them "marekanite" came from researching gems that were representative of death. I found this gem called the apache tear, named after the Native American Apache tribe. If not already obvious, shape of their gem is a nod to the name "apache tear". "Marekanite" is the more technical term given to this gem, which I felt was more fitting to the official name of the character.
I wanted to incorporate some of the Apache tribe's clothing into the design so added the tassels and a patterned cloth on Marekanite's back. The pattern on the cloth is meant to resemble the cracks or shards of a shattered gem, referencing Marekanite's purpose. I designed them based on the classic shape of a ghost, hence the round hunched back and wavy shapes. If it wasn't obvious, I had taken some inspiration from the character the One Who Waits (otherwise known as Narinder) when designing the face veil. He is a character from the game Cult of the Lamb, which I had starting becoming OBSESSED with last year, who is the god of death, very on-theme for Marekanite.
I had debated on scrapping this character because I couldn't figure out how to make them work in the Steven Universe... erm, universe. Marekanite has the ability to sense life within a gem. However, there was one extremely major problem with this in the context of the Steven Universe story... Pink Diamond's shattering. Since Pink Diamond had used fake shards to stage her shattering, the use of a marekanite's life-sensing ability would've immediately ruled out that Pink was truly shattered once the "shards" were analyzed. I was bummed because the life-sensing ability was something I really wanted the character to have. HOWEVER, as I thought more about it, I figured out how to make it work. Since Pink Diamond was "shattered" on the battlefield, having been witnessed by several gems, no one would feel the need to check that the shards were real. After all, they'd seen it with their own eyes. Of course those were Pink Diamond's shards. Therefore, no marekanite would be requested to check whether or not the shards were legit, meaning the story of Steven Universe can continue as is. I was so happy when I figured that out and could keep marekanite the way they were hehehehe.
