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Dark Magic

"Dark Magic" collectible card

The Dark Stone (or the Jewel of the Dark,[1] sometimes also rendered as the Darkstone) is powerful magic jewel in Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders. It is dangerous, unpredictable and erratic, similar in this to a Heart Stone but holding only dark and evil powers, like a more powerful opposite counterpart of the royal family's Sun Stone. The first season's episode "Revenge of the Dark Stone" was named after it, as were the Russian titles of the first two episodes ("Дикий камень") for its Russian name Wild Stone. Its other localisations include the French Jewel of the Night (Joyau de la Nuit) and the Catalan Black Jewel (Joia Negra).

Dark Stone statue

The Dark Jewel symbol seen under an "evil face of a horrible gargoyle" in Morgana's lair

The Dark Stone is a four-pronged purple crystal that can change its shape between two forms. Through most of the series, it is wielded by the evil sorceress Lady Kale. After bonding with her dweasels Rufus and Twig through the Dark Stone, Kale plots to tune more magic of Avalon to both it and herself so she can rule the kingdom forever.

At the start of the second season, the Dark Stone becomes shared between Lady Kale and the great ancient wizard, the evil queen Morgana, who had created it and to whom it originally belonged. It turns out Morgana had named it the Dark Jewel and specifically tuned it as a weapon against Merlin. To defeat Kale and Morgana, Merlin's students the Jewel Riders will need to overcome the powers of the Dark Stone.

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"Gwenevere! Feel the power of the Dark Stone!"


In Kale's hands[]

Kale 009
Witchy Thing

The dweasels Rufus and Twig bowing to their mistress wielding the Dark Stone in "Jewel Quest I"

As the series begins, the dwasels Rufus and Twig work to find an untuned magic jewel for the outlaw princessLady Kale. They succeed to track down what turns out to be the Dark Stone that finds stuck in a Travel Trees portal. She extracts it and manages to roughly tune its magic, bonding it to both herself and the two dweasels, which turns them into her magic animal. Once bonded with Kale, Rufus and Twig get the Dark Stone-themed matching collars but (unlike the unicorns of the Jewel Riders) they themselves cannot use its magic for anything but communication. Kale gets her own Jewel Armor, themed after her dragon Grimm. It does not need an invocation for a transformation and becomes her default costume from then on. She wears her jewel on her waist behind her when she does not use it.

Dweasels Dark Stone
Dark Stone power

Kale blasting Merlin into the Wild Magic in "Jewel Quest, Part I"

The jewel's powerful evil magic allows Kale to use it to warp the good magic of Avalon to darkness, twist the form and shapes of things (occasionally even of herself), and mind control people and turn magic animals into her slaves. Somewhat more mundanely, Kale can forcibly enter and ride the Wild Magic tunnels through the Travel Tree rings, speak to her dweasel minions (but not Grimm) at some distance, shoot deadly and destructive energy blasts, cast energy beams (also in whip and net styles), pull and lift objects and people, and capture her enemies into magical traps. One other notable ability is to create monstrous thorn trees that Kale then can control by her will to attack these trying to reach her castle within her domain changed by the Dark Stone from an once beautiful forest, the aptly named Thornwoods. There, she can also project her image and voice at distances through magic bubbles.

Similar to Tamara's Heart Stone, the Dark Stone is a wild jewel that controls the wild magic in strange and bizarre ways, depending on the individual that such jewel is tuned to. All the wild jewels allow communication with all magical animals and also can turn them towards either good (as in Tamara's case) or evil (as Kale actually almost succeeds to do with Sunstar, before being thwarted by Merlin himself). The wild jewels are also notoriously hard to control, and this one is especially powerful. Even despite all of the younger Kale's studies under Merlin, and the royal family shared gift of natural affinity with the magic jewels, it takes her time to even partially harness its dangerous magic. In fact, Kale never manages to truly master the Dark Stone. It is only in the "Lady of the Lake" she reluctantly starts to make rhyming incantations, making only one awkwardly but even that does work to increase the Dark Stone's just like the Jewel Riders routinely do with their personal Enchanted Jewels.

In the first season[]

Tractor

Kale's beam pulling Tamara up in "Song of the Rainbow"

Kale Wild Magic

Lady Kale facing Merlin in a duel after he drew her into the Wild Magic in "Full Circle"

Lady Kale's first notable use of the Dark Stone is to easily bait (by turning herself into a female deer pretending to be in distress) and trap Merlin into a magic bubble. She the banishes him into the Wild Magic when he refuses to give her his jewel, a key to control the Crown Jewels and the magic of Avalon. However, Kale is having trouble controlling the Dark Stone and soon she even ends up accidentally wrecking her own Castle Thornwoods while trying to destroy Merlin and fight his loyal followers in "Jewel Quest, Part II". The Dark Stone's magic is so great it can bring down an entire mountain top with a single burst, as in the script for "Badlands" (in Princess Gwenevere's script-only comment: "There's only one person I know who can create a magic blast like that - Kale!"[2]).

In "The Faery Princess", after Kale arrives in Faeryland where the magic works differently, she tongue-in-cheek dubs it the Shark Stone that projects a giant glowing shark head to attack the Jewel Riders. (The spell misses chomping Fallon by an inch because the faery princess Windy has flown up and knocked Kale's aside just enough to save Fallon.) In "Home Sweet Heart Stone", Kale uses the Dark Stone to create and play a series of evil magical instruments, first to summon Kit and then to compete with Tamara's Heart Stone in a magic music battle.

During the first season's finale, Kale uses the Dark Stone to gain access into the Jewel Keep and to manipulate the various Enchanted Jewels found in the storage of magic jewels within it to create the "anti-magic" device. (The script also describes a crystal sphere worn over the Dark Stone.[3])

At the end of the season's last episode "Full Circle", after Kale falls into Merlin's trap of the great good magic of the Crystal Palace activated by the Jewel Riders, she gets dissolved into "fairy dust". The Kale-dust is then sent off into the infinity of the Wild Magic, where the Dark Stone had been left since she had lost it during her duel with Merlin (during which Kale instead won Merlin's staff from him in order to finally get access to the Jewel Box). Losing first the Dark Stone and the Staff made her exposed to the untamed wild magic of the Crown Jewels.

In the second season[]

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It is revealed that the Dark Stone had originally belonged to the dark enchantress Morgana. It was created by her a thousand years ago specifically to let Morgana get rid of Merlin when she and the other Ancient Wizards turned against him. Much more recently, and unknown to the Jewel Riders, the Dark Stone was not destroyed along with Kale herself (and Merlin's own jewel) during her defeat but has been merely left tumbling through the Wild Magic.

Dark Stone struggle

Kale and Morgana fighting over the Dark Stone in "Morgana"

When it is magically summoned to Morgana's lair, still within the Wild Magic, the Dark Stone brings Morgana and then also Kale back to their physical forms. Once re-materialised, Kale magically pulls the jewel from Morgana's grasp and into the air, and the two of them have a short tug-of-war to determine who is the current true owner of the Dark Stone. That owner turns out to be actually Kale, and so Morgana is grudgingly forced to work with her as she herself still cannot leave her Wild Magic prison alone.

Morgana 30

Morgana appears conjured by Kale through the Dark Stone in "Prince of the Forest"

During the second season, Kale's use of Dark Stone gets a lot of extra power from Morgana. The two evil women also use the jewel to communicate with each other through the jewel which works like a mobile phone for Kale (complete with a ring tone). Morgana's image can also emerge from it and then directly aid Kale with her own vast magic powers.

In "Morgana", Kale uses some of Morgana's power to create a great magic hammer to blast open the magic gate to the Hall of Wizards. When Kale gets captured by her own magic, reflected back on her, the summoned Morgana sends a powerful blast through the Dark Stone that frees Kale and captures the Jewel Riders. In "Fashion Fever", Kale uses the Dark Stone to create an enchanted dress to mind control her good niece Princess Gwenevere, to copy the Jewel Keep's Wild Magic radar map with the locations of the Wizard Jewels, and to create a magic sword to fight off both Drake and Fallon when the two try to stop her from leaving the Crystal Palace where Morgana's magic is very limited. After the events of "Mystery Island", Kale manages to somehow escape from the Jurassic World, where she was left trapped by the Jewel Riders, even without using the time-travel Time Stone; while it is neither shown nor mentioned how she did it, presumably the Dark Stone must have been involved. The rhyme that she and the dweasels try out in "Spirit of Avalon" allows her to find the hidden Grandfather Travel Tree.

In Gwenevere's hands[]

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Evil Gwen

Princess Gwenevere being corrupted by Kale with the help of the Dark Stone in "Dreamfields"

In "Dreamfields", Princess Gwenevere fall into in a wild magic dream controlled by Lady Kale. In it, she and her wicked aunt swap Gwen's own Sun Stone with Kale's evil jewel. The Dark Stone then corrupts Gwenevere into becoming power-hungry and ruthless, just like Kale, until Gwen's friends manage to get her out of her nightmare before it is too late.

In "Lady of the Lake", Kale is finally defeated by Gwenevere and her beloved Ian, using the combined powers of the Staff of Avalon and the Wizard Jewels. Morgana captures the Wizard Jewels but somehow completely forgets about the now masterless Dark Stone. It is then spotted by Archie picked up by Gwen, and taken by Ian for safekeeping as it still contains strong magic. Soon later, in "The Last Dance", Gwen, aided by her friends, uses the Dark Stone (which disappears in a bright flash) to power up her own Sun Stone. With it and the Staff of Avalon, she creates the all-powerful One Jewel from all the Wizard Jewels for Merlin, who uses it against both Morgana and the evil wizards' ghosts (who have been just summoned by their jewels), eliminating them all.

"Gwen holds up the Dark Stone and the Sun Stone. One glows red, the other golden. 'Let goodness and love forever triumph over the forces of darkness!' She pushes them together and magic flares out. The magic is wild and encases Gwen, spreading out. Her friends stand around her, holding hands in a Jewel Circle. Gwen is covered in swirling magical fire, as the magic of the Dark Stone and the Sun Stone lash out against one another. She holds the Sun Stone high and it absorbs the magic of the Dark Stone. Gwen fires at the Staff and the Wizard Jewels becomes fused together to reveal the One Jewel now attached to the Staff of Avalon, forever."

Behind the scenes[]

Dark stone storyboard

Kale aiming the Dark Stone at 'Harmony' (Tamara) in a "Wizard's Peak" storyboard

As Morgana did not exist in the early versions of the show, the Dark Stone has been described as an unstable "wild crystal" jewel, never having been tuned to anyone before and thus unconnected to Morgana. In the Princess Guinevere & Her Jewel Adventures storyboard, Kale calls it just the "Wild Stone".[4]

Dark Stone power sketch

It was described in the Enchanted Jewel Riders show bible as a "shimmering purple, jagged, rough hew crystal".[5] In the Enchanted Camelot version of draft scripts, the Dark Stone's power was actually green-colored (later it was changed to purple). The magic was also to be reflected in Kale's eyes ("glowing bright with evil power") and to light-up the eyes of her dragon helmet.[6] In one script, it is described as worn around Kale's neck on her breasts, its power effortlessly deflecting Gwen's Sun Stone beam with Kale's input and able to tear open wild magic doorways for Kale to enter without need of the Travel Trees.[7] Kale was originally written to find the Dark Stone in a magical pool surrounded by crystalline trees and foliage, and tune the magic to herself by grabbing it away from an image of Merlin in the water, with Gwen explaining that Kale could bond it with her because it had been never properly tuned to good by Merlin.[8] In the original script of "Lady of the Lake", Lady Kale is finally defeated when her own Dark Stone's magic blast intended to turn Princess Gwenevere and Sunstar into crystal statues is reflected back at her by a mirror shield.[9] (The final version made it Gwen's own spell she herself casts at Kale.)

Legacy[]

Avalon villains

The Dark Sorceress and the Spider Witch inside their prison (full of Dark Stone-like crystals) in Avalon: Web of Magic

In Avalon: Web of Magic, Adriane's lasso spell resembles Kale's magic whip attack with her Dark Stone. The Dark Stone's power also inspired the Black Fire of the Dark Sorceress.

See also[]

References[]


Magic
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Magic, Wild Magic, Jewel Quest, Jewel Armor
Magic jewels
Enchanted Jewels (Sun Stone, Moon Stone, Heart Stone), Crown Jewels, Wizard Jewels (Dark Stone)
Places and items
Avalon, Crystal Palace, Enchanted Gardens, Hall of Wizards, Morgana's lair, Jewel Box, Merlin's key
Main magic users
Merlin, Wizards (Morgana), Kale, Jewel Riders (Gwenevere, Fallon, Tamara, Sunstar, Shadowsong, Moondance)
Other magic users
Anya, The Pack (Drake, Thunderbolt), Ian, Rufus and Twig, Babies (Cleo, Spike), Travel Trees, Guardian of the Magic, Arienda and the Faery Wraiths, Wild Magic Gliders, Kit

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