[timschmidt]

Don't forget the cavernous structures which people are forbidden to enter, buzzing with the activity of objects controlled by those enchanted crystals, like the magic brooms in Fantasia, performing myriad arcane rituals with rare and exotic materials to make more enchanted crystals.

[6510]

And the high priests guarding the knowledge.

[nevdka]

They perform elaborate cleansing rituals on any item brought into the crystal-writing room. When they enter, they wear special clothing, lest the impurities of the outside world taint the crystals.

[wmertens]

And the scribes designing the incantations using magical tools, ever more complex, eagerly working towards stronger and faster magic crystals

[timschmidt]

Those magical tools being self-referential incantations written in the weird and decidedly non-human language of the crystals themselves, containing deep magic [0] derived from the secrets of life itself [1] exploited to solve problems of intractable complexity in creating the next set of incantations.

Disturbingly, using the magical tool twice on the same incantation never produces exactly the same result.

0: https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/D/deep-magic.html

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm

[timschmidt]

Ah yes, the sandbenders. [0]

0: http://catb.org/jargon/html/S/sandbender.html