1) Gems are less rare in Erfworld?
2) Large squad of axemen.
3) Discovery made a long time ago?
4) Hard to convert so much jewlery into hard cash ----> military might.
But even so, one squad of axemen for such a large ruby? I just got out of Medieval Total War II and it just doesn't seem right. I could make people go die for me at a much cheaper rate then that.
I think it's meant to disenchant the reader. Normally it'd be a fantastic find, perhaps never even sold if it's a relic of the old days of creation. But, of course, greed, corrruption and war gets in the way and the godly gem is merely pawned as quick as it can be and some more warriors hired for the war.
I'm gonna say it's likely the proceeds of the gem went to many other projects in addition to the axemen. You know—roads, schools, tax cuts, the marbit ruler's new bathtub, and so forth. When it came time for militrary expenditures, the chunk from the diamond went to a unit of archers, two units of cavalry, and—hey! Look at that! Just enough for one more squad of axemen.
And it's the axemen that saved the day. So we're really only concerned with that particular expenditure. The rest don't really matter so much, so they don't get any special mention.
It's quite possible that we haven't heard the last of what exactly the gem has bought, I have a feeling it isn't the last we've seen of that gem, and what role it still has yet to play in the Grand Scheme of Things(tm).
One extra Gem means one extra squad of Axe men, or other appropiate rush unit, it can screw up your star craft game. the whole thing i get this creepy feeling that the RTS gmes i've played have been manned with little tiny people and i wonder what kind of gawd that makes me
Note the comic...
It may say one "squad" of axemen, but that "squad" looks more like a small army, if one assumes the group of marbit axemen on the right flank to be the squad mentioned. The way that one marbit chops the spidew, it looks like marbits don't spare quality in training either.
Even so, if that's all that the gem did, it's more of a macguffin than the Arkenhammer is.
Logos:
One should hope. Ender!
__________________ Belkar's Bad to the Bone.
Dispossible a fetter hein and bemay kine a sinder's tock.
The gem did fall off of one of the "Elvis"-Gods (is that like Elder Gods or is that too much of a reach) capes. How much do you really think a rhinestone, even an enormous divine rhinestone, is worth?
__________________
"I was working on a case. It had to be a case, because I couldn't afford a desk. Then I saw her. This tall blond lady. She must have been tall because I was on the third floor. She rolled her deep blue eyes towards me. I picked them up and rolled them back. We kissed. She screamed. I took the cigarette from my mouth and kissed her again."