2.1 Afyon Silexite

Afyon Silexite

Silexite is a rare form of intrusive rock that is almost pure quartz, hence one of its other names being “igneous quartz”. This usually indicates it was one of the last derived bodies from a parent melt. The nearly pure quartz content, combined with its very coarse grained texture, often give the rock the appearance of fragments of glass melted together. The silica is in fact so pure, scientists doing the first thorough geologic study of it thought it might be a giant piece of vitræite (lechatelierite). It is lumped together with the Red Hills Pluton into the Trans-Veldt Intrusive Suite more for convenience than from any actual relation to each other, as they are both appear to be much older intrusive rocks that predate most other bedrock units found in the region. While this supposition holds true for the Red Hills Porphyry, it is somewhat problematic for the Afyon Silexite. Where it is exposed, it seems to only intrude through the members of the Met’ula Group, with shockingly little contact metamorphism in the host rock. Further, the silexite lacks almost any trace minerals with radioactive decay elements, and those that are present are in such low quantities, that the radiometric dates are outside margins of errors. As such, scientists must rely solely on superposition for relative dates. As its name suggests, the rock is found primarily in and around the city of Afyon. Most notably, it forms the Pinnacle that rises out of the heart of the city, but it also underlays the main built-up areas, providing the stable shelf on which most of the old city is built in the otherwise badland-style landscape of the upper Simanda River Valley. The silexite appears to have formed a more or less isolated intrusion in the Afyon area, with only a few other small stocks breaking the surface within a few kilometers of the city. Its coarse-grained texture and unreactive silica content has made it extremely resistant to erosion, allowing it to endure through the time of the Eastern Kael Unconformity as an inselberg, only to be buried by the encroaching erg deposits, and be exposed again by the erosive action of the Simanda River within the last several hundred thousand years. The silexite is also notable as the rock unit into which the ancient Sion built the structure now known as the Shrine of Possibilities. Modern research has shown that artificial gravitational distortions generated from the shrine puts weak shearing pressure on the silica molecules in the monolith, creating piezoelectric charges throughout the mountain. This may lend credence to the old folktale of mysterious glows or flashes of light from the mountain. There are also several theories that, while unsubstantiated, are also worth mentioning. One theory, is that the Sion chose to build the structure in this rock unit so their technology could somehow make use of the piezoelectric property in some fashion. The other, more fringe theory, is that the Sion themselves used their technology to form this unique, seemingly undatable, piece of rock, again so they could use its unique properties for their technology. This later theory has received some pup culture attention, but little academic consideration.