My explorers are going to be venturing into an uncharted system soon. I have used the expanded star system charts to build this system and am happy with the result. One of the planets is very moist (only 14% landmass) and has vast crystal resources. I'd like to make these worth something, and be the focus of a Lesser Endeavour to harvest and exploit them.

However, I'm drawing a blank as to what could make them useful (in other words, who would buy them and what for). I'd like it to be something similar to how nephium is presented, if that makes sense.

Thoughts?

Well they could make better Las guns due to being really spiffy crystals, They could act as a natural battery and bring in the Cog boys, or they might be great Psy focus things. The could suck up Warp energy and act as a back up Geller fields, make great swords, be recording devices, could be pretty enough to act as jewels, they could grow really fast when exposed to void and thus be used to patch up ships. Hell they might make greeat rock candy.

Skys the limit dude.

I had a planet like that in one of my games, looted mercilessly from Anne McCaffery's Crystal Singer series.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Singer

Matched crystal sets serve as aids for psychic communication, as each crystal 'knows' where the others are. Astropaths find them to be incredibly useful in their work, however sets of the highest quality are exceedingly rare.

Jupp already everything mentioned.

If in doubt, harvest, refine and send to the AdMech. Theyll find a use.

Crystals have the bonus as potential warp focus or Force weapon component. The Ordo hereticus employs Anti-Psi grenades and even orbital dropped bomb versions. Maybe those crystals are the primary component of said bombs?

At worst it is the primary resource to be refined and 0.1% of the crystal mass is high grade enough to be turned into cyclonic torpedoes? Have the PCs earn alot (well if i ever get 1 PF in my life im rich!) of profit, but keep telling them, that their endeavour will save billions and trillions of humans, by killing millions or billions of them.

Ahh btw, crystal resource. My first thought was: "Get us the frag out of here, if the sun is nearly dead and older than its supposed to be i dont want to harvest anything from that planet." Cue for the N-word.

I pulled something simple in my last campaign- a mica-like substance that was wholly psy-opaque except from one direction. The players wound up in the middle of a massive bidding (and occasionally shooting) war between the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, the Inquisition and a couple of the larger Houses of the Navis Nobilite, as it essentially made the perfect back-up armouring for anything going to be exposed to the warp.

The last they heard there were still minor skirmishes between the Navigators and the Inquisitorial taskforces stationed aboard the League of Black Ships- the Navigators want it to armour their eyries, while everyone else wanted it as another layer of defences around the psyker prisoners/sacrifices/novitiates in the hold. They didn't particularly care though, having parlayed the secret of its location into a new-build cruiser and a metric buttload of cash...

So yeah, feel free to steal that one, although you'll need your own cool name for it (I can't find my notes)

Thanks all. Some good ideas in here. Should get me past my writers block.

Remember it doesn't have to be anything utterly astonishing that makes them valueable, perhaps they just glow... but think about that a cheap light source could be handy on any number of worlds and what about bigger or clearer pieces used to make art? Imagine a nice big lifesize statue of the Emperor in all his glory back in the great crusade expertly carved by a master sculptor and presented to Cardinal Ignatio in the Calyxis sector as a gift, possibly a potential extra minor endeavour.

Or maybe it's like Tiberium from command and conquer, growing by extracting valueable metals from the soil... though it can't be shipped off world due to different atmosoheric conditions it means rather than the dangerous work of mining they have crew with shovels and picks digging them out of the ground with much less effort.

Perhaps some of the crystals can be ground down and used to make a narcotic or drug?

Or maybe shard fragments can be used to make arrowheads that aren't primitive that might find buyers in niche markets amongst some noblemen and groups of assasins.

Note that the gift statue can be a great way for the Rogue Trader to start a fad - just about every other noble will want to comission the same sort of arts to show his faith/lineage/greatness and generally flaunting his money...