Crystal Temple

Crystal Temple
Information
Name	The Crystal Temple
Type	Gem Temple
Location	Beach City
Inhabitants	Crystal Gems Steven Garnet Ruby Sapphire Amethyst Pearl Peridot Pumpkin Bismuth Lion Rose Quartz (formerly) Bubbled Gems Corrupted Gems Centipeetle Mother (formerly) Pyramid Temple Gem Worm Monster Desert Glass Big Bird Heaven Beetle Earth Beetle Gem Cave Creature Watermelon Tourmaline Ice Monster Invisible Gem Monster Lighthouse Gem Monster The Slinker (undesirable, status unknown) Crab Gem Monster Biggs Jasper Jasper Tongue Monster Flower Monster Cluster Gems
Appearances
First	"Pilot" (as the Crystal Palace) "Gem Glow" (debut)
Latest	"Legs From Here to Homeworld"

The Crystal Temple is the home base of the Crystal Gems. The house portion first appeared in the "Pilot", while the interior rooms of the temple did not appear until "Together Breakfast". The interior of the bathroom is first revealed in the episode "Catch and Release".

Description

The Crystal Temple is a sacred place where the Crystal Gems live. It is their base from which they plan how to protect humanity. Inside, the Temple itself is composed of several cavernous rooms, all of which are connected through the Crystal Heart and accessed with the Temple Gate.

Built in front of the entrance of the Temple is a beach house, which serves as Steven's home. From camera footage in "Lion 3: Straight to Video" and the flashback in "Story for Steven", the beach house was not built until after Greg Universe met Rose Quartz. As seen in the extended version of the theme song, shown at Denver Comic Con 2015, the beach house that surrounds the entrance of the temple was built by Greg around the time when Steven was a toddler. The beach house was constructed to give Steven a safe home with normal human house rooms and utilities, such as a kitchen, porch, bedroom, and bathroom. He was unable to use his abilities as a Gem yet, and thus, Rose's room was inaccessible for an extended period of time.

The statue on the face of the Crystal Temple has four pairs of arms with 4 arms spread out, and the other four converge around the Temple's entrance on the figure's navel. Of the four spread-out arms, only the top-right arm with an intact hand and the broken-off remains of the other hands can be seen sticking out of the beach sands in front of the Temple. The statue's remaining hand is currently used to launder Steven's clothes, with a washing machine and dryer installed upon it and a clothesline strung out between the fingers, and can be accessed via the Warp Pad on its palm. The method in which the washing machine gets its power and plumbing is unclear, described only by Garnet as "magic".

The Temple Gate inside the beach house can access different places within the Temple. This is shown when Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Steven, and Sardonyx each open the same gate into different rooms. The way the door opens depends on upon the room it is being connected to. For example, Amethyst's door has a curved line of bubbly goo, Pearl's door is a straight vertical line with a circle around the star on the door, Garnet's door has two lines that split the door into three parts and Sardonyx's room splits into a curtain. Only a Crystal Gem that can utilize their abilities can open the gateway.

On the Temple Gate, a star with gems corresponds with the members of the Crystal Gems. The pink gem belongs to Rose Quartz and Steven, the cream gem belongs to Pearl, the purple gem belongs to Amethyst, the red gem belongs to Ruby, and the blue gem belongs to Sapphire.

As seen in "Story for Steven" before the events of the show, the Temple once had a fence surrounding the entire area. The reason for its removal is currently unknown, but it most likely got removed because of Greg Universe having to come and meet Rose. In the same episode, Greg drives through the fence, suggesting this to be the reason for its absence.

Known Rooms

• Pearl's Room: Filled with many raised pools and waterfalls, one of which leads to Amethyst's room. Pearl's items (such as her sword collection) are stored within the pools.
• Amethyst's Room: Filled with giant purple crystals and piles of junk. Puddles in the room lead to various other parts of the Temple. One pool from Amethyst's room leads to The Burning Room (the "Secret Team" utilizes this). Another leads to a space-like room with floating rocks. This eventually leads to the Crystal Heart.
• Rose's Room: A chamber filled with pink clouds which grant any wish to whoever has the Pink Diamond gem. A vein from the Crystal Heart passes through the room.
• Sardonyx's Room: A room only accessible by Sardonyx herself. Through the metaphysical properties of the temple, Sardonyx has full control over the contents of the room, creating a talk-show stage and game show-based obstacles to test Smoky Quartz's abilities. The room exists only while Pearl and Garnet are still fused, and will break down and fade out of existence otherwise.
• The Burning Room: This room is connected to a vein from the Crystal Heart. A motley assortment of defeated, cluster, corrupted, and/or shattered Gems remain in bubbles here. The Burning Room is opened by Garnet, although this is not necessarily Garnet's actual room within the temple, even though her gem(s) can open it.
• Dungeon of Trials: By adjusting the metaphysical properties of the Temple, the Crystal Gems were able to make a customized dungeon containing three chambers constructed by each of the Gems to test Steven by simulating the challenges of a real mission. Steven finds out that the challenges the Gems put up were all rigged, as to not let anything harmful happen to him.
  • Amethyst's Chamber: The first chamber upon entering the room is Amethyst's chamber. It leads to Pearl's Chamber. It features a runaway boulder and a vine to cross a bottomless pit. By entering the hole the boulder comes out of, the user can bypass all of the chambers.
  • Pearl's Chamber: The second chamber is Pearl's. It leads to Garnet's Chamber. Her room is a piano-like puzzle, involving the floor tiles and musical note patterns.
  • Garnet's Chamber: The third chamber is Garnet's and at the end is the final door. It features a spiked column that rises and falls from the ceiling and fire that bursts from the cracks in the floor.
  • Congratulatory Pad: Upon exiting through the last door, Steven is then greeted by the Crystal Gems, who congratulate him on completing the dungeon.
• Temple Gate-Inaccessible Rooms: Several rooms within the Temple cannot be accessed with the Temple Gate.
  • Crystal Heart: a red-tinted room with the Crystal Heart placed above. A vein leads down into The Burning Room.
  • An unnamed room filled with rocky ledges. In "Together Breakfast", it seems to connect Amethyst's Room to the Crystal Heart. The room reappears in "Secret Team", with several lost Gem Shards inside it.

Trivia

• The Crystal Temple is referred to as the "Crystal Palace" in the "Pilot".
  • In the Pilot, the doors to the Gem's bedrooms are located outside, and there are multiple, one for each Gem.
  • The pilot name for the temple, the Crystal Palace, could be a reference to the famous English exhibition hall of the same name.
• It is dangerous for Steven inside the temple since he has not yet learned to control his abilities. However, as he becomes more adept at using his powers and being more careful, he can travel through the rooms with more care, as seen in "Reformed". Steven also can control his mother's room with ease over time, as seen in "Open Book" and "Catch and Release".
• It is unknown if Ruby and Sapphire have their own separate rooms, or if only Garnet owns a room. It is possible that, in a similar fashion to Sardonyx's room, Garnet has a room when she exists as a fusion, but when unfused, Ruby and Sapphire each have rooms.
• Guy Davis championed the idea of the temple's dual head.
• The chambers that Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl design reflect their personality in some way or another.
  • Their styles, aside from Amethyst's chamber resembling Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, resemble the Pyramid Temple chambers.
• Each of the Crystal Gems has a room that reflects how their actual gemstones are formed. Pearls are formed in water, and her room has waterfalls. Amethysts form in geodes, so her room resembles a giant geode, although covered with junk and dotted with puddles. Garnets are formed under high heat and pressure, and The Burning Room has a lava pool. The only exception to this is Rose Quartz's room.
  • However, rose quartzes are known to be very cloudy gems, and Rose's room is made entirely of clouds.
• In "Together Breakfast", Pearl mentions that the Crystal Heart is connected to the most dangerous parts of the temple, including and especially the Burning Room.
• Although one of the temple's detached hands (notably the left hand on the sand) is partially disintegrated, sliced, and destroyed in "Gem Glow", it continues to be unbroken throughout the series.
• A screen was recently added to the front window as of "Onion Friend". In the same episode, Onion broke through it while running away from Steven.
• In "Bubble Buddies" and "Ocean Gem" there is a sword seen on the ground of the sea to the east of the Temple.
• Unlike the gemstones on the Crystal Palace as shown in the Pilot, the gemstones on the Crystal Temple are the same color as the rest of the structure.
• In "Buddy's Book", there is an entry in Buddy Buddwick's Journal depicting the Crystal Temple that uses the early concept drawings of it which depicted the Temple as having five pairs of arms, unlike the actual one which only has four pairs.
• In the book "Keep Beach City Weird: You Can't Hide the Truth!!!", Ronaldo Fryman mentions that the unknown fusion that saved William Dewey bears some resemblance to the Crystal Temple.
• On one of the early concept arts of the Crystal Temple from Steven Universe: Art & Origins, the Crystal Temple was conceptually named the "Obsidian Temple".
  • It should be noted that there has currently been no confirmation of whether or not the Gem depicted by the Crystal Temple is Obsidian, as in the same artbook, Pearl and Garnet's Fusion (now known as Sardonyx) had two concept names, Alexandrite and Obsidian.

Cultural References

• The way to access the Temple bears resemblance to the front door of Howl's Moving Castle, where one door leads to several different locations.

Gallery

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