Zauk, being the inquisitive mind that he was, gathered up as much from the red insects with crystals growing upon them from their mine trip that he could (Luci's 5/28/2021 scene) The fist thing he did was examine and experiment on what he could as little as possible for himself. And the rest, grand majority of the creature is brought to the Tower, and to various apothecary throughout Duirt to try and get to the bottom of what these things are, and what they could be used for.

(( Anyone belonging to Apothecaries, or to the Magic Tower in Duirt can also experiment and make discoveries. The only thing Zauk asks is that information be shared among the magical class in Duirt, and that we do what we can to advance our knowledge. ))

Professor Kadrai will bear one away to his Tower to examine the crystals on it to see if they are related to the psionic varieties.

Selene would like to collaborate with with Zauk to pool researches on these crystalline insects - especially the crystals.

(( Took me a while to respond to this, sorry all! ))

Studying the crystals proved more difficult than anticipated. The material was strange, brittle like glass-like, not quite as hard as gemstones, and with different intensities of colour in different samples, though all with a red hue.

The material did not appear to be usable for crafting, as working the crystals resulted in flaking and rumbling, despite being otherwise reasonably hard. It also seemed to distort light that went through it, changing the angle as it passed through.

The crystals did seem to have one peculiar property in that they seemed to grow and spread. Not very fast, mind you, but they definitely gained mass over time, and Zauk would find some tiny crystals growing on some of the instruments used to do his testing. They were easily cleared away and did not return if the instrument was cleaned properly though. This aspect seemed to almost be plant-like. Or perhaps fungus like? It wasn't entirely clear how the crystals could grow without some sort of liquid being involved.

Close inspection revealed that there was some very low level of energy in them, too small to pick up with detect magic, mostly - though recent samples from the Iron Mine seemed more intense. It resembled conjuration, though it wasn't quite clear if that was actually it

One final detail is that it seemed to fascinate insects and arachnids, with several samples having spider webs in the morning or flies buzzing about it. Perhaps the latter caused the former though.

But through careful study, the researchers did finally discover one important detail about the material: it was not native to Duirt. If anything, it seemed as if it was coming from beyond the regular world...

(( If you have any specific questions or research avenue's do let me know! ))

Milo performs his own experiments on the crystals casting Detect Magic [Arcane spell] then spending as much time as needed on examining the effect the spell has on it.