Basic Information
When a meteor hits the ground it sometimes splashes molten metal and rock about the impact site. These gravel-sized blobs of melted mineral, once cooled off and solidified, are called tektites. They are generally earthly minerals that were already on the surface of our planet prior to the meteor impact. Super-heated and blasted by the impact of a flaming space-rock, they melted into dark glass or obsidian.
The earthly origin is pretty accepted these days, but as recently as the 1960s scientists were still debating and divided over whether they were of earthly origin or if tektites perhaps formed on the moon and fell to earth following lunar asteroid impacts.
Of course, there's also always the outrageous theory that they were made when Ancient Astronauts fired nuclear weapons on the moon in distant prehistory.
Most tektites look a bit like a glossy black teardrop, or maybe like a shiny little turd, but some are shaped like buttons or tiny spheres instead and sometimes the color or shininess varies due to chemical composition. Being small and light (and initially molten) can be thrown very far from the impact crater. There are several large well-documented fields of tektite deposits around the world.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- A culture that lives in or near a huge impact crater might use tektites as decoration or commodity money.
- The presence of tektites might be a clue if the monster of the week is an alien or otherworldly eldritch abomination.
- Or they may indicate that a crime happened in a known tektite field or near a famous local crater.
- Or they may "prove" an Mad Scientist NPCs pet theory about abusive precursor aliens enslaving primitive man and building the pyramids, then nuking the moon.
- Split the difference and they could be caused by an ancient orbital kinetic bombardment. Still caused by fairly mundane bits of rock, but retaining the precursor causation.
- If your imported alien phlebotinum is green rocks or some sort of special glass or metal, it could be scattered across the globe in tiny amounts as tektites.