Item from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Three jewels containing the light of the Two Trees of Valinor — the most beautiful and most destructive objects ever created, for which entire civilizations burned.
The Silmarils are the central tragedy of the Elder Days. Fëanor created them in an act of craft so supreme it could never be repeated — even by Fëanor himself — and the moment they existed, the world began fighting over them. Morgoth stole them. Fëanor swore a terrible oath to recover them. That oath drove the Noldor to kinslaying, exile, and centuries of war that destroyed kingdoms and killed tens of thousands. The cruelest irony is that the Silmarils judge their possessors. They burn the hands of the unrighteous, and by the time the remaining sons of Fëanor finally recovered the last two jewels, the brothers' hands were scorched by the touch — their long war of atrocity had made them unworthy of the things they had destroyed everything to possess. One Silmaril rests in the sky as Eärendil's star. One lies in the depths of the sea. One is buried in the earth. They are scattered beyond recovery, and their light endures only in the Phial of Galadriel.
Three gems of unknown crystalline substance, each containing captured light from the Two Trees of Valinor — Telperion (silver) and Laurelin (gold). They radiate their own light, brilliant and shifting, too beautiful to look upon directly without pain or ecstasy. They are set in iron crowns, borne by fire, and lost to sky, sea, and earth. No craft since can replicate them. They burn the hands of anyone unworthy who touches them — which, eventually, is everyone.
Also known as: the Silmarils, the Great Jewels, Fëanor's jewels, the three jewels