Standing Stones

A colorless rock that fixes any color, but the design pays for that flexibility twice: once in mana, once in life. Compared to a plain mana artifact that taps for a single fixed color, the activation surcharge and the 1-life payment per use are the friction that keeps a universal fixer honest, and they reflect an era when "any color of mana" was treated as a premium effect worth taxing heavily. The structure is closer to a Fellwar Stone or a five-color land that bleeds you than to a clean ramp piece: it does not accelerate, it converts, turning one mana into a single pip of whatever you are missing and asking a life point each time you do it. That makes it a card about smoothing rather than ramping, the kind of fixing a deck reaches for when its color requirements outrun its lands and it would rather pay the toll than miss a drop. The life cost compounds, so the rate quietly worsens the more you lean on it, a self-limiting valve that early design used in place of charge counters or per-turn restrictions. It is a fossil of how cautiously color-fixing was once priced, before mana rocks learned to fix for free.