That is correct. A slave has to have a certain magical affinity to be able to manipulate or research it at all, however if the crystal has gone "Dark" then it has a chance to try and consume someone researching it if their magical affinity is less than the crystal's power + hunger. You should have the option to try and save them, though.
I have to finish the new additions into the game to be able to troubleshoot my fix properly before I can release the fix for that issue, unfortunately
The storyline for it isn't completely fleshed out, but there are abilities and some interesting things that can happen with it so far. It's primarily a teaser for a full new playstyle that is slated for a future version. :)
If you're interested in coding, writing story or dialogue, or anything else you are more than welcome to join in. This is definitely a group project at this point and there's always room to play to whatever strengths you'd like!
What we could do is this then. If you’re interested in writing for a certain event, I can send you the code format to write in so you can just write it, apply that format, and I can drop it into the code.
Examples would be: expanding the dialogue system to have different “conversations”, Intro prompts, etc based off of personalities or flaws. Expanding the combat capture post-dialogue. Adding more quests or end of day material. Etc
