From Vanguard Wiki
The Gnome racial ability.
This ability allows you to operate a variety of devices, only available to gnomes, which are able to materialize a energy crystals. Crystals will have several common effects, ranging from percentage based mana, health, and endurance heals to several uncommon, rare, and even ultra rare effects such as prismatic group resist buffs, rune and damage shields, minion summons, and more.
To be more specific, you can buy said device, the distiller, in the gnome town from a special merchant, in four qualities, lowest one useable from level 1 on, second useable from level 11, third level 21, and highest probably requires level 31. With a recast of 45 minutes you can operate one of these devices and get two random crystals. These crystals are not tradeable and go away when you logout over a longer time (half an hour later they are definitely still there). Higher distillers have a chance to create lower crystals. When you have used a crystal, you cant use another for five minutes.