Enhancing magic items - Woods

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Written by Palant

Raw Materials: Woods

Faerfin

Faerfin is a land of trees, sporting a great variety of such flora. Many varieties found in Faerfin are known widely on other planes and in the worlds within other crystal spheres, such as Oerth and Krynn. Trees of the Realms found on other crystal spheres include: apple, ash, beech, birch, cedar, cherry, chestnut, coconut palm, cork, cypress, date palm, ebony, elm, hawthorn, hickory, hornbeam, ironwood, mangrove, maple, oak, pine, rubber, spruce, thorn, willow, and yew. In warmer regions, the date palm, coconut palm, ebony, cypress, and mangrove are common. Ever¬greens exist in the northern regions, and most hardwoods live in the central forests. Birch and yew are present throughout Faerfin, but rare. Cork and rubber trees are found only in particular areas in the far South. In addition, the Realms possesses more than a few apparently unique types of trees. These include: beetle palm, blueleaf, calantra, chime oak, duskwood, felsul, hiexel, las- par, phandar, roseneedle pine, shadowtop, silverbark, suth, vund- wood, weirwood, and zalantar. There are likely to be many more sorts of these homegrown trees than Faerfinian mages are aware of—and more distant corners of Toril could well hold many, many more.
This is not an exhaustive guide to the flora of Faerfin, but merely a light overview for the use of folk interested in using wood as a material in the making of magical items and for other magical purposes. Each wood mentioned herein is rated for its suitability for long-term use (in magical items) and as a consum¬able (a material component for spell use). The most common of the unique trees of Faerfin are listed hereafter alphabetically.

Beetle Palm

Beetle palm trees, named for their black bark, which looks like a beetle's carapace, are found mainly in the mid¬wood of the great forest Cormanthor. On average, they grow to 70 feet in height, but a few grow to heights of 100 feet or more. Clus¬ters of spindly, spiky fronds often mistaken for leafless branches crown their otherwise smooth trunks, and a small cluster of soft-rinded, smooth, black, bitter-tasting nuts the size and general 
shape of plums grow under the fronds, dropping off once a year after the first snowfall.
Beetle palm wood is a dull brown and lightens as it dries, becoming a mellow tan. Beetle palm wood contains oily deposits that make it exceptionally flammable, but long-burning rather than volatile; it burns nearly three times as long as other types of wood and produces about half the amount of smoke. The wood is sturdy, but not outstanding, and it has a tendency to snap in sec-tions from 2 to 3 feet long after it has dried, so it is not often used in making buildings or carts.
Beetle palm wood conveys no special properties to items made from it or spells cast when using it as a material component. Beetle palm nuts, however, are exceptionally effective if used as a substi¬tute material component in the goodberry priest spell. When so used, they enable up to a huge (size H), hungry creature to eat the soft outer rind and be as well-nourished as if a full normal meal were eaten or cure 1d2+2 points of physical damage from wounds or other similar cases. The curative properties of goodberry - affected beetle palm nuts do not have a daily maximum, and such nuts remain magical and do not rot for one year. It is considered poor form by most nature religions not to try and plant the inner, hard-cased kernel nuts left over from such an enchanted nut, though few so planted seeds have ever been noted to grow.

Calantra

 This species is found south and east of Mosstone in the Forest of Tethir and in all the woodlands south and east of
there as far as northern Chult and the Shaar. One of the favorite carving woods of Calimshan and the Tashalar thanks to its dura¬bility and ability to absorb human oils and moisture for years after being cut so as to avoid decaying, drying, out, or splitting, calantra is the heartwood of the calan tree. Calans are stout, red-barked trees with deep brown wood that grow to no more than 11 feet in height and consist of thick trunks with no side-branches that rise up into a gnarly crown of many small, interwoven branches. Most humans can traverse calan stands only in a hunched-over pos¬ture, making such travelers easy prey for shorter creatures who can move at will among the trees below the canopy.
Calan trees are as hardy alive as they are dead, withstanding most frosts, fires (even red dragon breath), and floods. Much used in the making of furniture, travel chests, and walking sticks, calantra is prized by those who craft magical items because of this hardiness: It makes all item saving throws with +2 bonus over other woods. This increases to a +3 bonus if an item composed at least 20% of calantra bears any sort of enchantment, but strong or multiple enchantments cannot augment this bonus beyond +3. Calantra does not have any special properties when used as a spell component and may be used with safety and normal results whenever any nonspecific type of wood, leaf, stick, sawdust, or similar wood product is called for.

Chime Oak

 Chime oak trees are a very rare type of tree that thrives in the northern sections of the east starwood, a section of 
the great forest Cormanthor. They resemble normal oak trees made of transparent glass, though the leaves often carry a slight greenish tinge. Aside from their appearance, chime oaks are indis¬tinguishable from other oaks; birds nest in their branches, they sprout and grow from seedlings, their limbs can be cut and burned for firewood. Unlike normal oaks, however, chime oaks do not lose their leaves in the autumn. Instead, the leaves freeze solid, remaining frozen throughout the autumn and winter until they thaw in the spring. Light breezes cause the frozen leaves to tinkle like wind chimes, producing a soothing, pleasant sound especially attractive to basilisks. These creatures can often found curled up near the trunks, eyes closed, completely relaxed.
Chime oak wood gradually loses its transparent quality as it dries (as do chime oak leaves), becoming a silvery-white hue when fully dry. It can be used in manufacturing magical items in the same way that oak is. However, when used in the manufacture of magical musical instruments, it gives the instruments a very sweet and pure sound.
Chime oak wood is impervious to cold, whether of a magical or natural nature, and items made primarily of chime oak retain this quality, automatically succeeding at all item saving throws vs. cold. Items containing less than 45% chime oak wood (by volume) than other types of material retain a residual bonus of this resistance as a +1 bonus to their item saving throws vs. cold. Chime oak wood and leaves can be substituted for normal oak wood and leaves interchangeably in spells, but they otherwise have no special properties when used as a material component.

Blueleaf

 This species is found north of Amn from the Sword Coast to Impiltur, although a rare few blueleaf trees have been seen growing in Chessenta, Turmish, and the Border Kingdoms. Blueleafs (not "blueleaves") grow close together in thick stands and reach 40 feet in height, but rarely attain trunk diameters of over 8 inches. Blueleaf trees have many small branches that begin about halfway up their trunks; branches grow in spiderweblike swirls around the trunks.
These delicately built, but supple, trees are instantly recogniz¬able when in leaf because of the eerie, gleaming blue color of their many-pointed leaves. Blueleafs bend in high winds or under heavy ice loads rather than breaking, and when curved entirely around like hoops, they form snow tunnels that provide ready shelter for winter travelers — and hungry hunting predators. They yield beautiful leaping blue flames when burned and are thus prized in many inns and taverns, where their light provides moody illumination for taletellers and minstrels in the late evenings. Their sap and crushed leaves yield a vivid blue dye which captures almost all of the glow of the living leaves and is much favored in the making of cloaks in the North.
Blueleaf is a durable, neutral wood popular for use in magical items, which it neither aids nor hampers the enchantment of, and as a material component. If it is the sole consumed material com¬ponent in a spell (that is, not counting a holy symbol or item to be altered but not used up by the casting), it can reduce the casting time by 1 to a minimum of 1.

Duskwood

 This tree species grows widely all over Faerfin, and the trees get their name from the dark, eerie appearance of the closely clustered stands they grow in. Duskwoods grow arrow- straight and can reach up to 60 feet in height. They have smooth, bare, nontapering trunks, a crown of tiny, lacy branches at the top, and black bark, which turns silvery-gray when newly broken or peeled. The wood beneath the bark is always smoky gray and as hard as iron. Their wood's strength helps them survive the axes of woodcutters who come seeking firewood. Most mast spars and building roof beams in Faerfin are made of duskwood spars. Duskwood is also very resistant to fire, smoldering rather than blaz¬ing, and because of this, duskwood trees tend to survive forest fires.
Duskwood is suitable for use in the making of staves and rods, but should be avoided in the fashioning of items, where it forces the caster of every eternal flame spell involved to make a saving throw vs. spell at -2 or have the spell fail, destroying any previous enchantments successfully cast on or into the item. Its use should also be avoided in the casting of spells that involve fire, where it adds a 20% chance of total spell failure, applied after casting, wherein all material components except the duskwood are con¬sumed. The sole exception to this caveat is items and spells of fire resistance; duskwood augments these by increasing their protec¬tion by 1 point per die of fiery damage they are forced to ward (operate) against.

Felsul

This tree seems to favor cold and poor soil, and in many rocky places in the North and in those parts of northern Anauroch not cloaked in ice, felsuls provide the only tree cover to be seen. Felsuls grow on crags, cliff edges, and clefts where few other trees can find purchase. They are gnarled, twisted trees whose wood crumbles to the touch and is of a dusty cinnamon brown to deep brown hue.
Felsuls grow slowly, maturing only after about 10 years, at which point they are around 3 feet high. At around a decade in age, the soft green, fuzzy-barked straight saplings, which resemble many shrubs, darken and begin to twist and curve as their roots deepen, their upper reaches dry out, and winds begin to shape their frail trunks. Mature felsuls constantly shed flakes of rotting bark, and their wood is prone to split and crack, being too weak and mis¬shapen for use in building or the making of furniture. Felsul wood also burns poorly, but felsul root is favored for use in the carving of small things such as holy symbols, figurines, and toys.
Early each spring, felsuls burst briefly into flower, sprouting vivid, yellow-and-purple blossoms whose crushed petals yield a perfume prized by ladies of high rank throughout the Realms. A sack of these flowers can bring as much as 3 gp in years when these blossoms are scarce.
Felsul is unsuitable for magical use except as a material com¬ponent in spells designed to hasten withering or decay or increase damage caused by something else. For such magics, this wood serves as a universal replacement, with one chip of felsul wood, bark, or root sufficing per spell as a substitute for the normal material components (provided they need not be specially con-structed).

Hiexel

This species is very common in the Dales, growing in thickets in ravines and on hillsides. It averages about 30 feet in height, but can grow to reach 70 feet or more in a sheltered spot. Hiexel have gently curved, sparse branches that give the whole tree an upright oval foliage shape.
The wood of these trees, also called simply "hiexel," is brittle, green, and waxy. It succumbs to rot easily, and produces profuse amounts of thick, oily smoke when ignited. This brings it frequent use in signal beacon fires, in the smoking of meat or fish, or in driving beasts or foes out of an enclosed area. 
Hiexel bark is silver-green and neither easily burned nor easily rotted. It has seen use as a binding material for books, including spell tomes, and —stuck down with wooden pegs and sealed with mud and clumps of moss —as a facing material for the outside walls of wooden buildings located in damp locations such as forest glades. Windstorms often fell old or large hiexel, because over time or as they grow big, portions of their wood dry out unevenly. This makes them topple easily and also renders them unsuitable for use in situations of stress or hard usage, such as in sledges or bridges.
Hiexel is unsuitable as a material component for any magic involving water or other liquids. It can serve as a universal replace¬ment component for any spells whose effects involve mists or other vapors, and when so used, it increases the casting time of the spell by 1, but has no affect on other spell particulars. Hiexel should not be used in the making of magical items, as its unstable nature causes such an item to break after ld2 years of service —at most.

Laspar

 This evergreen species grows everywhere north of mid-Tethyr and west of Thay and has a distinctive olive-green to copper hue. Laspars look like squat cedars, rarely topping 30 feet in height, and have thick foliage that foils most searching eyes seeking to see under a single tree, let alone a stand of them. Las- par needles are flat and smooth-pointed, and they grow in spheri¬cal clusters (known as "shags") at the ends of a cloak of delicate branches that swirl around a straight, strong central trunk. Those trunks have dusty green bark that tends to form a surface of many small, interlocked, concave plates. Under the bark is a golden- hued wood that is easily worked, like pine, but is also pitchy like pine, spitting too many sparks for safe burning.
Boiled laspar needles are an effective laxative well known to the lore of the North, and crushed needles are used in the making of certain scents, such as those worked into torches and candles of superior quality. The sharp, distinctive laspar smell seems to attract laspar moths, which lair only in laspar trees. They are gray furry-winged, but only fearsome-looking, things that have wingspans as large as 8 inches and a body length of up to 4 inches.
Laspar is unsuitable for use in magical items or any other per¬manent magic, but for spells involving transformations of shape or state, a handful of laspar needles are a universal replacement component, decreasing the casting time of the spell by 1.

Phandar

 This type of tree seldom grows north of about the midpoint of the High Forest and is now rare all across Faerfin due to heavy cutting. It grows to about 60 feet in height with terrifically strong, springy curving boughs sprouting in great numbers from a massive, knobby central trunk, which greatly resembles the feared monster known as a roper, though the trunk, at 20 feet or so in height, is much taller than a roper. Its leaves of mottled, vari-colored green are shaped roughly like an egg laid horizontally. Their long axes point in the direction the wind is blowing, so a stand of phandars all seem to be pointing in one direction.
Phandar wood is greenish-brown and striped with thin black grain lines throughout. When the wood is cut for use in the mak¬ing of jewelry or coffers, the grain forms striking waves of curling parallel lines. Tool and weapon handles, bows, and the musical instruments known as tocken are often fashioned of phandar wood, though its curving nature makes it unsuitable for spears, wands, staves, and other forms where straightness is desirable.
Phandars are very hardy; many leafy sprigs are carried for many miles and long days before being simply thrust into the earth or let fall onto it—and have subsequently grown, without
attention, into towering trees. A phandar stump often grows a new tree, and even waste boughs tossed into a heap have been known to root and sprout. This has probably saved the tree from total extinction at the hands of loggers, who prize the central trunks of phandar trees because they are strong enough to support heavy roofs and can be chiseled to accept crossbeams without cracking or splitting.
Phandar wood is ideal for the making of durable magical items that need not be straight and as an ingredient in all healing potions and enchanted unguents. When used in a magical item, phandar wood requires no purification magics and prolongs all wondrous web or holy vesting spells cast upon items even partially made from it for one additional round.

Roseneedle Pine

 Roseneedle pines grow in Faerfin's temper¬ate forests along riverbanks and are most plentiful in Cormanthor, where they thrive along the banks of the Ashaba, growing there the year round. They are miniature evergreens that resembles yews and seldom exceed 3 feet tall, with trunks that grow no big¬ger than 4 inches in diameter. A roselike blossom, pink or white, sprouts from the end of each of their tiny needles during the late spring and early summer. A roseneedle's roots extend into the ground and then spread out in a wide circle often in excess of 10 feet in radius around the tree trunk. The roots end in fat tubers the size of a potato. Chunks of the tubers make excellent fishing bait; fisherfolk can easily double their day's catch when using them.
Roseneedle wood is pitchy, like other pine woods, and burns with a great many sparks, though not with any special degree of heat or amount of smoke. It is gnarled and unsuitable to being crafted into many items other than small figurines, but it is soft enough that a great deal of detail can be easily imparted to any small items carved from it. Tinctures made from roseneedle tubers or flowers are often used in the preparation of magical items made to control or summon aquatic life, especially fish, and roseneedle pine needles can be used as a universal replacement component for any sort of fish or piece of a fish required as a material component for a spell.

Shadowtop

 These trees are the soaring giants of the forests of Faerfin. They grow as quickly as 2 feet a year if the weather is warm and damp enough, can exist in all except arctic climates, and can reach 90 feet or more in height if undisturbed. A full- grown shadowtop flares out to 20 feet or more in diameter at its base, and its trunk is textured all around with many pleatlike ridges. Shadowtops only sprout branches from the uppermost dozen feet or so of their trunks, and the trees are named for the dense clusters of feathery leaves that grow from these spreading branches at the tops of their trunks. Shadowtop leaves are irregu¬lar in shape, with many fingers, and have copper-colored under¬sides and deep green upper surfaces. In autumn, the tops change hue to match the underneath sides before the leaves drop.
Shadow wood is fibrous and tough, but unsuitable for carving or structural work because it tends to split down its length under stress into a splayed mass of fibers. The fibers are valued in rope¬making, and a few at a time added to the twist adds considerably to the strength and durability of a completed coil. Shadow wood burns slowly but cleanly, generating a very hot fire with little smoke, though it typically does not ignite at all unless held in the leaping flames of an already-established fire. The wood's qualities as a fuel make it ideal for use when cooking. If a woodcutter with fewer than five wagons fells a mature shadowtop, wood is always left over that cannot be carried away in a single trip; by tradition, travelers are free to cut enough from this remainder for one night's fire.
Shadow wood is much used in the making of magical staves, rods, and wands. Crown melds are never necessary when an item contains shadow wood; Merald's meld joins automatically succeed at their saving throws and other die rolls when covering a join with shadow wood. (Treat the item as if it has the benefits of a crown meld.) Because of an innate quality of shadow wood, the wood is also always considered to have been harvested in a man¬ner related to the enchantment it will receive or bathed in an appropriate substance, whatever the actual manner of its pro¬curement and preparation was.

Silverbark

: This species flourishes in wet ground throughout Faerun, generally near bogs and swamps, but sometimes in deep, flooded ravines in the depths of large forests. Silverbarks are thin and straight, seldom growing more than a 15 feet tall or more than 4 inches in diameter. They are plentiful, and grow in thickets, from which they are easily cut. Silverbark wood is reddish and dries out thoroughly after it is cut, becoming very light but also very brittle after a year or so. The deep red leaves are large and oval with pointed tips, tiny saw-toothed edges, and purple bases. They are waxy and strong and are sometimes used to wrap game in—or even to carry kindling—in the wilds. The silver bark for which the tree is named is loose and can be easily torn away (whereupon it crumbles).
Silverbark trunks serve the poor as staves, poles, and as defensive stakes (once points have been whittled and hardened in a slow fire). The weakness of the wood makes it unsuitable for lance shafts, fence rails, or structural work, but its sap is an essential ingredient in poison antidotes and sweet water potions. It can be used as a uni¬versal replacement component in all purification and antitoxin mag¬ics, taking nothing from the effectiveness of such spells but reducing casting time by 1 and replacing all other normally necessary compo-nents (unless they must be specially constructed).

Suth

 The name of this tree may be a corruption of the word "south." These tangled trees with olive-green leaves are found along the edges of the Shaar, in the woods of Chondath, and far¬ther south in Faerun. They grow almost horizontally and then double back over themselves to angle back in another direction. If a few suth trees grow together, their branches intertwine, lock around each other, and then double back until they are inextrica¬bly entangled and form a visual screen and wall barring passage to all things that cannot fly over the tangled trees or scuttle under their lowest branches.
Suth leaves are long, soft, and fluffy, but the ends form spikes. They grow in bunches at the end of each branch and in a ring around the trunk wherever tree limbs branch out or the growing tree changes direction.
Suth wood is very hard and durable. It is so hard that it is diffi¬cult to work unless one has the finest tools. Thin sheets of this wood retain astonishing strength for decades and so are favored for use in book covers. Suth is also the preferred wood for shields; it never shatters and does not catch fire as long as it is soaked in water before battle. A crushing blow might crack a suth wood shield, but it would not fly apart if cracked.


Items made primarily of suth wood gain a +2 bonus to item sav¬ing throws vs. crushing blow and fall. Provided the components need not be specially constructed, suth wood slivers or bark chips can replace all components used in barkskin, armor, and similar spells, and spells that toughen the nature of inorganic components or items, such as Veladar's vambrace and holy might. Suth sap is an essential ingredient in the oil used to anoint metal armor and shields before they are enchanted to improve their Armor Class.

Vundwood

 This species of tree is short and scrubby. It thrives on poor ground and grows in small stands in the Tunland and in even more profusion south of Iriaebor in the rolling, seemingly endless hills and plains that separate the Sword Coast from the Dragon Reach lands. The tree is named for the Vunds, an infa¬mous nomadic tribe who lived long ago in what is now considered the Western Heartlands and the Green Fields. These brigands' persistent caravan raids only ended when they were wiped out long ago by folk who lived in what are now Cormyr and Sembia.
Vundwood trees rarely top 15 feet and lack a central trunk; instead, they have many small, radiating branches, which in turn split into smaller branches, and so on. The trees have smooth, thin, dark red bark and pale green leaves edged with white that lighten to yellow when winter is nigh or when a tree is dying. The wood itself is reddish-brown and smells rather like cinnamon.

Vundwood is used as firewood or felled intact and then dragged into tangled lines to form rough paddock enclosures. When used in the making of wands and other magical items that use charges, it exhibits a peculiar echo property, causing an item made of it to spontaneously gain 1d4 charges out of nowhere once every 1d12 months unless the item is totally exhausted. In spell¬casting, vundwood serves as a universal replacement material component —replacing all consumed components—for all priest and wizard spells that involve recalling an already-cast spell for the use of the caster or augmenting or altering the spellcaster's capacity for spells (such as Rary's mnemonic enhancer).

Weirwood

 Weir trees are now rare and highly prized. Most that survive are deep in the larger forests of Faerfin and actively protected by dryads, treants, druids, and rangers. If undisturbed, weir trees grow into huge, many-branched forest giants. They resemble oaks in appearance, only with leaves that are brown with a silver sheen on the upper surfaces and velvety black on the undersides.
Weir wood does not burn in normal (nonmagical) fire and is resilient and durable. It is favored for the making of lutes, harps, birdpipes, and longhorns because of the unmistakable warm, clear sound it gives to such instruments. Any magically generated radiance (such as dancing lights) that is brought into contact with cut or living weirwood lingers around the wood for 1d4+1 rounds after its source expires or is removed — unless the weirwood has any active enchantment upon itself, which negates this property.
Weirwood serves as a replacement component for all spells that normally use oak or holly (bark, leaves, berries, or the wood) and can replace any one consumed component that does not need to be specially constructed in spells that create magical radi¬ance or that provide some protection against, or resistance to, normal or magical fire. If used as an extra material component in spells that create or mend objects (such as mending, wondrous web, awakening, enchant an item, holy vesting, or ritual of transfer¬ence), it confers a bonus of +1 to all saving throws and ability checks involved in the spellcasting.

Zalantar

 This subtropical species is rarely seen north of the Shaar. It is plentiful along the shores of Chult and the southern coasts of Faerfin and seems to grow in any terrain short of moun¬tainous. The leaves of zalantar trees range from white through beige, and the bark and wood of the tree are black —hence its Northern name: "blackwood." Zalantar trees have a central root and eight or more trunks branching out from the root at ground level like the splayed fingers of a hand. The trees may reach 80 feet in height, but they average half that. Zalantar wood is strong, yet easily worked, and sees much use in southern buildings and the making of wagons, litters, and wheels.
Southern sorcerers use zalantar almost exclusively in the mak¬ing of rods, staves, and wands. It is durable and handsome, and it aids magics cast upon it, providing a +2 bonus to the saving throws associated with a priest or wizard awakening spell or a wizard's enchant an item spell. When an enchanted or nonmagical item that is wholly or partially made of zalantar is in use, the wood aids all item saving throws with a +1 bonus. It also glows with a very faint mauve radiance when undead beings are within a 70- foot spherical radius.