Materials & Enchantment¶
Not everything is forged in plain steel. Weapons, shields, and armor come in the old metals and bow-woods, and the finer ones carry an enchantment — a permanent bonus worked into the material itself.
- On a weapon, the enchant adds to your AS (attack strength).
- On a shield or armor, it adds to your DS (defense strength).
APPRAISE <item> tells you everything: the make, the bonus, and what it demands of you.
The wield rule¶
The finer the metal, the more it asks. Anything through +5 answers to any hand. Past that, an enchanted item only answers to a wielder of level (bonus − 5):
| Enchant | Minimum level |
|---|---|
| +5 | none |
| +10 | 5 |
| +12 | 7 |
| +15 | 10 |
| +20 | 15 |
| +25 | 20 |
| +30 | 25 |
Swing a blade you haven't earned and it simply refuses — no roundtime, no swing, just a lesson in humility. Shields and armor are gentler: you can carry and wear them, but the enchantment stays dark until you reach the level, leaving only the mundane protection underneath.
The metals¶
The material tiers most commonly encountered in shops and on more valuable drops:
| Metal | Enchant | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| steel | +0 | the measure everything else is priced against |
| mithril | +5 | silver-pale, ~10% lighter — first magic for a first purse |
| orichalcum | +10 | the enchanters' apprentice metal; white and black orichalcum exist, and are another story |
| skysteel | +12 | dramatically light (~30% off); duelists cross the map for it |
| mereglass | +15 | sea-green, glass-smooth, brutally heavy (+50%) |
| truesteel | +20 | the soldier's dream metal, ~20% lighter |
| deepsteel | +20 | truesteel's harder-won, full-weight rival — mined under the Delvings |
| kingsteel | +25 | kingly; the great houses arm their champions in it |
Rarer metals hold stranger gifts: white orichalcum and argent are blessed and anathema to the undead; black orichalcum is their cursed mirror; shearsteel never dulls and bites past armor; embersteel, rimesteel, stormsteel, and thrumsteel flare fire, ice, lightning, and raw force when they strike. If you find one, keep it close.
Flares¶
A flaring metal wakes on roughly one landed blow in five: the weapon erupts with its element and the wound takes a hard extra bite on top of the strike. Nulliron is stranger still — its grey flare deals no wound at all, but drinks one enchantment off whatever it hits. Holy metal saves its white fire for the undead alone, and burns them twice as hard. Flares belong to the metal, not the wielder: a looted embersteel blade burns just as hungrily in a kobold's paw.
The woods¶
Bows and staves take their virtue from the tree:
| Wood | Enchant | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| balsa | −10 | soft trail-wood; cheap bows, and they shoot like it |
| yew | +2 | the old bowyers' first love |
| rowan | +5 | the warding-wood of hedge charms |
| wenge | +10 | dense enough to turn a blade |
| silver birch | +12 | frost-silvered, cut in the coldest month |
| satinwood | +15 | golden and true under strain |
| ironwood / bloodwood | +20 | runestaff and bow wood the towers swear by |
| silverthorn / palethorn / songwood | +25 | the elves' great woods; effectively legends |
Where to buy¶
Weaponsmiths keep a small enchanted rack, restocked on a slow cycle — when a piece sells, it's gone for a while:
- Tam Harrock's Gilded Anvil (Emberford, the Street of Hammers) — the full rack, every school of arms: longswords and the skysteel battle axe (one-handed edge), greatswords (two-handed), war hammers (blunt), halberds (pole-arms), enchanted bows — and one truesteel longsword that everyone looks at and almost no one buys.
- The town smith (Coldhollow) — a starter shelf: mithril blade, mithril hammer, rowan bow.
- The Bulwark Armory (Emberford) — enchanted shields (mithril kite, orichalcum tower) and enchanted armor: a mithril chain shirt and an orichalcum breastplate.
- Hesk Undermantle (the Deep Delvings) — one deepsteel vein-spear and one deepsteel brigandine at a time, for delvers who've earned the depth they answer to.
Prices rise sharply with the bonus — a +10 blade runs roughly twenty times its plain
counterpart. SHOP to see the rack, BUY or ORDER <#> to claim one, and remember the
smith's stock notes what's sold out.
GM notes¶
/ENCHANT <held item> <bonus> [material] sets an instance's enchant and make;
/ENCHANT <held item> inspects it. Authored templates carry combat.enchant and
material.primary vars — any item can be materialed in the Worldbuilder.