WOD
Wood
The Worked Grain
From yew and ash to ironwood and darkwood — wood is light, renewable, and burns. Handles, hafts, shields, and furniture of every quality.
Every item in Altarmn is built from one or more of fourteen material domains. The domain is not merely a label — it is a set of mechanical tendencies, a range of possible substances, and the vocabulary the world uses to describe what a thing is made of.
From yew and ash to ironwood and darkwood — wood is light, renewable, and burns. Handles, hafts, shields, and furniture of every quality.
Boar, stag, moose, lizard, wolf. Leather bends without breaking, offers modest protection, and is the dominant material of travelling gear.
Iron, steel, bronze, silver. Metal holds an edge, carries elemental properties through alloying, and remains the standard for weapons and heavy armour.
Linen, silk, wool, canvas, spidersilk. Textiles breathe, insulate modestly, and carry dye and embroidery well. The material of robes, bandages, and disguises.
Granite, obsidian, marble, slate. Stone is slow to make and hard to destroy. It appears most often in dungeon construction and in blunt implements of great permanence.
Clear, smoked, amber, violet. Glass seals alchemical contents, focuses light, and shatters. Its products are valued for what they carry rather than what they endure.
Bloodwort, mugwort, yarrow, nightshade. Herbs drive most consumable remedies and poisons. Their potency multiplies with quality; their danger does the same.
Glowcap, bloodcap, ghostcap, cave chanterelle. Fungal materials thrive in dungeon conditions and appear in food, medicine, and alchemical preparation in roughly equal measure.
Ruby, sapphire, amethyst, opal. Gems carry runic charge efficiently, resist elemental damage, and are the primary material in high-value jewellery and socketing work.
Bleached bone, antler, ivory, fang. Bone is strong for its weight, carries ritual significance in certain cultures, and is the material of choice in necromantic craft.
Beeswax, tallow, pine-resin wax. Wax seals, lubricates, and carries flame. A secondary material in most finished goods; a primary material in candles, seals, and waterproofing.
Salted meat, dried herbs, jerked provisions. The organic domain captures food-source materials. What it makes does not last long and should be consumed rather than stored.
Hemp fiber, linen cord, gut string. Twine binds, wraps, and repairs. It appears as an accent material in most weapon and tool construction, and occasionally as a primary in traps and snares.
Vellum, oiled parchment, treated paper. The alchemical domain covers prepared writing surfaces and the scrollwork that allows spells to be stored outside the mind.
Every item that exists in the dungeon exists at a quality - a single value from one to ten that represents the care and skill that went into its making. Quality multiplies the item's mechanical properties directly.
Quality multiplies durability, damage, defence, value, cure chance, spellcraft, and sneak ratings. A masterfully crafted dagger deals more damage and holds its edge far longer than a dismal one with the same base design. The multiplier is proportional — each step up the scale is a meaningful improvement, not a cosmetic one.
Weight, size, required level, and elemental properties are fixed by the item's design, not its quality. A heavy axe remains heavy regardless of who made it. The quality of the metal may change how deadly it is, but not how much it costs to carry.
Items are described using words that reflect both their quality tier and their material domain. A quality-one weapon is shoddy; a quality-ten weapon is masterful. The domain supplies the noun — the material's adjective wraps around it to produce the item's generated name.
| Rating | Name | Character |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dismal | Barely serviceable. Likely to fail under pressure. |
| 2 | Poor | Rough work. It functions, but not gracefully. |
| 3 | Shoddy | Acceptable for a dungeon find. Better than nothing. |
| 4 | Common | Standard craft. What most traders carry. |
| 5 | Decent | Competent work. A journeyman's honest output. |
| 6 | Fine | Above the common line. Reliable under real strain. |
| 7 | Superior | Skilled hands. A craftsperson who knows their trade. |
| 8 | Excellent | Notable work. Sought out, traded for, worth protecting. |
| 9 | Exceptional | Rare quality. The best most craftspeople ever produce. |
| 10 | Masterful | The ceiling of craft. Remembered by those who hold it. |
Material does more than describe. Each domain carries mechanical tendencies that shape an item's behaviour in use, its resistance to damage, and its relationship to the enemies that fear or ignore it.
Materials generate the item's name and narrative. A sword is not just a sword — it is a fine dagger forged of blued steel with a grip wrapped in boar hide. The primary material drives the main adjective and surface detail. Accent materials add secondary texture. The description is deterministic: the same material and quality combination produces the same words every time.
Each domain contributes small flat bonuses to relevant stats. Metal items lean into combat performance. Herb and mushroom items lean into consumable effect. Gem items lean into runic efficiency. These bonuses are modest but consistent, and they stack with quality multipliers rather than replacing them.
Different domains wear at different rates. A metal weapon used in every fight loses durability quickly but starts with a high ceiling. A wooden tool is cheaper and lighter but reaches its limit sooner. Consumables from the organic domain have no durability to speak of - they are spent entirely on use. Repair and replacement decisions are domain-specific.
Certain materials are weak to specific damage types. A wooden shield facing fire damage will resist less than an iron one. Some enemies fear or are weakened by particular materials — bone enemies may be resistant to blunt impact and fragile against cutting edges. This creates a layer of preparation that rewards paying attention to what the dungeon is made of before descending into it.
When a recipe consumes ingredients, it does not merely destroy them. Their material identity passes forward. The result of a crafting action tends to echo the materials that were sacrificed to produce it. An item crafted primarily from metal ingredients will carry metal domain properties even if the recipe itself does not specify a material.
This inheritance is biased, not absolute. The recipe's intended result still shapes the output — but the specific materials used push that output toward one region of the result's possible material identity. Two seekers who follow the same recipe with different ingredients can produce items that describe themselves differently and carry different secondary stats.
Every item carries a primary material and may carry one or more accent materials. The primary material determines the item's main description and drives its most significant mechanical tendencies. Accent materials add secondary flavour lines — a blade might be primarily steel but have a leather-wrapped grip and a wax-sealed pommel cavity.
In practice, what the crafter puts in shapes what comes out. Using high-quality ingredients from specific domains is therefore a form of expertise: it allows a practiced crafter to steer the result toward a desired material composition rather than accepting whatever the recipe rolls by default.