Crystalwood

Crystalwood trees grow deep in the pitch black forests, easily recognizable by their translucent clear trunks laced with veins of sap that seem to drink in surrounding light. Crystalwoods are notable for existing in superimposition with Darkness and not an aribtrary Chaos or otherwise lesser point. When drained of sap, its wood fully cements its existence in the human plane, superimposition fading. The naturally growing material exhibits properties extremely similar to polycarbonate, and is a popular choice for longbows.

Planar link imperfection

Because the Pitch Black Forest's mundane footprint constantly spreads, it's clearly not an exact 1:1 requirement for a crystalwood to survive. In fact, it's theorized that crystalwood trees actually grow by utilizing the 'ballooning' effect of space.

Material Properties

Darkness-drained crystalwood is functionally identical to polycarbonate in most mechanical properties. This makes it much tougher than ordinary woods, and consequently harder to work. Nevertheless, it's plentiful. Being so tough, it's often used as armor in thick plates- often around 1-2cm. This provides comparable protection to bronze, while being far more readily available in the region.

Biological Function

The 'sap' of a crystalwood tree exists in superimposition; the material itself is entirely homogeneous. While colloquially called such, it's not an entirely accurate descriptor- rather, it's how the "plant"'s vascular system appears in the mundane plane. Unlike mundane trees, this network expands through the trunk as well. While alive (that is, with a proper vascular network running through it), the plant will cold-weld on contact with itself, healing from cracks and such (along with potentially attaching to other nearby trees). With proper control of solid shadow sorceries, this healing mechanism can be jumpstarted in otherwise dead pieces of crystalwood, allowing one to repair damage. Note that this is separate from umbrite infusion, which takes significantly higher amounts of energy, but little control beyond flooding the material with magic. Recreating crystalwood networks is a much more technically demanding task. The trees subsist on nutrients found in the ground along with Darklight photosynthesis analogue, existing partially in both planes at the same time. If one were to look at a crystalwood tree from the plane of darkness, they would see a bunch of floating leaves, attached to an extremely frail-looking network of fine threads.

Type

Wood

Related Locations