Soarwood

Soarwood is a pale, fine-grained hardwood growing only in select groves within the forests of Aerenal. The elves have cultivated and guarded these stands for millennia, for soarwood possesses a natural magical buoyancy unmatched by any mundane timber. Even after felling, shaping, and seasoning, a soarwood plank remains markedly lighter than common lumber, with a faint hollow resonance when tapped and a subtle warmth beneath the hand.

Properties

Material Characteristics

Soarwood resembles ordinary hardwood in appearance, though its grain tends to run in smooth, flowing patterns suggestive of windblown sand or moving currents. It weighs only three-quarters as much as normal wood, while maintaining hardness 5 and 10 hit points per inch of thickness. When carved into hulls, keels, or long beams, it demonstrates an innate lift, allowing constructed vessels to ride higher on water, providing the perfect foundation for elemental airships.

Physical & Chemical Properties

Ships built from soarwood move more swiftly than those made from common timber. An ordinary hull replaced entirely with soarwood sees its travel speed doubled, the vessel seeming to skim or glide across the surface rather than push through it. Though the wood does not confer flight on its own, it is a critical structural component for airships and elemental galleons, where bound elementals rely on the material’s buoyancy to maintain stable lift and steering volume.

Geology & Geography

Soarwood trees are found primarily in closely tended Aereni groves, many of which are bound to ancestral wards or overseen by deathless caretakers. The trees grow slowly, and the elves fell them sparingly, often only when a vessel is commissioned for a purpose considered necessary—political, ancestral, or arcane. Unauthorized harvesting is treated as a grave cultural violation.

History & Usage

Cultural Significance and Usage

Among the Aereni, soarwood is associated with journeys of meaning—pilgrimage, memory-keeping, or the forging of treaties across sea and sky. Even when sold to outsiders, the sale often carries ceremonial language, implying that the vessel’s voyage reflects upon the grove from which the wood came.

The ships of House Lyrandar rely on soarwood not only as a material, but as a heritage, one that quietly ties the dominion of the skies back to the island of the Undying Court.

Manufacturing & Products

Working soarwood requires light-handed shaping, as the wood responds poorly to compression or harsh bending. Shipwrights and artifice-smiths cure it slowly, aligning its grain to reinforce directional strength. For this reason, soarwood shipyards are specialized, and repairs in foreign ports require either imported lumber or Aereni-trained carpenters.

The cost of soarwood vessels is four times that of their mundane counterparts.

Environmental Impact

Soarwood harvesting is tightly regulated. Many groves replenish only across centuries, and over-harvest threatens the airship networks that depend upon it. As such, House Lyrandar and House Cannith maintain diplomatic and economic entanglements with the Aereni, balancing need with reverence and political concession.

Soarwood

Cost 4x normal
Weight 75% normal
Hardness 5
Hit Points 10/inch

Type

Wood