Sand Worm Tooth

A Sand Worm tooth is exactly what it sounds like. A tooth from a Sand Worm, complete with the strange yellowed coloration with tips tinted a light pinkish color. This tool is uniquely sold by the Ryum Chyimon Kiufom.

How to Make One

Unsurprisingly, this tool is not just found laying on the ground in the desert. No, It is painstakingly made by the Ryum Chyimon from a tooth pulled from a Sand Worm and making it safe for common use. This is not actually the tricky part, the tricky part is getting the Worm to let you.

Pulling a Sand Worm Tooth

Misnomer, it doesn’t let you. Not ever, not until it’s dead. Which means its your job to kill it. This is better done with the help of an entire Kiuf, each doing their particular job in taking the huge beast down. This often includes many spears, several hours of work, and being dowsed in the worms gelatinous-slime like insides before it finally goes down.

Once the worm is dead, One then heads to its mouth and begins the search for a suitable tooth. Generally, out of the worms several hundred, only 15-20 are suitable for use. Once a tooth is found, the Ryum pulls it out carefully, but quickly. From a young age, all Ryum children are taught never to touch the tooth with their bare hands, or to let any of its bodily liquids touch their bare skin as it will still burn you. Badly.
When pulling the tooth from the worms mouth, they wrap it in a thick, dark cloth as best they can before pulling gently from the base, rocking it from side to side to loosen it. Sometimes cutting at the gums can help

What makes a tooth suitable

• Being able to wrap your hand nicely around its base where the handle will go
• Around 10-15 inches in length.
• Not largely curved, just a gentle arch.
• Not cracked or broken in anyway after being pulled
• Being decently dull already; It should not be able to cut flesh even with presser applied.

loosen the tooth as well, but it is dangerous as they risk damaging the tooth in the process. Removing the tooth takes around 15 to 20 minutes of constant, low effort pulling. To share the effort, many work in groups, finding a tooth for each member to carve before heading back to the Kiuf.

by Avalonsketches

Once the tooth is out, it is important to thouroghly wash it off in either water or, if it’s available, some sort of alcohol. Gin Daisy water will not work to clean the tooth. They leave eave it soaking for a couple days with a cloth draped over the bucket to help keep it contained.

Making the handle

While no longer covered in acid, the tooth is still dangerous to touch for long periods of time due to its natural corroding properties on flesh, bone, and stone. This is why a handle is then made out of strips of old cloths and leather. They take the cloth that was draped over the water or alcohol bath and cut it into strips that wrap around the base twice and a little more. They then wrap each strip tightly before securing it in place. After it is secure, they take a large leather swatch and wrap that around the cloth cover to hide it nicely. The leather is then secured in place using bright ropes of colorful cloth, the more colors the better.

The Best Part: Carving

Once the handle is made and secure, then the fun begins. Carving. Most take great pleasure in coming up with intricate designs to cover the head of the tool with, ranging from repetion of shapes, to intricate desert flowers, all the way to things they have heard of in stories, such as waves of the ocean or towering groves of trees. The more intricate and detailed the better.
For the most part, the carvings are worked on till the Kiuf finds another town to trade with.
The carving of a Tooth is a very private project, many not sharing their work until right before it is given away. Younger Ryum try to have competitions of who can create the best image. Older Ryum will go along behind others and offer advice on how to work out difficult details or problem solve a new way of displaying their desired image. Parents take great delight in teaching their children how to carve a tooth at first, including their adopted children. It is a shared belief that everyone should know the basics of carving, even if you hate it.

What it is Used For

A Sand Worm tooth is good at one thing and one thing only. Carving and destroying stone and bone. When used by the Sand Worm, this means distraction and death, as well as feeding time for the worm itself, but when removed and used by an artisan, it means carving stone into beautiful works of art becomes so much easier.

Writting on the Walls

In much of Tublian culture, decorations on the wall are a staple, a must. Many use painted tiles to display the story of their homes, others use plain paint or stains to achieve the same effect. Both of these luxuries were far too expensive for the common person to make use of, leaving them with very few options to keep up with the current styles or document their familial histories. But when the Ryum Chyimon emerged from the desert offering to trade these teeth for a few panels of cloth, everything changed.
When drawn across stone, the tooth makes a carving almost as easily as lead on paper, allowing a whole new style of art to emerge. Suddenly, people could carve their stories into their walls with ease, creating stunning 3D pictures that could leave even the most prominent tile maker speechless. Now, houses are often covered in an intricate and alluring mix of tile, paint, and carvings, ornately displaying the heritage of the family.

Other Carvings

While mainly used on the walls of houses and buildings, that is not the only play these teeth are used. Many use them on exploration advetures, marking their path in the stone so as not to loose their way. They can be used by Prophets and Conduits trying to get their message out to everyone without it being taken down. Basically, if anyone has a need to change, carve, or write on stone, The Sand Worm Tooth is invaluable.