Popular - Materials

Stuff of Legends

There are many materials in the world, used for literally everything. But among all the mundane leathers, and logs, there are some that stick out for their unique origin, or utility, and some for their strange magical properties.
It is these things that make these materials not only popular, but also legendary.

Dragon Scale

The scales of Dragons are one of the most prized mystic resources, none of the other mystics are hunted for a piece of their body, but dragons. Their scales are large and extremely durable, they can withstand extreme punishment from any variety of weapons. However, it is not just this that makes them popular, it is also their magical negation properties and fire resistance.

They are able to significantly reduce incoming magical attacks, and they are extremely terrible conductors of heat, making them the best-known thermal insulators in the world.
This is not only useful as attached to your armor, but also on a shield, or even in your walls, although those walls would then be very expensive.

Dragon scales are most easily gathered from the remains of dead dragons, however, dragons also shed their scales regularly, and it isn't that uncommon to find some in dragon territory, and if you can find the dragons nest, there will probably be a big pile of old scales somewhere, which will be worth a small fortune.

In armor, they are attached to thin gambeson or tunic of some type to make light plate armor, or to heavy metal armor, in order to make the armor even more efficient.
the scales themselves are surprisingly light, but their weakness is the gaps between them, which is why light armors are often not fully protected, especially against fire, which can seep through the cracks, and it is also not the best against blunt force weapons unless combined with a metal foundation. Works great against slash attacks tho.

Jet Glass

Jet Glass is a newly rediscovered material. It is made by combining Molten sand and Jet and letting it cool slowly. It isn't quite that simple tho, because slight impurities in the sand or the jet could ruin the whole process, and the initial cooling also needs to be very carefully controlled, or the glass will shatter, and you will be left with beautiful but rather useless silicon-jet crystals.
Those crystals can be remelted tho, to try again but this process requires time, and a lot of heat, not to mention that the shattering of such crystals is violent, and involves sharp pieces of glass metal flying in every direction.

When successfully created and cooled, the glass will be dark, and slightly translucent, it allows people to see what's on the other side, without actually letting a lot of light through, just enough to see what's happening, though that is not very useful tho, a more common use is in the construction of mana wells, and other magical contraptions because both class and jet are good at holding mana.

Read more about Jet in: Popular - Metals

Chitin

This is the material that makes up the shells of any and all crustaceans, it is a hard yet flexible substance.
The most used chitin originates from the King Crab, which is the largest, and therefore provides the biggest and sturdiest pieces of raw chitin to work with, this material is carved into armor, but even tableware such as plates, and smaller bits are used as decorative pieces. It isn't uncommon to see sailors carrying swords with chitin handles or even handguards.

Chitin can also be purified, in which case it becomes translucent and much more flexible, as well as still being very durable. This material is used in water flasks and other containers, it can even be turned into a coarse type of cord, often used to stick wounds, or as fishing lines.
However, the chitin purification process requires magic, and a great deal of know-how, making it not the most common resource in the world. The chitin traditions go back millennia tho, and in certain parts of the world, they are so baked into tradition, that its impracticality is just shrugged off now.

Ivory

Ivory is a largely decorative material used in many kinds of luxury items such as little statues, fancy cutlery, or weapon handles, to piano tiles, and you name it, and there is probably a version of it somewhere made from ivory.

Ivory is primarily gathered and sold in the form of Elephants tusks, although Fiends horns are also made of the same material, despite looking much more like moose antlers. However, the fiend horns are much less thick, and never very straight, making it more difficult to use them, on top of that are fiends much more rare, and much more dangerous to hunt, and thus it is that almost all ivory in the world comes from elephants.

Spider Web

Most spider webs are thin and fragile, and completely useless for use by corporeals, however, the Boar Spiders are so large that their web has reached a thickness that makes it usable.
This material is only really used by a handful of forest tribes, and they collect the string, either by milking a live boar spider or taking it from an existing web, and then they are washed and dried. While still sticky, they are used in the walls of homes, but they aren't useful for a lot of other things, so they are dried and treated with grease, in order to prevent them from going rigid, and at that point, they are used like any other rope. These webs come in different types, and they range from half a centimeter to two centimeters thick, depending on the type of web, the resulting rope will also be more or less elastic.
All spider ropes are extremely tough, and if made correctly, they will last you a lifetime.

Mithril And Jet

Read about these two legendary metals in the article about: Popular - Metals.