Harrowpine Wood

Harrowpine wood is a rare and highly coveted material harvested from the strange, sound-absorbing Harrowpine trees that grow exclusively in regions scarred by the Calamity Era. Unlike any mundane timber, Harrowpine wood possesses an uncanny stillness: it absorbs vibration, dampens footsteps, and seems to drink in ambient sound rather than reflect it. Even handling a raw plank can feel unsettling, as every tap, scrape, or breath becomes muffled the instant it touches the wood. This acoustic void makes Harrowpine one of the most valuable materials for stealthwork, arcane containment, and certain divine rituals.   The wood itself is matte black with an almost shadow-soaked quality. Its grain runs in impossibly straight lines, unbroken by knots or twists, as if carved from a single block of night. When worked, the lumber produces little sawdust and offers unexpected resistance—craftsmen often describe the sensation as “cutting silence itself.” Once shaped, Harrowpine retains its rigidity and weight, but gains a strange warmth when touched, as though quietly responding to the presence of living beings. This responsiveness is subtle yet unmistakable: tools hafted in Harrowpine feel perfectly balanced, and weapons strike without audible impact.   Its most remarkable property is its ability to nullify noise, both mechanical and magical. Even faint metallic clinks, spellcasting whispers, or the rustle of cloth can be dampened by Harrowpine sheaths, flooring, or reinforcement. This made the wood historically prized by assassins, scouts, spies, and monks of silent orders during the later Harmonium Era. In arcane circles, Harrowpine is used to construct containment boxes for unstable relics, masking their magical signatures and preventing sympathetic resonance with leylines. Temples dedicated to death, shadows, or silence often incorporate Harrowpine in ceilings or sanctum walls to create a profound stillness.   Harvesting Harrowpine wood is dangerous and tightly regulated. Harrowpine groves occur only in post-Calamity soil where divine fallout once burned the land, and these regions are often unstable, haunted, or magically toxic. Even when found, the trees must be cut with specialized tools, as ordinary axes rebound uselessly off the bark. Folklore claims the trees “choose” whether to yield their trunks; while likely superstition, many woodcutters refuse to approach Harrowpines without ritual preparation.   Because of the risk and rarity involved, Harrowpine lumber is expensive and typically reserved for elite tools, ceremonial weapons, or specialized equipment for guilds and military operatives. Despite its value, the tree is never cultivated, every Harrowpine in existence is wild-grown, shaped by a disaster that can never be safely replicated. As a result, every crafted piece of Harrowpine is a relic of Tanaria’s wounded history: a silent reminder of the world that was, and the shadows that remain.