Blackwood

Deep, deep in the bowels of the earth, where the duergar delve, where the sun is unseen, and where the Great River¹ flows freely deathward, great tendrils of wood burrow through the caverns of the Underdark; dark as night and hardy as steel. The roots are mammoth, double as thick as the thickest surface tree trunks and miles long. This "blackwood" is greatly coveted above and below for its natural beauty, durability, and its superior arcane storage capacity to surface woods. The high demand for it has, of course, created a lucrative business centered around harvesting the stuff, and therefore around finding the stuff, guarding it, and shaping it. None of these are easy. To find the blackwood, you must venture out into the untamed Underdark. To harvest it, you need the best steel, enchanted for extended durability and sharpness, and many, many laborers. To guard it, you must be ever-alert, lest a wild steeder or worm snap up your client, yourself, or (most often) both! Even the shaping of the wood is difficult. Only a master craftsman knows how to bend the blackwood to his will. Blackwood is notoriously unyielding, needing to be coaxed with magic at every stage to curve just a little more, and a little more, until it has reached the desired shape. Even so, with all of the trials and tribulations associated with the stuff, Underdark merchants are still eager to finance it all. So, then, let us attend to the primary question: Where is Blackwood found?   Unless you're extremely lucky, or else favored by the gods, blackwood deposits of any significant size are far from the myriad of Underdark cities. The closest are usually a day's journey from civilization -- and mind you, surface folk, this is no jaunt in a splendid forest overseen by the sun, no. The journey is grueling and too-often fatal for those who undertake it. A deposit, we somewhat erroneously call it, in truth, normally consists of a single massive root with smaller (though still quite large) offshoots burrowing into the earth. These great roots can be found nearly anywhere in the Underdark, from verdant mushroom forests to crystalline caverns to lakes of night-dark water. These deposits are harvested thus: first the myriad branches of the main root are hacked off and shipped away for sale -- these will be fashioned into whatever they can; they are the lowest quality of blackwood, yet still of greater value than any surface tree. The main root now barren, great cylinders are hewn from the wood, such that a team of pack animals or an ogre² can haul it on a sled. Once the root is cut all the way up to the surface from which it protrudes, tedious work begins. For many weeks or months, the woodsmen will become miners, burrowing through the root and following it to the source. The journey is often miles long; miles of tunneling through tough-as-rock root in a claustrophobic tunnel perhaps only two dwarves wide. After many weeks, or even months, of tunneling through the roots, the miners will arrive at their source; truly a wondrous sight it is to behold. The roots come from a single, towering tree, at least a mile high and hundreds of feet thick. Held sacred by the many races below, the trunk and its branches will not be touched, but the roots can be taken with impunity. Each root will be mapped in its entirety and painstakingly extracted. Those sections not entirely encased in rock will be cut into cylinders as described above. For the rest, the tunnel through them will be dug panel by panel, and each panel will be sent away to be worked. Thus the roots will be mined, with agonizing precision, over many months or even years.   There are many hazards associated with logging these wonders of nature. Creatures living within the tree's trunk and upon its branches tend not to take kindly to visitors. Steeders and hisjvern³ are well known to descend from the branches above from time to time and make their attempt at catching some unfortunate woodsman. There's also the hazard of falling branches to contend with -- the branches of the blackwood are hefty as surface trees, and they occasionally, just as their surface cousins, fall to earth. This isn't to mention the latent danger of travel in the Underdark. Recall that hauling teams make the trek to and fro the logging site for as long as blackwood may be harvested. Naturally, accidents will occur over the many months that these teams must cross the untamed lands between the site and civilization. More than a few hauling teams (or even entire logging camps) have fallen prey to the nameless horrors below. For this reason, Underdark mercenary groups normally have a veteran wing dedicated entirely to blackwood logging operations, featuring specialists for convoy escort and sentry duty at the foot of the blackwood trees. Highly skilled, experienced security is indispensable to blackwood logging operations since only they can safeguard the product and ensure that the logging company secures its most important objective: a hefty profit.   Once the blackwood panels, cylinders, and trimmings have been transported to civilization, they are sold to the expert craftsmen who now must shape the stubborn wood according to the demands of their clients. A combination of traditional wood shaping methodology and magical "encouragement" is used to bend, cut, and sand the blackwood down into a finished product. Most blackwood artisans can expect to have a long backlog of requests, mainly consisting of exquisite weapons and furniture for extremely wealthy clients. The sight of blackwood adornment in a grand manor or estate is a clear signal to all visiting that they are in the midst of the highest form of wealth imaginable. And so too with weapons. Blackwood weapons are reserved for only the most wealthy of combatants, being far too expensive for mass manufacture for entire armies. The arcane capacity of blackwood hafts increase the potency of magical effects that may be cast upon the weapon as well as being generally more durable and well crafted than their surface-wood cousins. Arrows are an especial favorite of blackwood connoisseurs, as arrow shafts of blackwood rarely break on impact and, paired with a durable head of magically reinforced steel, can be reused many times before replacement. The finished products are then shipped from the artisanal workshops to their final destination under heavy guard.