Looking for magical ingredients

[Mr. R]

I have a mage system where using runes, magic items can be made.  Now I am going with the idea that MI have the Independent limitation.  So if you commission a magic item, the points have to come from someone--- or something.  I am thinking of making some sources of magical material that can provide free CP for purposes of creating an item.

 

Some ideas I have:

Along Moreg's Brow (A mountain chain on the southern end of my continent) there is a river that runs along the spine.  At one point the river go over a fall that goes down over 1 KM.  A node of gems are at the top, and occasionally a gem will come loose and go over the edge.  The mixing of earth, air and water imbue the gems with latent magic.  

 

In the norther part of Kerq, there is a sacred forest called the Goddess Wood.  Inside is a tree called the Stone Tree.  It is a living tree, but looks made of stone.  Worshipers tend the tree and will gather the branches for use in magic items.

 

In the Bola Desert is the City that Storms.  This is a city surrounded by an ever storm keeping people out, and items on the iside in.  (It is the location of an ancient library, so many risk the storm to get to the library).  But as the outskirts of the city are continually struck by lightning, a special type of glass is formed.  Some will also risk the storm to harvest the glass!

 

 

Any other ideas?  I don't mind generic, as I can fit it into the world!

[Steve]

I’m reminded of quintessence from Ars Magica. It could be gathered from places, creatures and objects and used for spells and magic item creation.

[unclevlad]

For D&D, an idea I had was that gems were normal rocks...that contained magical energy, if you knew how to draw it.  This let me re-structure magical item creation by establishing 2 separate value systems...there was a standard monetary value for gems, that by and large was MUCH lower than in the rules...but that value in the rules represented the magical energy.  I coined a term...Elvish sounding, of course:  quess.  Yeah, its root is quintessence as per Ars Magica, but that's too long-winded.   

 

And with 4E and the way they talked about "sources" of magical energy...ok.  Magical energy...the Elemental Chaos.  Mithril is much more readily found there.  Gems of exceptional potency.  Other ores...cinndril is a copper-colored ore that doesn't tarnish.  Moderately popular for decorative jewelry, for magical rings, and for inlays.  The Wild Lands (the nature source) has allll manner of exotic plants...goldenoak (stolen from Lackey's Valdemar), perhaps silverthorn (Feist) or athelas (Tolkien).  Note that these are very definitely NOT!!! safe places in which to travel.  Still, one can have dimensional separations weaken...perhaps temporarily, like a few hundred years...and the inflow of dimensional energy causes pockets of The Good Stuff.

 

Oh...another personal favorite.  Both decorative and useful for magic.  Item creators developed an approach of grinding gems, and mixing that up with some reasonably common ingredients, to make a paste.  In this form, the energy in the gem was easier to draw upon, to power the item's effects.  The paste can be shaped and formed pretty much like putty, and once set, is just as hard and durable as the stone...but the process also eliminated almost all internal flaws, inconsistent color zones, and the like, leaving beautiful gemstones.  So it's VERY popular, especially with richly colored, fairly common stones like garnets.  Create a metal, oval bodied ring...paint in with garnet paste.  Can be done with a basic steel or brass ring body;  what gets noted would be the garnets.  But again, it's great for inlaying runes, say, on a blade.

[Duke Bushido]

Lota of great ideas given here; I would like to offer one that is a bit darker than the suggestions thus far.  I have used it (very sparingly) in one particular campaign to represent a very limited source of extremely powerful magic:

 

The blood of an ancestor slain in anger.

 

"Ancestor" meant a direct lineage; no fair going for Dad's uncle's third cousin's wife. 

 

The closer the generation, the stronger the magic.  The closer the relationship, the stronger the magic.  A close enough relationship between a character and a _parental figure_ would work to produce a staggering amount of magic.

 

This all came crashing around my head because of a player named Davien.  (I have mentioned him before; he really was just the _worst_ sort of person).

 

His character, from the inception, was a foundling raised by a village.  Now before anyone says "how could you allow this," let's remember that this was a pretty standard background for a questing hero back in the 80s, and _we had not yet established_ that an _adopted_ parent would work if the relationship was strong enough and close enough.

 

Yeah; I won't bother you with the details.  You _already_ know how this heroic party member decided to become the most powerful villain in the history of this world....

 

 

 

Edited August 17 by Duke Bushido
Touchscreen-induced Typos, as always

[DShomshak]

The old FH Magic Items book did this a lot and is well worth reading. For instance, two magical metals: bloodiron, from ore mined beneath a blood-soaked battlefield; and frostsilver, mined from beneath a glacier.

 

Exalted has the Five (or maybe six) Magical Materials: Orichalcum, Moonsilver, Starmetal, Soulsteel and Jade, standard for use in making magic items attuned to the various types of Exalted. (Also Adamant, but it's so rare in Creation that most people don't even know it exists. Not so uncommon in Autochthonia, but that would take a long time to explain.)

 

In Exalted, there are also natural sites where magical energy concentrates. Each "demesne" generates a specific small object, an "essence token," imbued with magical energy. An essence token grants minor magical benefits to a person who collects it and attunes to it, but is also useful in making magic items.

 

(Variations on this theme in the various iterations of Mage and, I believe, Ars Magica. White Wolf recycled a lot.)

 

Plus miscellaneous objects or supernatural significance, such as the bones of a king (usually assumed to be dead but hey, I don't judge) or strange things from the edge of the world, generated by the power of Chaos leaking in, such as frozen lightning. The Books of Sorcery: Oadenol's Codex has an extensive discussion of this.

 

Dean Shomshak

Edited August 17 by DShomshak

[Duke Bushido]

Oh-

 

Regarding just _why_ this was so crazy powerful:

 

Well, first we have to establish _up front_ that I am _not_ one of those "it is wrong to lose XP forever" GMs.  I never have been.  And before we claim that it is wrong in the eyes of HERO to lose XP forever, let's look at first edition Fantasy HERO, where it was a _stated part of the rules_ that XP could be invested in creating magic items, which could then be used, bartered, sold, or even stolen.  All invested XP went with the item.

 

Any claims to the contrary are based on either personal squeamishness about losing XP or the thoroughly-debunked yet still strongly-clung-to notion that points equals balance.

 

Let's look at reality:  by training (earned and invested XP plus a large chunk of my life and, once upon a time, budget), I am a registered nurse.

 

I am _not_ a registered nurse.  I will never get back the years or the money I poured into that education and keeping it current (don't worry:I stopped investing in that roughly twenty years ago).

 

By additional training- real inveatment of real years and real resources- I am a motorcycle racer, specializing in off-road, but a fair hand on a track and a noteworthy opponent on a drag strip.

 

I am too old and too stove up to even think about re-entering any of that (but I miss it like a hermit misses sex.  Uhm....  Not our Hermit, of course).

 

What I _am_ is one hell of a framing carpenter, a skilled roofer, and a damned fine mechanic, at least when I have the opportunity, and currently serve professional dual-duty figuring consumption rates, production streamlining, inventory and resource management, (that's right: a professional shopper, for an industrial operation), and needs projections, as well as a heavy-equipment operator, plumber, and electrician, and thirteen years of oversized load hauling (mostly moving houses) has helped me become, without bragging, one of the most skilled truck drivers you will ever encounter- my very first truck was a twin-stick International with an electric two-speed on the rear differential.  Combine that with an eight-speed gear box and _any_ traffic or hills made driving turn into walking _real_ fast-- an endless procession of left foot; right foot; left foot.  I have literally _walked_ across Chicago without ever getting out of the truck.  😕  even with all that, I still can't alley dock worth a damn unless I am in a cabover.... 

 

And for reasons I have never really understood, I am a fair-competent writer completely on accident, and in spite of a lifetime of practice, I can't draw my way out of a wet paper deathtrap....

 

The most recent heart attack (just got home yesterday) may well rob me of heavy equipment operations, and will _definitely_ cost me my CDL at my next DOT physical (no; I am not one of those guys.  First thing Monday morning I am going to schedule one instead of waiting another five months.  I know that if allowed to drive when the need arises, I _will_, but I don't want to sneak around doing it if I pose a real danger on the road.  There are probably a few people out there who deserve to live a bit longer.

 

But I will _not get back the XP I have spent learning it and improving any of these skills, ever.

 

Frankly, in terms of XP, Classic Traveller got it morw accurately than any other RPG with which I am familiar: use a skill regularly and successfully to improve it; no points involved.  Don't use a skill for a while?  Get rusty, and eventually lose it altogether.

 

All that to explain that I have no problems with permanent XP loss.

 

To that end:

 

The absolute base of this particular magic acquisition is that all the XP earned by the dying character becomes available XP to the killer specifically for the purchase of magical abilitiws or creation of magical items.

 

This made it an extremely high payoff, for the truly evil.

 

The "killed in anger" and "direct ancestor" we're _supposed_ to be limiting factors, and for NPCs, it truly was limiting.

 

When you have a genuinely evil _player_, though.... 

[DShomshak]

Special times and places could function as "ingredients." Western ceremonial magic makes much of performing magical workings on the correct hour of the correct day. Astrology provides times that are a bit more, hmm, less obviously arbitrary, such as conjunctions of particular planets. New moon or full moon, solstices or equinoxes are more frequent but very traditional. The idea even made it into Lovecraft, though we never learned how exactly "the stars are right" for Cthulhu to wake up.

 

Places? Chrchyards and crossroads are traditional, but likely easier than you want. Maybe a graveyard that has been in use for a very long time or is special for some other reason, like a Pharaoh's tome.

 

Or speaking of which, particular ancient monuments might be required as the location for making an item, such as the Great Pyramid or (cpombining time and place) Stonehenge on the solstice. Create suitable analogues for your Fantasy setting.

 

If your Fantasy setting is a spherical planet, perhaps certain very powerful magic items can only be made at the North or South Pole.

 

Items of evil, destructive magic might need to be made at locations where horrific mass crimes took place -- the setting's equivalent to a Nazi death camp, the killing fields of Cambodia, or (on a smaller scale) the estate of this Manaos rubber baron who enjoyed lighting his garden parties by coating Indigenous people in latex, tying them to stakes and burning them alive.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Rich McGee]

There's a few things on my underused system agnostic fantasy blog that might help.

 

Ghost Blossom Trees are have several petty magical uses that any hedge wizard or wise woman might know, and can easily used as ingredients for crafting more potent items.

 

Watchweed is a natural emetic, but might have uses as potion ingredients for more sophisticate alchemical concoctions.  Beware of sentry wasps and roaming carnivores when harvesting the stuff, though.

 

And if you can manage to kill (or at least drive off) a psychedelephant the prismatic powder they leave behind would certainly make a useful component for all many of mind-affecting magics - assuming you can resist snorting the stuff for however many hero points fighting a not-at-all-dragon is worth.

 

Might be some other inspirations to be found there if you poke around the blog, but those are the main ones I can think of.

[DentArthurDent]

My players always liked ingredients collected from slain monsters. They enjoyed saving the village from the troll and then harvesting its (teeth / heart / bones / whatever fit their current design) at (dawn / dusk / midnight) and taking it to a skilled (armorer / fletcher / …) 

You get the idea.