The most important thing to remember about crafting is that, really, any effect achieved by it could, in theory, be achieved by any mage who just focused enough on the spell they were casting, shaping the energies just right. Crafting, however, allows the user to let the material components of the item handle the shaping of the energies for themselves, making it much easier to achieve any effect.

Additionally, items can be made to automatically store energy or drain it from the surroundings, allowing for easy and repeated use, as well as the possibility to access more power than the caster could possibly have.

Lastly, they can be worked on over time, allowing the crafter to add and add on them much more powers, as well as giving the chance to focus on every single detail of the spell being “cast” to a degree that nobody could possibly muster all at once – with the end result that magic items will always, on a general note, be more effective than spells just cast, even if they do lose in versatility – a mage can, after all, pick his spells for the situation, while items have only their predetermined effects to rely on.

This is because, when casting an item, there will eventually be a point where the item is overloaded with magic – at which point it’d simply ascend to a different plane of existence, one where that magic would not make the item implode. Thus, it is always prudent not to put too many magical effects into a single item, or too powerful ones, since nothing is worse than watching an item you’ve poured months of work into just vanish from your sight.

The most powerful items, to obviate this risk, tend to be ones who have a soul: souls act as a connection to the real plane, and also keep the item’s powers in check, so that they don’t overload. Souled items often also use the soul as a “controller” of the effects – maybe refusing to release them if the wielder isn’t to the soul’s liking, or other such things.

While this makes it seems like working with souls would then be the best way to create powerful items, this is hardly true – the only known ways to chain a soul to an item are necromancy (the art of manipulating and enslaving ghosts), human sacrifices and dark magic, or godly power, only the last one of which is usually without risks for the user and, of course, not particularly accessible.

Materials are more easily divided into three main categories when crafting items: stones, metal, and cloth. The specific difference among these types of materials will be explained at a later date.

While it is true that the materials used in crafting are the most important aspect of crafting magical effect into anything, there is a fourth, if somewhat abstract, component to every magic item: that would, of course, be the magic itself.

It is not unusual for crafters to know some magic themselves – and, in fact, the greatest crafters usually have a solid grounding in many different fields of magic, or are exceptional specialists in their own favored kind – but, it is not a requirement; channeling the energy from the environment and imbuing it into an object as magic is a simple enough and easily learned procedure.

However, if one lacks some grounding in magic, it is then necessary for them to conceptualize the effects they want in different manners – and this is where the composition comes in. Specifically, a crafter would imbue the magic along lines and geometrical figures, usually carved on the item during the forging process, and this allows them to give the magic instructions as to the effect it has to manifest as. Thus, applying markings to an item during crafting makes it possible to achieve desired results with greater ease than it would be possible if one simply tried to impress the spell in the item by concentration alone.

Since geometrical figures are so often the means of expression of crafters at the beginning of their career, it is often believed that an item devoid of any marks is the hallmark of a master; however, the best crafters know that all items carry some symbolism merely because of the way they’re physically built in reality – most random swords would be a composite of the cross, double line and arrow-point symbols on  an ideological level, for example – and thus, they can match the spells they want to the items most perfectly. Additionally, while magic is powerful, some effects simply don’t have spells to create them, or maybe a certain spell need adjustments to manifest in exactly the way the crafter wishes – and thus, in all of these cases, the user can apply markings to the item to carefully tailor the magic to the specific effect they want.

Stones (which mostly means gemstones, but that would not be a completely correct definition) are not very good at making tools; they are, however, a key component in crafting, because they have a natural tendency to “channel”. Channeling is a process by which magic, when applied to something, flows inside and then again outside the material; in doing so, the magic acquires properties that make it easier for it to conform to certain focuses which the crafter wants to achieve.

Sapphire: the baseline and most used gem in item crafting, and what all others are usually compared to. Since magic is, at its core, the manipulation of energy lying around (be it in the air, the body of the users, or elsewhere), it is easily intuitive why Sapphires are so useful in crafting when it is understood that they are the only gem in nature which naturally channels magic on its own, drawing it in and pushing it out in a process almost like breathing, if not exactly like that. Unlike other stones, who adds properties to the magic which is channeled through them, the sapphire merely refines it, making it more pure and more easily “sensed” by the mage. Thus, they’re considered perfect for making magic easier to use and to focus on, and as a result are considered basic in any kind of item meant to “power up” mages, or as sources of power for more heavily draining magical effects to be put on items.

Jade: mainly used to channel magic power in following the “water” concept. Being that water is a very flexible thing in reality, as well as a concept which encompass very many aspects, jade is one of the more often useful materials, especially for projects that require flexibility.
In addition to the concept, jade can also be used to manipulate actual, real water if crafted appropriately, although, this being a more complex process, it is rarer to see it used this way.

Ruby: the same as Jade, except it embodies the concept of “fire”. Notice that, fire being much more destructive than water, the trend with rubies is opposite, and it’s more likely to find it used in the more physical sense of “manipulating flames” than in the more abstract sense that take advantage of the more conceptual effects of fire.
Of important notice, being that they’re opposite, it takes great skill to join rubies and jade in the same magic item without losing control of the work; some sort of medium or magic insulating material being included in the design is the usual solution, but it is not an easy thing to try.

Granite/Basalt: the third piece of the elemental trinity, this one embodies the control of “rock”; while jewelry or armors do now usually have much use for the level of enhanced sturdiness this stone allows spells to reach, things change when fortifications and castles are being built – it’s a thing to have a castle made of rock, but quite another to have a castle (or a temple) which has plenty of enchanted granite filling its outer walls to make it more sturdy, more resistant to attacks (even targeted type of attacks, if the proper spells are cast), and overall supernaturally though – Holmgard’s wall are entirely built out of the purest granite and every single brick is enchanted, which helped the city survive many a Darklord’s assault along the centuries.

Diamond: often considered the “purest” gemstones, diamonds are obsidian’s opposite and probably the most sought after stones in crafting, because they channel “light” and because they’re exceptionally strong, as far as healing stones go.
Healing effect are very rare to produce, mostly because the main types of positive magic in Magnamund (Old Kingdom and Left-Handed) do not focus on it: Old Kingdom magic calls forth magic from within to affect the external world, while the Left-Handed magic manipulates magic in the environment to affect it. The only magic that actively targets living beings is the Right-Handed magic of Naar’s worshippers, and as a result, healing spells in Magnamund are very hard to come by, and most commonly, the materials who are useful in crafting to produce these effects reach them from a different angle, like a connection with “nature” (natural recovery), “time” (hastening the natural healing process)  or “stability” (keeping damage from getting worse until it recovers on its own), all of which provides only weaker and slow types of healing skills.
Diamonds, on the other hand, channel light, which as a concept refers “purity” (removing infections), “cleanliness” (keeping the body clean of diseases), “diffusion” (affecting entire body systems all at once), the ability to reach past even the smallest breach and make sight possible on the other side (filling the wounds completely and thus removing them), and much more.
Of course, while the healing uses of diamond-channeled magic are the most important and sought after of their application, they’re far from the only one; “light” is an amazingly encompassing concept, and while it does is a bit lacking in offensive application, it more than makes it up for it by the sheer number of support uses it can have.

Opal: this one connects to the concept of “control”; this might seem like an extremely powerful effect, but it’s important to remember that stones only shape the magic to better accomplish some specific purpose and makes some spells easier to perform, do not automatically enable any effect related to the concepts they embody to become reality.
Even so, opal is usually the perfect gem to use when aiming to create effects capable of manipulating all kinds of things – rubies might help with creating a magic item to control fire, and jade one meant to control water, but an opal would allow for the crafting of an item capable of manipulating both, and more besides, instead of having to risk combining jade and rubies in the same item.
And of course, the other applications of the concept should not be discounted either – many a piece of armor had opals fixed to it in order to grant the wearer better reflex by “control” of their own reactions, reflexes and muscle strain.

Glass: yes, this is considered a stone, although the less interesting one: the magic it channels is not usually modified, so on its own it does nothing, but if anything is put in contact with it, one can notice that magic channeled through the glass will always come back through it, making it the perfect tool for spells that need external magic to latch on them and then rebound outside. Of course, if the material in contact with glass is a polished metal, this makes that portion of the item a mirror – and in fact, mirrors are usually the only magic items where glass is employed in any capacity.

Amethyst: the best enhancer among stones, and the second more used one, after Sapphires. Amethyst imbues the concept of “force”, and thus is usually placed as an enhancer of other effects, although it is interesting to note that this is a very vague concept and can apply to many things, and in many ways. While the most common application is to use it to give “force” to another of the spell’s effect, having it become more powerful, it can just as well apply “force” to the item, to make it stronger against outside interferences, or it can apply “force” to something else entirely; this is a stone that rewards creative interpretations and ingenious crafters when used well.
Also, Amethyst can also be the main thrust of the magic of an item, rather than a support stone; when this is done, it usually means to give more force to the user, and the most common combination it is found into, the one with Silver, uses the latter’s ability for looping magic to expand that “force” outside of the wearer, usually granting telekinesis-like abilities.

Quartz: Amethyst is a violet-colored variant of quartz; thus, they have the same powers, but whereas Amethyst is more focused and channels magic easily, quartz is much harder to handle. However, quartz is also much more effective at channeling the concept of “force” in its aspect of “enhancing”, making it better than Amethyst is in this particular facet of magic use.

Obsidian: the most recognizably “evil” stone, obsidian is not much different than jade or ruby, in that it changes the magic to more closely reflect an elemental concept, except in its case the concept is “dark”. Notice that, when referring to dark magic, evilness is not always inherent; dark is the power of suffering, destruction and night, but also shadows, hiding and, most of all, overwhelming power, all things which have the potential to be equally as damaging to the forces of evil as they are to the forces of good. Obsidian is the easiest gem to handle, since it behaves partially like a metal in addition to its others properties: namely, it can be enspelled and enchanted with effects of all kinds, rather than only effects attuned to the magic it channels. Nevertheless, the mere fact that it channels (something no metal can do) makes it squarely a stone in terms of classification, even if although most don't actually publicize this preference.

Amber: its concept is “conservation”. It’s not an exceedingly versatile or powerful concept, but it is very effective in utility applications – specifically, things like making weapons capable of withstanding the ravages of time, keeping wounds from bleeding out, and so on. “Balance” is also an usual interpretation of this concept as well, but the main problem is that, unlike some stones (like sapphires or emeralds) who increase the amount of magic as they channel it, or the majority of others, who give back as much as they drain, amber is the one gem which releasess barely a fraction of the absorbed magic (about one tenth) so to make it work properly, it either needs to drain a lot of focus from the user, or to be strongly empowered to be self-sustaining.
Because of all of this, amber is usually considered the humblest stone, and crafter who use it are usually  either very good, very creative, or pretending to be either of those things – very few use this stone merely because they thought it was the more appropriate choice for their goals.

Onyx: another so called "evil" stone, this one channels magic into "power". Not to be confused with "force", this stone is tied to a much more abstract concept, and thus its uses are quite different. Examples go from strenghtening the baseline item (making it sturdier, or harder, or sharper, or otherwise "more powerful"), to enhancing a spell (not making the effect greater in quantity like Amethyst or Quartz would, but rather giving it more quality: greater breadth of options, additional application, more reach, a wider selection of targets, and so on) to increasing an item magical capability (allowing more spells to be applied to it), to physically, psychically, emotionally or otherwise empowering the users (the possibility with the vaster number of application), and more.
It's easy to see how, despite the magic the stone itself grants being clearly neutral in nature, somebody could let themselves be pushed to excesses by this kind of ability and easily create items who turn on both crafter and any eventual user, but at the same time, the applications are far too many to simply ignore onyx as a possible stone to use. As such, while most openly recognize the dangers in using this stone, it is still not so unusual to find a crafter making use of its unique properties - even if most will not openly publicize the fact.

Topaz: it channels magic under the concept of “time”, although not as well as most would hope. Topaz is the kind of gem that beginners will usually experiment with a lot, because it allows to create powerful effects with a simple application of magic, and also because it makes many spells who would otherwise be impossible to cast, both as a mage or when applied to an item, a reality. That said, most experienced crafter shy away from it, because it is the most unreliable of stones; “time” is too vast a concept to properly direct, and thus items who carries topaz tend to not be very sensible to fine manipulation and carefully tuned effects, and in addition, the magic produced from the topaz tend to overpower any other present in the item and use it to fuel itself, turning all spells on the item into alternative ways to apply the one it itself is fueling, which can often lead to unreliable or even disastrous results – this is a stone best used alone and without support, but that also limits its possibility in combinatorial uses considerably and makes it a dead end as far as creativity in item crafting is involved.

Pearl: pearls are imbued with the idea of “magic”, which might seem strange at first glance, but is less so once some thought is given to the definition. Basically, though, when magic is channeled through pearls, it becomes more attuned to itself, and more able to interact with other magic – thus, making it easier to cast on the item more spells that interact with magic effects directly (like counterspell), instead of producing a magic effects that affects real matter.
While this would seem to limit the utility of pearls in item crafting to only a very particular breed of items, in actual use it is trivial to use the “power of magic” they tend to provide in order to empower, modify, change, refine or redirect the effect of the spells which the item itself casts: as such, pearls are more often used by very experienced crafters to fine-tune the effects they want from their items, rather than to interact with items others use.
Rarely, pearls can also be used to help coordinate the magic of a “set” of complementary items, so that they amplify each other even more – although, of course, using pearls is hardly the most effective way to do this, and is mostly a shortcut used to create such sets by lesser crafter, ones not yet skilled in the art of redundancy and codependence.

Emerald: embodies the concept of “nature”, and while it is not as versatile as obsidian in the sense of physical items that can be made from it, it does is by far the more encompassing and effective of them all, allowing to easily focus spells on everything from healing to creation to destruction to even more exotic options, and it is also by far the spell whom channeling properties are more easily directed, since it bends very easily to any type of magic.
The main drawback it has is that, while it is the stone with the broadest scope of effects and the easiest to manipulate, its effects can never reach the same level of power as a stone who channels a more aimed concept, since those are usually capable of producing much more pronounced results.

Metals, unlike stones, serve double duty when crafting a magic item – they’re not just useful because of the properties they acquire when enchanted, but also because some of them can already predispose the basic item more toward some things or others, which can be important for weapons and armors. The definition of “metal” is not really correct, since there are some non-metallic, often organic  materials, like wood and bone, who behave similarly to metals in crafting; these are grouped together for simplicity, since they’re not really different enough to deserve a category of their own, like clothes instead do.

Also, it is important to notice that metals never “channel” magic like stones do; they can “react”, changing how any magic applied to them takes form, but do not by themselves offer a simpler way to convert magic into one form or another – that’s something that either needs to be done by a stone set in the item, or which the item’s user has to do when using it, usually by focusing strongly on unleashing the item’s powers.

Steel is the baseline metal; whenever another metal’s properties are referenced, it can be assumed to be “as opposed to steel”. Physically, on the mundane sight of the crafting process, steel is flexible and sturdy, bending and then bouncing back to normal form rather than breaking, having a good resistance to elements, acceptable weight and good sturdiness, as well as not very high density. Item made of steel rarely have any particular effect, but they also rarely carry any penalty due to their make.
Magically, steel is a neutral medium as well; magic can be applied to it with no particular ease or difficulty, and it tends not to react excessively, which makes it the easier material to work with. It also doesn’t confers any special or useful property to magic channeled through it, though, which, while making spells cast on it not deviate from their normal function, also makes it rather dull and not particularly useful for any more creative endeavor. Very good for beginners, since it’s among the hardest materials to overload (only two others are better)  and never behaves in any unpredictable manner.

Darkland steel has normal resistance, flexibility and hardiness, but is a variant of steel which is somewhat heavier in exchange for having a much, much higher melting point. Additionally, it also handles much the same as steel on the magic front, with only one notable exception – it takes very well to any and all dark magic, whereas any non-dark magic which is cast on it automatically gains dark properties. Of course, this might at times be a desired outcome – dark magic is naturally more powerful and more destructive, so a magic item with those two as main goals would benefit from this kind of empowerment, and it is not hard to pick spells whom darker sides are not any trouble for the user.
These characteristics makes it the favored material for magic items crafted by Nadziranim and other Naar’s worshippers, while most others shy away from using it unless in very specific circumstances, mostly ones where an item needs to withstand high temperatures, or is intrinsically destructive.

Kagonite makes item built from it both lighter and harder, which makes it a favored material for crafting weapons or armors, and any other type of martially-oriented item. It stays sharp longer, and it’s generally more resistant to all forms of damage, including wear from both environment and usage.
Magically, kagonite is noticeable and sought after because it is the hardest of all materials to overload – it drinks magic like a sponge and can keep draining more for even longer times, making it perfect for applying multiple magical effect on an item, or a single, very powerful one.
That said, kagonite is an hard material to work with, because it is ALWAYS drinking magic from its surroundings; this mean that, if any mistakes are made during crafting, the item might have unexpected properties, or behave erratically. Additionally, kagonite, while a neutral metal in itself, is very susceptible to its surroundings, and especially to dark magic – while this does means that it’s very easy to apply dark magic to items made of it, often to the point that it will fix them to itself on its own, it also makes it very hard to put any positive spell on it without risking it backfiring spectacularly. Handle with extreme care.

Gold is not usually a very martial material, being easily bent out of shape, obnoxiously heavy, and having too low a melting temperature to be properly mixed with any other metals. It is, however, the perfect item to make jewelry from, and in this capacity it is often used in crafting.
This is not surprising, since, magically speaking, gold is one of the absolute best metals to use in any crafting endeavor: it is the most magically insulating material there is, meaning that it allows different portions of an item containing spells that are not meant to mix to be kept separated. It is also absolutely the more powerful “storing” material, specifically because of its insulating capability: if magic is poured inside a block of gold, it will stay there and not move out of it or flow to other pieces unless specifically coaxed to do so. This means that it is very effective at containment and very easy to work with; one of the reasons why crafting magical jewelry is often considered easier than crafting magical weapons is because gold is so much more prevalent in the former.
Note that, because of the very same qualities that makes it so effective, gold is easily overloaded if too much magic is poured into it – trying to enspell more than one effect on a golden item is often a recipe for disaster.

Silver is gold’s opposite, and probably the most used material in magic crafting. The second hardest material to overload with magic (only kagonite is better), this is due to its exceedingly good magical conductivity – whereas gold keeps all magic to itself, silver will naturally let it flow through its form and output it to everything it touches, creating magical circuits and being very useful for connecting together and letting work as one two magical effects that had been crafted at separate times. It is also very good for creating magical loops and as an help for spells that need to be aimed, since just a lining of silver will be enough to give any spell a preferred path to travel.
Outside of its magical characteristics, silver is acceptable as a fighting material: it is somewhat lighter than steel, but is also less flexible and more easily damaged, although it rarely breaks. This makes it more indicated for jewelry than weaponry, but it does has also martial uses, since appropriate spells makes it easily capable to match steel in resilience, and it’s one of the few metals who can take both a reinforcing spell and still have plenty of magic tolerance for adding more on top of it, thus it is a favored option for magical weapons who are meant more to quickly or cunningly defeat the opponents, rather than overpower them with strength.

Bronze, as far as building normal items go, is sort of a compromise material – it bends a bit less than normal, and thus is easier to dent and break, but is also slightly lighter, even if not exceedingly so. It is also a material that is about equally useful in both martial items and jewelry – it shines, is sturdy, but neither enough to be relevant and, thus, is always relegate to less important positions. Despite this, bronze is actually a wonderful metal where crafting is involved, for a great variety of reasons, and it was, in fact, the first metal ever to be enchanted.
This is because bronze is, of all metals, the more reactive there is: it carries a very strong amplifying effect, and as such, even the weakest and less powerful spells, when cast on it, tend to become more impressive and effective. In addition to amplifying every spell imbued into it, bronze is also versatile – it has a powering effects on spells that rely on the concepts of “defense” or “sturdiness”, but at the same time, it has a stabilizing effect on more destructive or explosive spells (the opposite of iron in this), making them a bit less effective than baseline, but with the advantage that the crafter can shape them more precisely, make them easier to aim and control, and many other things that are often much more valuable than mere power can be.
Bronze is also very friendly, in the sense that, while it overloads normally, it tends to slowly form a coat of green rust on itself as it gets closer and closer to the overload point: this helps the crafter gauge very precisely the amount of magic they want to put into it, and once the enspelling is done, the rust can easily be removed to leave a perfectly polished item behind.

Copper is a fickle material; enspelling copper items is always a challenge because, while the effect will usually not be modified easily, they will usually be modified by it in unexpected manners. This is because the reaction of copper to being enchanted is to draw some more magic from the crafter on its own; this makes it both a very easily overloaded material, and one who is best suited to the application of smaller effects, or effects who are so steady and controlled that a little bit of unpredictability doesn’t change them substantially.
While this might make it seems like copper is a material better left unused in magic crafting though, this is not actually correct. It is indeed a material that only the most skilled crafter can handle competently, but it does has some strengths. Specifically, it is really useful when the spells are meant to interact with unpredictable forces, while being predictable on their own; in these instances, copper tends to give the items effects a degree of flexibility which is perfectly suited to the task at hand.

Jadin is a material which is very rare, very priced, and very unusual. Physically speaking, its only very relevant characteristic is to be extremely lighter – it has less density than any other metal in this list, and despite this has the same overall combat effectiveness steel offers, while at the same time being both shining and exotically colored enough to fit easily among jewelry as well.
Magically speaking, jadin is an investment in storing and conversion magic: any effect applied to jaidn usually tends to work with only half the magic actually cast on it (without losing any power), and the stored magic is usually re-released into the air. This would normally be mere waste, but it’s not hard for even a passable crafter to just redirect that magic into a different effect, making it so that a single casting can power up two spells at the same time.
While these characteristics make, of course, for a very efficient material for magical crafting, jadin overloads easily and thus requires some experience to be handled properly - but given the returns, many a crafter still tries it anyway, which is contributing to making the metal more and more rarer as time goes by and more of it ascends out of this plane of reality.

Bronin is half again as sturdier, half as weighty, twice as shinier, and generally overall better than steel at pretty much everything, except for ease of work - forging bronin takes ten times the amount of time required to make the same item out of steel, and a much greater skill, which is likely the only reason it has not yet supplanted it in day to day use… that, and its rarity, of course.
The most important physical aspect of bronin is that it has a great diffusion of impacts, making it withstand heavy blows with great ease; this makes it most often used for armors than it is for weapons, and means that it’s generally not found in jewelry – most people wouldn’t waste this kind of commodity and efficiency to craft items that wouldn’t get any benefit out of it.
Magically speaking, bronin is something of a strange beast; it tends to take to spells really well and reliable, but almost always dulls them down somewhat – meaning that, while it’s rare to find spells that can’t be cast on a bronin item, or spell who are made useless or changed in some unpredictable manner from it, it’s just as normal for any spell cast on it to only perform its effects at about 95% of their effective power – not a big decrease, and certainly worth it to get the spell on as good a medium as bronin is, but at the same time, it’s somewhat depressing that, no matter how good the spell, it will just not be as good when it’s a bronin item which is carrying it.

Wood comes into many different qualities, some which bends very well and some who don’t bend at all, but all of them share the same frailty – even the sturdiest of woods can be broken easily enough when compared to any actual metal. However, the benefit of wood is how cheap it is, both to produce and to work; for this reason, many a weapon that doesn’t require melee combat (like bows) or who have parts which are not supposed to see contact with the enemy (like a spear’s haft) uses wood as a minor but meaningful component, and it’s unlikely that this material will stop being used for those weapons any time soon.
Magically speaking, wood is a strange beast; it is very hard to overload, tending to reject additional magic the closer it gets to its limit, and it takes a very stubborn crafter and a stupidly high amount of magic being pushed into it all at once to go overboard with it, making it very friendly for beginners. Yet, despite this, it is also the one material that requires the most skill in the application of magic – it usually depowers spells to various but highly noticeable degree, yet some select spells are instead enhanced by quite a lot, and there’s not a clear idea yet as to why, or which spells are more likely to be empowered and which ones to fail, since the reports don’t match. Most people thinks that this might just be a result of different woods behaving differently, but no consensus has been reached by the crafter community at this point in time.
The only things which is certain is that wood almost invariably will empower spells which, rather than affecting the item itself or somebody who is targeted with the item, have instead effects geared toward the item wielder; it is not always true, but it’s a rule solid enough that user aimed protection spells are commonly accepted as the best way to use wood in magical crafting.

Bone is not a metal, but behaves much like one – it doesn’t channel magic, but it’s very good to add further effect to spells – and, in particular, bone makes almost any spell who is targeted to living creatures, feeds on blood as a power source, or is related to the body in some manner, almost twice more effective – it is the greatest increase in power that can be experienced on any type of material by any type of spells, and as such, bone is not an element to easily discard.
That said, bone is also a VERY controversial crafting ingredient – sure, it can easily be used for curative effects and others such things, but it’s just as easy to let oneself be carried away and focus on the more destructive effects it allows to inflict on living beings, something which the Nadziranim, in particular, really enjoy experimenting with.
There’s also the matter that bone is very frail as far as materials go, thus being better suited to jewelry than weapons – weapons of bone are not unheard of, but they just don’t compare with stronger metals, and jewelry has a tendency to be easier to create, exponentially increasing the risks that a mere curiosity might push an inexperienced crafter into creating items they’ll regret having made eventually.
Bone overloads easily enough, and that might well be a good thing, considering how controversial this material is – it means that only more careful casters can get the more benefits from it, and hopefully those will be also skilled enough to avoid the implicit risks in working with this material for any big length of time.

Ivory is the less controversial little brother of bone. Not as effective in its empowerment, it is still hardier to some degree and, more importantly, is the only known material which enhances the aspects of spells involving speed, precision or high sensitivity and timing. It’s thus a niche material which finds plenty of uses, especially in self-enhancing jewelry of all sorts but also as an additional component in some weapons, although almost never in the function of blades. This is because ivory, while being very good at what it does, it’s also very unstable – if it gets damaged to any degree, any spell cast on it tends to lose power and fade into nothingness rather quickly.

Platinum is, physically, halfway between gold and silver, being malleable and easily bent like the first, but light like the second. It is also one of the most conductive metals in nature, meaning that electricity and light both have an easy time flowing along its edge. This is reflected in its magical properties, where spells with either (or both) components of lighting or light stick to it with great ease, sometime even being enhanced by it. Interestingly, though, outside of these particular spells, platinum is an almost perfectly magically refractory material: unlike silver, magic doesn’t flow at all along its edges, and at the same time, it doesn’t store or stops it from flowing like gold, rather repelling it completely.
It is important to notice that most psychic abilities – as evidenced by the Kai being a mostly psychic orders – are usually either “light” abilities (the ones who influence the mind and the abstract) or “lightning” abilities (the ones who affect the nervous system and thus the body); as a result, platinum is the go-to metal when spells meant to interact with psychic powers in any fashion are meant to be part of an item particular effect.
Also, platinum never magically overloads, but this is not because it is more receptive to enspelling, like Kagonite – rather, if it reaches its maximum amount of supportable magic, it will “turn away” any further added, thus stopping gaining in power but also preventing itself from ascending.

Iron is heavier than steel, and sturdier, but much less flexible – thus, it remains easier to break or dent as it refuses to bend and absorb offending impacts; on the other hand, it is also heavier, so it is still more effective on weapons like warhammers or maces where the power of the blow matters more than the user’s skill or the weapon’s resilience. Defensive uses though are much rarer, and jewelry even more so – iron is not a metal well suited to be worn.
Magically speaking, iron is very similar to darkland steel, in that it adds power and brutality to spells cast on it. However, where the darkland steel’s power is due to the magic turning “darker”, magic cast on iron rather more tend to instead turn “savage”. It becomes wild, often harder to predict and sometimes even causing the item’s effect to manifest randomly, but in return, it might well produce effect more attuned with nature than is normally possible, or give already devastating powers enough of a boost that they’d bypass even the stronger defenses – as far as sheer “increasing destructiveness” of effects go, there’s no better.
Iron overloads slightly faster than normal, but this is made up for by its affinity toward destructive spells and nature-affecting spells, which take much less magic to imbued into it than any other material, making it the best choice if one is looking for an item capable of unleashing a great number of destructive effects.
Even so, it is easy to go overboard, and generally speaking, iron is considered the absolutely worse metal to work with, even more so than kagonite – it is not unheard of for many a crafter to prefer working with darkland steel when they want more “oomph” on a weapon with destructive powers, rather than risking the many difficulties that as unbending and chaotic a material as iron can present.

Bluesteel is a very special metal, crafted only by the Elder Magi of Dessi with a recipe they have never shared; attempts to reverse-engineer it from recovered Vakeros Swords (the only items the Elder Magi ever crafted out of the stuff) have always failed, although these studies have allowed skilled crafter to divine some of the underlining effects of the magic.
Apparently, from a magical perspective, Bluesteel is somehow capabhle of acting as a combination of both silver and gold; it will generally be magically insulant against many forms of magic, but for the one specific magic the Vakeros Knight use - inner powered channel through the user's body - the blade acts as a channel and lets the Vakeor's Battle Magic be more powerful and less tiring to use for the users.
From the physical standpoint, the Bluesteel is as close as one could get to a "good counterpart" for Kagonite; a compitantion of being impregnable to magic with the fact that it seems to store some of the wielder's magical power makes the metal incredibly sturdy and long-lating, yet somehow it remains lighter than any other metal known to man, except for Kagonite itself.
While recreating the material from scratch or reshaping the material itself have proven pointless endeavours, a few daring crafters have tried to rework already existant blades looted from defeated Vakeros into new pieces. These experiments have been met with mixed results; while breaking a bluesteel blade into pieces is possible (if ridicolously hard), and replacing a Vakeros sword's handle and hilt is a viable if time-consuming process, the result are usually way under the crafters' expectations, and never compares to the kind of power a true Vakeros sword will hold. However, this is also something of an unexplored field of research - the Elder Magi considers it sacrilegious to profanate one of their creations in such a fashion, and have been known to retaliate with great violence toward any researcher caught in the task, making it something only attempted in secret, and mainly by the kind of people who'd not consider the enmity of an entire nation threatening enough.

Sunmetal is the metal the Sommerswerd is made of. It is golden in colour, but with a texture closer to bronin than gold; it's also as light as silver or kagonite, but as unbending and inflexible as iron. Unlike iron, however, it is impossible to dent or damage, apparently having an hardness superior to any material it was tested against. Not much more is known about it, since only Moon Shadow, Black Beaver and Lone Wolf, of all the crafters in the world, have ever had the chance to examine it in any more depth than a passing glance at the blade of the only weapon known to be made out of this very special metal. Kai is likely the only one who can craft it.

As already said, in the art of crafting, the materials used can usually be divided in three subcategories: Stones, Metals, and Cloths.

Stones are usually identified by their inability to be shaped and the need to be set (although some, like jade or obsidian, go against this paradigm) but, more importantly and characteristically, by their ability to “channel”: have any magic flowing through them modified to gain special attributes.

Metals, on the other hand, are the part which is usually shaped (no particular exception to this rule here) and, again more important, because they “react” instead of “channeling”; when magic is applied to them, they strengthen (or weaken) some of its effects, while leaving other untouched, but they don’t grant a spell any characteristics on their own. They’re also the part which determines an item capability to absorb magic before overloading – limiting the amount of magic that can be crafted into an item; it is important to note that, since stone “channel”, no magic can be applied to them without it automatically being modified, meaning that items who are made purely of stones simply cannot be enchanted with neutral spells.

Cloths are a compromise, in that all clothes are neutral where magic is involved: they don’t react to magic, nor do they channel it,  and are thus a much easier medium to work with, especially for beginners. They’re very similar to steel in this, although there are still differences.

However, clothes have a particularity, in that they can’t be overloaded, but not can they be supercharged – clothes will always only accept one spell, no matter its dimension or power, and they can’t feed it magic on their own, they need some stone or metal to do so for them. Additionally, a second characteristic of clothes is that they’re typically a combination of weaved fibers – what this mean is that, since the item is actually a combination of hundreds (or more) items (strings) at the same time, to have the magic stick, it must be crafted during creation. Of course, this is always a good idea even for metallic magic items (the magic takes better and is less costly to cast if that’s done during forging) but with metal items, you always have the option of adding magic afterwards – with clothes, that’s not possible.

Luckily, most clothes, unlike metals, have already natural reactions to magic in the air, or at least effects that are useful to have on a magic item; thus, while they’re generally much less useful for crafting than metals or stones are, they do allow for some effect that might not otherwise be achievable.

What follows is only a small sample of the many possible type of cloths that could be used in magical items - since, unlike metals and stones, clothes are not a natural process but rather a result of human ingenuity, there's way too many to list them all, and most of these are of little interest. This selection should however give a general idea of the kind of flexibility cloths allows to a skilled crafter, and why they shouldn't be underestimated in favour of the more shiny metals and stones which the mayority of begginers tends to focus on.

Korlinium: this is probably the best example of how, in crafting, it is an item magic-related properties to define it’s classification, and not its physical composition, since by nature, korlinium is a mineral – a stone with traces of metal. It is, however, a surprisingly brittle one – more so than even glass – and cannot, thus, be shaped in any solid, single piece items, as they’d break to pieces easily enough to be unable to survive the slightest of accidents. However, despite this, it has surprising flexibility and, when shaped into strings (a process that only the dwarves and a select elite of human crafters can achieve), a stunning textile strength as well; this makes it perfect for being woven into clothes, which have a distinctive silvery streaked dark grey color – it is, after all, strings of stones who composes it.

The more important aspect of it, though, is that korlinium is the strongest magic reflective material in existence, being completely immune to it – even the strongest magic would be impossible to detect if it was shrouded within korlinium. Because of this, korlinium really cannot be enchanted at all – it’d reflect the magic back to the caster immediately – but a skilled enough crafter could weave a set of strings of some other cloth through it (or even silver, if a metal was required), connected to stones to feed it, so that minimum effects can be applied to take advantage of the korlinium magically insulate surface – although these effects will usually just linger over the cloth surface, basically letting a thin layer of air between the spell and the material to keep it from just short-circuiting the spell altogether.

Because of all of this, korlinium gloves are usually one of the most indispensable tools any crafter can have, allowing them to manipulate and affect magical substances without contaminating them, and usually greatly enhance the chance of success when any crafting procedure is performed.

Ashden: it’s a vegetable cloth (like paper or papyrus)  made from the fiber of the barulan tree, a rare plant which has a much stronger than normal photosynthesis effect. This fact can be emphasized with proper treatment during harvest and weaving, and results in a dark black cloth which collects sunlight, but which instead shed a bright white light when placed in darker areas.

Turquoison: probably the most sought after cloth in all crafting endeavors, and it’s not easy to come by, mostly because legally, the Toranese Brotherhood of the Crystal Star has exclusive rights to the acquist and selling of it, due to using it for their robes. This is because Turquoison drains magic from the air and feeds it to the user; this make the blue cloth spark silvery when exposed to the light, and also greatly ease the ability of mages to focus on their castings. Thus, in crafting it serves a similar function to sapphires in enhancing one’s ability to cast, and it’s not unusual to see Turquoison items lined with sapphires created for the sole purpose of allowing the greatest mages to cast the most complex and attention-draining of their spells.

Shabot gum: another classic example that magic properties in crafting are more important than actual composition. This gum is made by letting the resin of the shabot tree solidify and turn black and rough in texture, with the item being shaped with boiling hot implements to have the gum take the finished form desired. Shabot gum is not real gum, it acts like the toughest metals (iron comes to mind) in taking hits without bending; however, it also never creaks or dent, because it has the property of completely diffusing any impact force and vibration it is hit by, and has a consistence comparable to bronze, meaning that only a cutting implement of horrid weight and possibly jagged would be able to cut through protections made of this thing. Shabot is thus exceptionally good for any kind of protective gear, but at the same time, it doesn’t works well with metal – and most crafter, when choosing between something they can enchant at will and an item who they can only enspell once, will usually go with metal more often. It is still a valid option for the creative crafter though, even if the rarity of the shabot trees themselves make it very hard to come by.

Alether’s Wool: a trade secret of the Vaduzhan’s crafters (Vadhuzan being the most renowed of southern Magnamund’s countries where clothes exportation is involved), barely anybody out of that country know the secret process for creating it; it requires a great number of alether’s berry to be peeled, which is a very time-consuming challenge in itself, and then smashed into a paste. The paste is then versed over silk lines individually, which are then cooked until each one turn into a fiber which has the same consistence of wool but a naturally brilliant orange color. This process allows the wool to retain some of the energizing properties of the Alether, as small particles of it filter in the wearer’s blood through the pores on their skin, and for this reason the material is very useful for people who constantly undergo strenuous activities, helping them stay chipper and reactive throughout the day.

Alverian: one of the rarest material on the world, not merely on the side of clothes, but absolutely so – it’s currently believed that only about twelve kilograms of it exist in all of Magnamund. It is built in secret by only three Vaduzhan’s families, using vegetal and animal fibers from areas with an high concentration of magic, treated with secret process who the makers have, in repeated occasions, proved to be ready to die for. The result is a green, shimmering tissue which is the most magic-resistant material in exitance – where korlinium repels magic, but the alverian instead takes it, receiving minimum tear in the process, and then nullifying the spells. While the difference is minimum, it does is important – a fire dart hitting a korlinium cloth would still carry heat and impact power, even if it would not burn anything (since the magic forming the fire is repelled), but one hitting an halverian cloth would simply dissolve, harming nothing except maybe inflicting extremely minimum tear to the cloth.

Given it’s rarity, Alverian is extremely costly, but it is rarely used in crafting for items themselves – any magic applied to it fails to take, and if an alverian item was somehow enchanted to unleash some spells, it would eat them even as they are cast, leaving nothing behind. However, much like korlinium, alverian tools can be extremely useful to a crafter who needs to tone down certain magical effects applied to an item, and wrapping an item near overload in alverian to reduce the spell’s output is an advanced practice that some skilled crafter uses – although caution is necessary, since too long an application might well have the alverian completely drain the item of any power whatsoever, which, of course, is another of the important potential uses the material can have in the hand of a competent crafter.

Spotterplow hide: a type of leather from a species of big lizards which is found in southern Magnamund – most likely a bigger and more versatile type of cameleons, although sightings are incredibly rare and captive version of the beast are jealously guarded by any who happens to catch one alive. This leather is quick to change color to match their surroundings, more so than even normal chameleon do – whereas chameleons only go from red to green (and the various shades in between), it is reported that Spotterplow can easily go from black all the way to cerulean, making it the best hidden predator in the world – only grey and white shades are out of its reach, making it capable of incredible feats of stealth. The main weakness of the hide is that it changes gradually, meaning a moving Spotterplow (or somebody wearing their skin) can be noticed if one is paying attention, but even so, no material in the world would be better suited to people who value highly their ability to hide.

The material itself, while obviously only having some niche uses, is nevertheless particularly famous among crafters because there was a tradition of it being weaved with a single illusion spell to make the closest thing to a cloak of invisibility to exist; however, all crafter who knew the exact spell used, and the process to properly cast it, died out as they were sought out by rivaling monarchs or Naar’s followers – the last village to contain a community of them being reportedly slaughtered during the Gnaag Wars. Many a crafter has tried to replicate the cloak, but nobody has managed it yet – finding a single spell to completely cover the Spotterplow hide’s weakness is not, apparently, an easy thing to do.

Banharian Spider Silk: a very rare product, this is as useful and resistant as most silk tends to be, but in addition, it has the useful characteristic of being completely, absolutely fireproof. Nobody is sure how the Banharian spiders developed this particular ability, but nevertheless, the material is highly sought after,  since many a crafter would find it very useful to make any item they’re crafting totally fireproof. Unluckily, Banharian spiders are an highly specialized breed and are nearly impossible to grow in captivity outside of their natural habitat, so the silk remains rare and highly priced, since the request for it is always very high.

Laethian Cotton: crafted by the Elder Magi themselves, it’s not clear when or why the idea of this material was born, but what’s known is that the fabrication itself requires magic, making it something of a strange thing in the art of crafting – a magically created material that can be used in the creation of magic, a level of recursion that no crafter so far has ever managed to replicate.

If the Banharian spider silk is highly sought after, that’s nothing compared to how wonderful it is for a crafter to have Laethian Cotton on hand – it’s unique property is the ability to store fire within its fibers, as well as being able to release it on command under the user’s will. Since this is basically the same as having a free spell in the item already, it is not rare for casters to try and add opals or rubies to pre-existing cotton to give the wearer control over the released flames, an use that, if completely mastered, would probably allow the crafter to create a completely new generation of weapons and completely redefine how warfare is to be waged.

While this is practically the Holy Grail of crafting, things are not that simple: laethian cotton can’t be cut or reshaped in any way, since the only ones who know how it is put together are the Elder Mages, and this makes adding gems to the build close to impossible – adding metal decoration with stones set into it to the edges of laethian cotton’s clothes have been tried, but the results tend to be unsatisfactory and unreliable.

Research is still ongoing, though, and while the Elder Magi absolutely refuse to produce anything resembling the kind of items that could be possible if full advantage of this material’s properties where taken, the incomplete and unsuccessful attempts by crafters all over the world to try and reach this result are still incredibly sought after, both by people who want to use it but most of all by other crafters, who hope that improving over the result will allow them to finally crack the recipe and become revered as the most world-shaking crafters in the history of Magnamund.

As it has already elaborated, marks are the preferred way for a caster to direct the power of a magical item the way they want it to be. However, it should be noted that maks take many forms; the basic is to have the mark painted or carved into the iterm, but that's far from the only one. For example, when putting gem into an item, they could be set up in a different pattern - all aolong a line, or a central one with the others froming the rays of a cross or star, or in a circle - and so on. Even the shape of the item itself matters, since some items are clearly more easily shaped into a form which can contain one, or even multiple, marks: an arrow tip is easily also in the shape of an arrow point, a shield can easily be a circle, pentagonal or triangular shape by itself, and a sword combines the cross, dual line and arrow point marks together into a single item.

Triangle

The most basic and strongest of all markings, and the simplest of all geometrical figures, the triangle is easily the most effective of them all in its power, helping shape a spell much more decisively than anything else and having a multitude of uses that can be made to suit any situation.

Of all markings, the triangle is by far the most defensive, sporting three sides of equal length, each one of which are supported by the other two, and an acute angle connection which is better built to handle stress, as well as a structure which allows is to turn as necessary to defuse danger. In addition to making it so good an expression of the concept, the perfect structure of the triangle also allows it to perform best on a structural level; this means that the mark can be easily combined with other figures, as well as itself, without ever losing potency in its symbolism.

In addition to these three basic and most easily seen meanings (excellent balance, strongly structured build, and defense) the triangle is also the most mystical of the numbers, considered such from the beginning of mankind in a belief that gave this symbolism more and more  strength as time went by; many suspect this to be a truism born from the fact that there are three major gods (Kai, Ishir and Naar), but other metaphysical evidence – like the success at the third time attempt, the essentiality of three as the ideal number of the core family, and more like this – helps to cement this view as real. This is proven by the fact that, when handling metaphysical or mystical effects for one’s magic, the triangle is always the best way to correctly build the magic to this goal, which makes it almost the only ever used choice for the goal.

One further significance of the triangle is in the fact that three is the most basic amount of things or items that can be called “group” (as opposed to two which, as the number of a couple, has very different connotations), and this helps the triangle play an essential role in any spells that is meant to affect, influence or otherwise work on many people at once, giving the mark even further usefulness.

It is important to note that all of the previous assumptions are meant to indicate the mark of a perfect, closed triangle, with equivalent sides and equivalent angles; imperfect triangles – with any one side shorter or longer than the others, for example, or a larger angle, or a missing side – are not identified as such in item crafting, but as a rather different marking (arrow-point) with quite different significance.

Arrow-Point

This definition is the one normally used among crafters to identify any triangular mark with imperfect proportions, which can be easily identified by the fact that one angle of the triangle can be said to be pointed in a determinate direction, giving it a front and back on an ideological sense.

If the triangle is the perfect representation of defense, then the arrow-point is the ideal concept of the offense, being always aimed to something and thus giving any spell directed with it a specific, strong purpose and direction to propel themselves on. This is not merely an offensive figure, like the circle or the line, but an actually aggressive one – whereas the offessive marks can be used to give a spell’s effect a bit of attack power to manifest themselves with, the arrow-point is innately aggressive and pushes toward conflict every effects that it touches, in a very active and direct manner.

The arrow-point is a very decisive mark, so any spell affected with it can be expected to be very precise in what it does – the pointed arrow is not something that can be misunderstood, and in the same manner, a spell tied to its symbol will have a clarified intent and purpose, which makes this a very favored and heavily used mark among the beginners. However, the mark also has another meaning, and that is one of growth, as it can be taken to symbolize a tall structure aimed at the sky, and this allows the symbol to also helps with any effect that is meant to be enhancing, which allows the marks a very small bit of flexibility.

Note that, while the most obvious way to employ an arrow-point symbol is to imbue an item with a spell meant to enhance an effect which will hurt an enemy, this is not always the case, and the mark does has some limited flexibility, although usually only the greatest crafters are capable of leveraging it to any degree.

Circle

By far the most used and more versatile of all geometrical symbols in crafting, the circle is a compelling mark due to its ability to embody very many concepts, some of which not very intuitive.

A classic example is the fact that the circle is an offensive symbol. This might appear strange at first thought, because the circle tends to be a steady sight in our mind, but that’s a mistake of perception, mistaking the circle’s emphasis on focus with one on defense.

The circle does is the best mark to get a spell to be focused; this is a basic result of the fact that the circles is built around its center, which means that every piece of the figure is focused on it, making the symbol not merely one of focus, but of extreme and almost unyielding focus, the best for spells and effects who cannot be allowed any leeway if they’re to be effective.

When one, however, pictures a circle in the physical reality of the world, however, what we get is the wheel, which doesn’t stays fixed in a single place – like a proper defense would – but instead, if given a powerful enough push, will continue to move forward without pause, pushing past everything in its way. For this reason, the circle is the perfect symbol to use for spells which are focused on an unrelenting attack, especially since it is also a very empowering symbol, given that it allows for the highest amount of energy to be focused in any one area due to its exceptional geometrical properties.

One aspect of the circle which is very important to crafters is its lack of weak points; this gives them some tangential uses as ancillary defenses, but it is mostly a different way to get a spell toward perfection than the triangle’s structural and more balanced approach to it – whereas a triangle would help an effect reach a perfect balance in its effects, the circle would help it reach a state where no particular point of the effect can be identified as its point of failure. This also helps it give some spells reliability – that’s something that can be valuable and hard to obtain on a spell even for the greater crafters, which is why the symbol sees use at all levels of the competency scale in crafting.

Occasionally, the circle is also used to represent the Sun, although this is very rare – since most spells or effects hardly have anything to do with the sun, using the circle in this manner is usually merely asking a blessing from Kai himself on the item crafted, something only very few crafters (mostly Sommerleding) would do, as only a true Kai Master can take advantage of spells who actually draw power from the sun.

Aside from these various significances though, which does help the circle be a widely popular symbol among crafter and gives it a wealth of uses, the most important meaning it can have is undoubtedly that of cyclical awareness, something no other mark can convey with quite the same emphasis. This gives it an even greater importance in crafting empowering effects – not only is the circle an empowering symbol by itself, it also encourages effects to go through a cycle of incrementing themselves, allowing for powers who grow more powerful through time.

Lastly, the circle also is by far the more inclusive symbol of them all, representing comprehensiveness and unity; whereas the triangle is the symbol of preference for spells who reference or target a group, the circle is ideal when a single spell is meant to encompass many different aspects of something, or to affect a very specific group of people to the exclusions of all others. It’s also the best means to symbolize a containment, trap or housing spell – almost all known souled items have a circle as part of their markings, since it helps give the item the power to be filled with the soul, although, as always, soulcrafting is not very well researched and the large majority of what’s known about it is supposition and guesswork.

Ellipse

Much like the triangle mark only refers to perfect triangles, the circle mark only refers to perfect circles; imperfect ones usually go under the ellipse label. Although an ellipse is a very specific geometrical figure, the term in magical items markings is used loosely, to identify the effect which all circular markings who don’t met the standards of a perfect circle have on shaping a spell; it is worth nothing, though, that these effects work better the closer the mark is to a perfect ellipse – unlike with an imperfect arrow-point, which always have the same effectiveness regardless of proportions.

The ellipse is a defensive mark, although less so than a triangle; this stems from the form’s cohesion and closed shape mixed with higher dimensions and lesser mobility than a circle – the ellipse can be anchored easily, and the first shield mankind ever used where ovals in form. While this protection is looser than a triangle’s, it’s also more encompassing, since the ellipse works well to contain the human form – thus, it is preferred to craft effect that protect the whole of one person’s body, instead of acting like a shield the way a triangle would.

More important, though, is the similarity of the ellipse to the number 0, which ties it to the concept of emptiness, or void; this works well to shape spells who need to achieve a lack of something, or alternatively require a lack of something in the user to function properly. Since the ellipse’s other uses can often be substitute for by others marks, this is the most likely reason to find an ellipse mark on a magic item, and since this kind of effects themselves are not really much used, it’s one of the reasons for the ellipse’s relative lack of use if compared to other marks.

That said, the ellipse do can be used in more ways. In particular, where the circle is tightly focused and comprehensive, the ellipse is instead marked by a distinct lack of a single focus – since the ellipse it’s built around two – and is thus very effective in giving spells a dispersive effect, or otherwise weakening them or the power they carry.  One the other hand, where the circle is a continuous cycle, the ellipse has a short and long curve, and this allows it to be used to give spells a gradual development; instead of the evergrowing energy of a circle, the ellipse allows power to have phases of greater and lesser intensity, making it more useful for effects which needs to vary their power output depending by the circumstances.

It is worth nothing that several gemstones – opal and onyx in particular – are oval in shape; this usually allows for ellipse marks to be carved around them without disrupting the magic item’s general focus, so when used in this manner, the ellipse can be an useful way to increase a stone’s power without the risk of overloading that could be run by adding more gems into the item itself.

Spiral

Another very overused symbol, the spiral is a favorite of crafters everywhere because of its ability to do double duty, being one of a rare few symbols who can convey multiple meanings with a same carving. This is a result of the amount of variables that go into a spiral’s carvings, as it is the only commonly used mark which is three-dimensional, and the only one to have more measurements than merely an angle and side length, which allows for different spirals to convey different things.

That said, there is one dominant meaning the spiral almost always carries, and that is one of transferring power from one of its ends to the opposite, usually from the external to the internal, although the opposite is also known to happen. This can go hand in hand with the spiral’s additional effect of draining power and drawing within itself, but it doesn’t always have to; just as often, the transfer of power is one where authorization is needed, rather than a draining, self-activating one.

The spiral is one of the small number of neutral figures, ones who are not classified as either defensive or offensive; however, whereas the majority of those are usually inapplicable to either purpose, the spiral is different in that its neutrality is instead a result of it being efficiently useable in both sense, a characteristic it only shares with the pentagon; this rarity is a result of the spiral’s three-dimensionality. Whereas approaching it from the side suggest the concept of maze and layered strata of defense, making it a perfect fit for crafting a spell into a strong defensive array, if one follows it along the side toward the center one get the effect of focused force into a single point, like a drill or bow shot. Because of this, the spiral is most often used to craft spells meant to pierce defenses of all kinds, or ones who unleash a single, powerful blast which travel long distances – although not rays, since that’s much better conveyed with a linear mark.

The last and less often used effect of the spiral is related to its use by illusionist everywhere: it is one of hypnotism and confusion, which means that, if an effect has to be chaotic in the way it manifest, or otherwise aimed to confuse people, then the spiral is the way to go. This, being the hardest use of the spiral can be put into, is normally only the province of masters of the crafting – most beginners would feel much too intimidated by the risks carried to try using a spiral mark in this manner.

Square

Usually considered the most simple of all marks in crafting, the square is usually identified because of its strong neutrality, in that it doesn’t convey neither offense nor defense in any possible use; being just as regular as the triangle but far less rigid and strong in build, the square fits neatly into being the one mark to go by when an effect is needed which is aimed to only play a support role, which gives it a very effective niche use.

In addition to its neutrality, the other most important meaning of the square is equality; there’s a reason why squares and cubes are used for measurement units, and that’s because the highly symbolical value of the square is that of an area where everything is administered in equal parts. This particular essentiality of the square can also be used to emphasize an effect’s magic toward a more physically supporting role, much like a cornerstone would act for a building.

Most importantly, though, the square is a very structured symbol, if less so than the triangle; it is still capable of creating several  more copies of itself simply by intersecting with other square, and while the potential for growth are not as exponential, it still allows for more complex combinations in a smaller space, which is always useful and hints at the hidden power the square can unleash, if used properly.

Rhomboid

The rhomboid is similar to the ellipse in many respects, being to the square as the ellipse is to the circle. As far as marks go, this one is somewhat weak, but that’s not a bad thing per se; it merely means that the effect it shapes will not reach the same heights of power – which is useful when the goal is to create a very precise effect, and potency is not essential.

That said, the rhomboid has uses for the lovers of powerful effects, as well – given the build, with equal length sides but unbalanced angle, the center gains prominence on the figure, which means that any rhomboid formation will grant increased power to an effect tied to a symbol or stone at the center of it.

Also like the ellipse, the rhomboid has a weak defensive connotation – specifically, it allows protective spells to focus on letting harmful effects slid over it surface; this is of course an useful facet of the mark, but the weakness of it means that a powerful enough attack might still pierce this kind of defense, making it not as favored as ones based upon stronger marks, like the Triangle or Cross. Additionally, the great majority of stones are rhomboid enough in shape, so the same trick which works for the ellipse (carving it around a stone so that, as a repeated shape, it gains power) is even better when applied to rhomboids.

Unlike the strong structure of the triangle, or the solid structure of the square, the rhomboid is much weaker from a structural standpoint – combining rhomboids can be done, but getting an exponential growth is not very likely, thus greatly limiting the chances of increase. This still doesn’t make it worthless, though, as some effects might need a middle ground of flexibility between being firmly fixed in their effects, and being very variable; this is where rhomboids come in, allowing the effect to keep some flexibility but limiting it to the goals the crafter is focused on.

Hexagon

Structure is one of the core elements of applying marks to a magic item: by creating a third mark through the intersection of two others (for example, two triangles overlapped with opposed orientation creates six more triangles, as well as an hexagon in the center and a hexagonal star following along the external borders), the magical effect will, in the same way, channel its magic to produce more effects, as indicated by the end result. However, the most complex of effects can easily get out of hand if the order of effects application is screwed up somehow, or if some unpredictability in the construct causes it to backfire; to prevent this, the effects need to be organized, and the mark that better symbolizes organization is the hexagon. As such, hexagon markings are practically a must in all the most complex or multi-effect magic items, and any crafter worth their salt knows that, if an hexagon marking is present on an item, there’s a very high chance of it being an item with very complex multiple effect, and likely very dangerous one, if the crafter felt the need to regulate them this way.

Of course, while this is by far the most usual application of the hexagon and thus a reason to always thread with care when an item has this symbol, others, less widespread uses exists, the most likely of which is likely the meaning of sturdiness and efficiency; hexagonal structure in nature are used by many an insect (especially bees) to optimize the space in the construction of their nests, and thus they work very well to make effects who consume the least amount of magic or effects which preserve an item’s integrity. This also makes the hexagon a slightly defensive mark, although only in a positional sense – the hexagonal structure can help an effect be static and stable, and thus creates a defense only if it is standing in place; it is a good means to apply defensive spells to walls or buildings, but rarely to more mobile items like shields and armors.

The hexagon, while being less heavily structured than the triangle, is still better at it than every other mark can get; this is in good part because triangles and hexagon mix very well together, so that they make building a magic item’s structure a lot simpler if they’re used in combination. While not a very usual application – the triangle do is the dominant force in terms of structure everywhere – the hexagon mixes better with multiple marks, so it is a good fallback mark to use when the other marks on an item are not suited to being combined in a simple manner, which gives it sort of a niche use there as well.

Lastly, the hexagon is the last mark (after ellipse and rhomboid) who can also be used to surround and enhance a stone; this naturally gives it a more intuitive use than the highly complex other ones it has, allowing beginners to gain familiarity with the mark itself before trying to put it to use in its more powerful and potentially much more effective applications.

Pentagon

Unlike most other figures, the pentagon is not a popular or widely used mark; this is mostly a result of the popularity of star marks, but it can probably also be partly ascribed to the general “weakness” of the meanings ascribed to it. This doesn’t mean, though, that the mark lacks uses or flexibility, merely that it is not as glamorous as the rest.

Of all these meanings, probably the most used one is that of “weakness”; unlike the triangle, the pentagon lacks a proper center of balance, and unlike the circle, it cannot be easily turned to many functions at once. Also, pentagonal structures are rarely found in nature, since it lacks any solid structural virtue. Also, the easiest way to draw a proper pentagon is to pick a center and produce five equally long lines from it – which can be seen as a process of “draining” power from the center, and indeed, the mark is usually applied on sealing effects or other such things where power need to be contained and made weaker for safe handling.

While this is by far the greatest use of the pentagon, it has others, less glamorous ones, but which can often have niche uses for the experts. First of all, the Pentagon offers a different outset for neutrality than the spiral, in that it lacks in both offensive and defensive connotation, and this makes it useful for those support roles where a true neutrality is necessary.

More interestingly, though, five is considered the holy number of Ishir, since the moon has five phases to its cycle – new, growing, falling, half and full – and thus it is always the best reference point when calling on the power of the moon is required. This is even more enhanced by its other meaning, which is that of friendship. This might come as a surprise, when one considers that the triangle already covers the meaning of group, but the matter is easily understood by mere use of perspective.

The fact is that, while three can be any sort of group, five is typically bigger than the size of a family nucleus, but smaller than what one would call a society, and is thus a much better starting point for an ideal conception of people gathering together, either to help each other out – which gives it a side meaning of cooperation – or else for mere companionship. This is a crucial reason why set of armors usually have five pieces, and why crafters who are working on a set of item meant to be used together will pick five as the ideal number, as it grants more symbolic meaning to such a grouping.

An interesting bit of trivia is that, when used for this particular meaning, it is not unusual to have the mark be drawn with a point at each corner, rather than leaving them sharp; this is both a symbolical way to represent the softer meaning of the mark, as well as a reference to the commonly recognized mark of friendship, five people holding hands around some form of campfire or other such gathering point.

One last notice is that the pentagon, due to its multifaceted nature, it’s also the mark for “oddness” and “weirdness”, in a sense, being the odd one out of the geometric mark and thus one very useful to help an item into manifesting powers or effects who are somewhat uncommon or unusual in nature.

Star

The star is a most particular single, since it is not actually a self-standing one - rater, a Star is obstined by placing triangles of equal lenght touching all the borders of a different poligonal symbol, resulting due to this into a design with a number of outward points equal to the polygon numbers of sides.

Due to this, a star is usually the symbol of complexity built over simpler values, and is especially useful when crafting an effect into something that is reliant on something else - be it another effect, or external conditions.

Another important apsect of the star is its complexity relative to the base polygon; crafter utilize this to create effect that drains more power than they should, making it a very effective safety measure upon tampering over their work.

Of course, stars on their own have lso a meaning aside from their geometrical configuration - most importantly, of their beauty and light, which makes the star a very ornamental mark, more than any other. As such, this is the mark of choice rfor a crafter that wants to add a little bit of showmanship without substance to their magic items, one used to produce accessory effects without any particular weight.

While these are the most simple uses of a star mark, there is one more complex one, which most crafter would not dare use lightly - thanks to its ability to overwryte all the geometric symbol, a star can be used to alter, modify and change the pre-existant effect an item could have. Considering how dangerous it is tto attempt and modify an already enchanted item, only the most skilled of crafter would dare this - and this makes it pretty hard to tell if the presence of a star in a mark composition is merely there for its own uses, or as a sign of tampering from a master crafter.

Lastly, the star is the most disperive mark there is - which makes it perfect for those  instance when an effect needs to be diffused across mutiple targets, or a single, very dangerous failure point needs to be widespread among multiple sources to make it harder to attack directly - all things that makes the star a makr best exploited by experienced crafters.

Line

The line is the most classic of the offensive symbols, as well as the simplest, so it very widely used. Most importantly, though, the line symbolize a directed offense, conducing the spell along its lenght and toward its target; this make it a somewhat weaker attack mark, since it's more of an "accompanying" offense than a "pushing" one, but it still forces a spell into a predetermined effect, which makes it very easy to use, and one of the favorite marks for beginners.

Of course, much like all other marks, the line too has more meanings that a skilled crafter could call upon. The first and most important its the singularity of it - nothinepresents the number one, and this allows it to be the key mark for any effect which needs be related to a single target or user, or any other extremely exclusive effect of that type.

Additionally, the line is just so simple, it simplifies all effects, making things much more easy and straightforward - when the interaction between a ton of effect is hard to grasp, it usually helps to dispose them along a line of causation and results, making everything more intuitive and clear.

One further use of the lise ia as a separator, a way to compartimentalize effect - nothing quite sends the message of two things being unconnected than tracing a line that separates them completely.

On the other hand, where a line separing two symbol hints division, a line connecting two symbols represents union; such connection are often used to strenghten both symbols involved in the effect, and to create more complex, interlocking symbol that can substain very complex and developed magic effect.

For all of its effectiveness and it's ease of use, the line mark do has the characteristic point of fail of being incredibly direct - any kind of subtleness or lateral approach to demolish effect supported by a line is almost always guaranteed to work, which is why it's common wisdom to only use the line as aprt of a group composition, some of which at least meant to counteract the line's one weakness.

Despite all this, the line is considered the easiest to use of all marks, and it's the one most favoured by beginners, and although it has some variants which one needs be careful about, on it's own its one of the best marks to practice with.

Double Line

The double line it's the first of the line variants, and the most used of them all. It's easy to recognize, in that it's just made by two lines perfectly parallel to each other, yet this is enough to give it very different characteristics from the basic one.

Most important of them all is that the offensive power of the double line is much, much greater than that of the line - only the arrow point can surpass it in sheer agressiveness. This is because, where the line is a directional indicator of how to attack, the double line is like a tunnel, which makes the attack singularly directed and much more forced, as well as keeping it protected from both sides, removing the single line's weakness entirely.

An additional implication of the dual lines is that of compulsion, and a very forceful one at that - like a canal, it can forcefully pushes a magic effect into a specific result, and this makes it a siymbol of order and one of the most powerful from a straight meaning perspective - it's a security measure over powerful effects that almost never fails.

In addition to these meanings, the double line is also the symbol preferred to indicate the pair, or the couple - two forces acting in concert to achieve a unity of result, thus still feeding in the sense of accomplishment that is the unerlying meaning of the double line, even if in a less forceful, more understated manner.

Overall, it is easy to see how the double line is a very straightforward mark to use, just like the single line - however, it's forceful meaning makes it a much less frequently seen one, since it takes a great amount of skill to understand which spells can be constrained appropriatedly by this symbol, and which ones would instead react explosively to it. Handle with extreme care.

Cross

The second and more often used of the single line's variants, this is made by two lines set perpendicularly to each other, and it's also a very flexible symbol to use and a favourite of crafters who favour economy of mark placement, since crosses are extremely easy to trace and integrate very well with any empty space an item might offer.

Between the moltitude of meaning the cross carries, the most important one is that of defense - the cross is the only defensive symbol to be on par with the triangle in term of strengh, HOwever, the cross is also strong for the opposite reason - whereas the triangle is perfect for deflecting the attacks to the sides and keeping structural integrity, the cross' strenght comes from taking attacks head on and remaining undamaged by them. Thus, depending on the kind of defenses one desires, it might be better to place a cross instead of a triangle - and this is not something another symbol can claim.

The cross is also shaped in the same way as an instrument of torture, so it's very easy to apply it to an item in order to give the magic within the ability to create pain and suffering. This is the less well liked of the cross uses, but also the more diffuse among the darkest of crafters, for obvious reasons.

However, the cross is overall a very positive mark, especially when used in its function as a connective. This is similar to how a line can connect two symbols to make them work together - however, the cross connets four things together with each other, and that interdependence between symbols can allow crafter to shape things much better, and create relationshiop between different effects much more easily.

One furter use the cross has is as a mean to focus power over a single target, centralizing the magical effects of an item into a single place, which is incredibly useful for the most powerful and complex of magical effects.

Lastly, the cross it's also the mark of deleted mistakes - thus, this makes it the ideal mark to use for magic which has some kind of negative or nullifying effects.

Due to its wide versatility, the cross is a mark which requires considerable skill to be used properly, but when proper mastery over it is achieved, it allows the crafter a great deal of freedom in their creative endeavours.

Arc

The arc is any line which has a single curve within itself. While most arc are imperfect and thus weaker in their intents, a perfect arc is a portion of a perfect circle, and that makes it a very powerful and useful mark to apply to an item.

The most important meaning of the arc its derived from its architectonic function - it is a very effective mean of giving support and stability to the most unstable of effects. This meanings of stability is the more often used of the arc's possible values, so whenever an arc is present in a magic item, it's fair to expect this one meaning for it.

That said, the other means of the arc are important as well. The arc is a valid defensive fiure, but more often useful for magic spells that have to substain a constant, steady assault, much like an arc can support the whole weight of an edifice without crumbling.

Additionally, the arc is also the most efficient way to frame a spell for gaining contact and support from the earth. Due to this, many an armour have been known to sport this symbol, particularly on boots and such - since the earth is the most solid anchior point there is, and having defensive spells anchored to the ground makes them so much better and effective.

One last effect is based upon the very essence of the arc, which is that it resists stress by redirecting things on the ground - as such, when one of those rare effects which bounce back things is required, it's almost always a good idea to go with an arc symbol to guide the magic that way, since such effects are usually very easy to get wrong without using marks to help.

Overall, the arc is an effective and versatile mark, and a good way to adapt to the flexibility of others marks for a beginning crafter, without for that losing value for the experienced one.

Wave

Last of the line variants, and also last of the marks, is the wave, which is identified as a line containing at least two bends on its path (unlike the arc who always has only one).

The wave is a very different mark from all the others, because of the complete lack of structure it embodies; there are a thousand and more ways to make a wave and none is more correct than the others.

Because of this, the most important value the wave has is that of a neutralizng factor, something that puts a balance in the magic and keeps it from going into one direction or another by curbing all excesses that too rigid a form would impose.

Additionally, the wave is the best way to represent something that it's fluid and ever changing; magic items connected to controlling waters or other fluids almost always will have swirling patterns on themselves, and the spell also helps in situation were the user has a pool of magic that can be shifted to different purpose, heloping it from locking too strongly into one use or another.

Further, the wave is neutral where offense and defense are concerned, as well - it can easily do both, the flexibility of adapting to an attack or the swift surprise of a twisting strike being both excellent uses of its application,. this makes it a favoured decoration on those weapons (like swords) who have a flexible use and can be adapt to both defense and offense easily, making it a favourite of all crafters who focus mostly on weapons rather than more generic magic items.

One particularly useful aspect of the wave is that, when properly shaped, it can repeat itself into an intinite pattern. This allows it to give stability to effects which require a repetitive interaction of magics, to create virtuous circles more easily for magicvs who require it, making it a very effective mean to control the power of some very complex effects.

Lastly, the wave is avery whimseical in anture, being ever-changing and always different, and this allows it to be useful for any effect which requires some level of uncertainty or randomness.

Overall, the wave is a very useful mark due to its unicness - but this also makes it somewhat tricky to handle, requiring a great deal of care and attention to it.

While Craftsmanship has plenty of uses for a KAi in the field (such as detecting the presence of magical items in an area, immediately and correctly identifying the properties of any magical items one comes into contact with, and gaining a greater understanding of magical traps and all types of magic in general), the main draw is the ability to craft one own's equipment.

Mechanically speaking, this is a relatively simple process, although it requires a lot of rolling and a certain degree of strategical thinking.

When crafting a magical item, the user has to state the materials they're using (stones, metals, cloths, marks), as well as their general intentions toward what they want the end result to be like. Once this is done, two DC are fixed for the item, a minimum and maximum one; the first is the number which must be reached to grant the item a magical effect, while the second (which is kept secret from the crafter) is the number above which the magical item is overloaded and thus disappear.

Once the two DC have been determined, a user rolls a number of dice which directly relate to the amount of time they have at their disposal to complete the crafting, meaning that having more available time means the crafter will be able to roll a larger amount of dice. Furthermore, a crafter that works overtime or put more effort into the task can get more rolls for it - each roll above the basic ones which they've been granted will cost them a variable amount of WP, which is genrally 1 but can be more if reaching the necessary focus or putting in the required amount of effort is particularly hard for whatever reason.

In addition, the user can choose which type of die they want to use for each individual roll - the choices available are d2, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20, although certain circumstances might make some size of dice not be available as a result of constraints other than time - lack of skills, being in a chaotic situation, attempting a crafting on the fly, and more. Generally, having access to lower sized dice means having access to more tools, better help, being just more skilled at crafting, having a keener eye for detail, or other positive modifiers, while having access to higher sized dice means having vaste amounts of materials at hand, extra hands to speed the process up, needing the jobn completed a rush, and similar.

The ability to choose dice is a result of each crafted item having two DC; while managing to roll above the DC ensures that the item is created, the precise effects the item will have will be different depending on how close to either DC the final result is - if a roll gets close enough to the maximum DC, the effects will be better or more powerful, but this is naturally made risky by the fact that rolling above the Dc means losing the item (and thus its component materials) completely.

Normally, the specific of which DC the crafter must remain under to avoid overloading a magical items, as well as how exactly the different end roll would alter the final result, are unknown, but a Craftmaster can attempt to find out both by rolling 1d10 as normal; finding the overloading DC requires the crafter to beat a DC of 7 for most item, but it can go as high as 9 for more complex ones, while knowing the precise result of every result in the target spreads will require beating a DC of 15 or higher, which higher results graning greater understanding of what'll be the result of the completed crafting process.

As always, circumstances can grant bonus to rolls, but in Craftsmanship, the specific type of help will also influence which of the involved rolls can receive a bonus, and which cannot.