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Reflecting 47 of the Ironwood Heart Rings

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by

Dale
in
  • Item Lore: Deep within the petrified groves of the island continent of Tasian, ancient ironwood trees absorbed centuries of elemental conflicts, wild magic runoff, and the rhythmic seismic pressures of the turning moon. When an artisan-forester fell these ancient timbers, they discovered that the concentric growth rings within the heartwood preserved a literal chronology of the world’s violence. A master wood-shaper sliced these growth layers into thick, circular pectorals, carving them along the grain of a catastrophic fire that swept the continent four centuries ago. In the culture of Saṃsāra, where artisans use specialized recipes to transmute organic harvest into enchanted gear, these concentric rings were treated with alchemical tree saps via fluid collectors to bind their historical resilience into wearable armor. The chest piece reads the age and violence of incoming blows just as a scholar counts rings in a stump, throwing the recorded force back outward into the physical realm.
  • Visual Description: This circular cuirass is fashioned from a single, cross-section slab of dense, polished ironwood that covers the wearer’s torso. The surface displays dozens of tightly packed, dark amber and charcoal-colored growth rings that spiral outward from a dense central knot. Fine veins of hardened amber resin run between each ring, giving off a faint, rhythmic glow when kinetic force touches the wood. The edges are bound with hammered bronze brackets to keep the timber from splitting along natural grain checks, and thick leather straps cross behind the back to secure the slab firmly over the sternum and ribs. Small alchemical etchings are carved into the outer perimeter, framing the rings like a celestial astrolabe tracking passing years.
  • Item Statistics:
    • Tier: Tier 1 (Common)
    • Slot: Chest Slot
    • Armor Check (AC): +2
    • Resilience: 10
    • Item Health Points (HP): Maximum Avatar Health Points + 10 (Item HP = Avatar Max HP + [10 Resilience × Tier 1])
    • Attunement Time: 1 minute (Simple Attunement, openly worn)
    • Suggested Market Value: 45 Silver (Final merchant price subject to local availability, regional access, and seller discretion)
  • Passive Magic:
    • Annular Shock Retaliation: Whenever the wearer takes physical or magical damage from an attack, the heartwood’s stored growth rings rupture in a retributive wave. The breastplate immediately unleashes an explosive shockwave dealing the exact type and amount of damage sustained by the wearer to every enemy within a radius equal in feet to the damage points taken. If an enemy struck by this wave also carries an active reflecting enchantment, the intersecting feedback risks an immediate catastrophic resonance that can vaporize all entities in the area within a single turn.
    • Dendrochronological Recall: The armor’s exposed rings automatically attune to the passage of local seasons and climate shifts. While worn, the avatar can interpret the annular patterns to instantly deduce the exact age, botanical genus, and traumatic fire or drought history of any wooden item, plant matter, or arboreal structure examined through their normal senses.
    • Growth Ring Cushion: The density of the seasoned outer sapwood layers absorbs minor ambient blows, reducing mundane environmental bludgeoning damage taken from falling branches, collapsing timber, or sliding debris by a flat 1 point.
  • Activable Magic:
    • Kinetic Expulsion Ring: As a reaction triggered immediately after being struck by a melee attack, the wearer channels the retaliatory shockwave through the outermost growth boundary of the chest piece. This expels a concussive shockwave that forces all adjacent foes backward by 10 feet. This forced displacement shoves targets out of range before reciprocal reflective fields can trigger, preventing catastrophic reflective resonance from igniting between matching enchantments. This ability can be used twice per in-game day.
    • Core Sap Harden: By taking a standard action to speak the command sequence carved along the wood’s heart-grain, the avatar stimulates the ancient resin channels across the surface. The amber veins calcify for 6 rounds (one full minute of combat time), granting the wearer an additional +1 Armor Check bonus against physical attacks. Once activated, the sap solidifies completely and requires 4 hours of natural rest to soften before it can be invoked again.
  • Tags:
    • Chest, Armor, Tier 1, Common, Wood, Dendrochronology, Retaliation, Force, Displacement, Alchemy, Ironwood, Resonant, Amber, Botanical, Shockwave, Abjuration, Defense, Reactive

Acquisition and Commerce of the Ironwood Heart-Rings

  • Botanical Apothecaries and Herbal Reagent Dens:
    • Environment and Setting: Found tucked away in narrow side alleys of overgrown port towns or situated on the outskirts of forest-bordered settlements, these cramped, family-operated shops are heavy with the smell of boiling pitch, crushed bark, and preserved saps. Shelves are crowded with labeled glass jars containing fluid collectors, desiccated roots, and petrified flora harvested from the surrounding wilderness. The shopkeeper is typically an alchemist or hedge-crafter who specializes in organic transmutations and biological reagents.
    • Purchasing Conditions: An avatar browsing such a shop might find the cuirass hanging alongside preserved beast carapaces or cured hides. The shopkeeper values the item primarily for the purity of its alchemically treated sap veins and the pristine nature of the concentric growth rings. To purchase the item, a buyer who does not hold a relevant faction or guild credential is charged the full baseline price demanded by the proprietor, typically around 45 to 55 silver pieces. If the purchasing avatar holds a recognized guild membership or faction standing associated with natural crafting or alchemical trades, the shopkeeper applies the standard commercial discount, reducing the price by 10% per tier level of the buyer (a 10% reduction for a Tier 1 avatar, lowering the cost to approximately 40 to 49 silver pieces).
    • Selling Conditions: When an avatar brings the item to sell, the merchant scrutinizes the condition of the wood to ensure the growth rings have not suffered grain checks or structural matrix rot. Under the standard haggling conventions of the realm, the merchant negotiates down from the item’s perceived value by 10% times the tier level of the seller. For a Tier 1 seller, the proprietor offers approximately 40 silver pieces, less any deductions if the timber shows scars from previous battles. Upon finalizing the transaction, the funds are deposited directly into the seller’s account with the World Bank, visible immediately through the Mind’s Eye, accompanied by a transaction record noting the seller’s identity.
  • Artisan Carpentry Guildhalls and Woodcarver Boutiques:
    • Environment and Setting: Situated along the prominent market lanes of central cities or within commercial trade rings near island docks, these bustling workshops ring with the sound of bronze adzes, hand saws, and sanding stones. Rather than mass-produced inventory, these establishments display masterwork shields, bow staves, and carved runic fixtures crafted by specialized family lines. The artisans here regard dendrochronological pieces not merely as armor, but as historical timepieces and demonstrations of timber-shaping prowess.
    • Purchasing Conditions: The chest piece is mounted on an armor dummy to showcase the symmetry of the growth rings and the bronze edge-brackets. Because access to aged ironwood from interior regions is difficult to secure in coastal population centers, availability is limited and subject to heavy markups. The master carpenter operates strictly on a seller’s market basis, setting an asking price between 50 and 70 silver pieces. If the buyer is an active member of the local craftsmen’s guild or woodworkers’ syndicate, the 10% tier discount is honored, allowing a Tier 1 avatar to purchase it for roughly 45 to 63 silver pieces.
    • Selling Conditions: If an adventurer offers the breastplate to an artisan guildhall, the master carver evaluates the lineage mark stamped on the bronze brackets and the integrity of the amber veins. The buyer negotiates based on current regional timber shortages, starting negotiations at the baseline rate of the item’s value minus 10% for a Tier 1 seller, typically resulting in a payout of 40 to 45 silver pieces. Payment is settled through the official ledger of the World Bank, minus the mandatory administrative logging that records where the adventurer acquired such a specialized guild piece.
  • Harbor Pawnshops and Frontier Outfitter Exchanges:
    • Environment and Setting: Located directly along the wharfs of large island ports or just inside the fortified gates of frontier settlements, these low-ceilinged, cluttered depots cater directly to arriving travelers, mercenary parties, and newly arrived reincarnated souls seeking basic survival gear. The walls are hung with assorted adventuring kits, worn scabbards, and surplus gear recovered from deceased wanderers or surrendered by those who could not pay city entry tariffs or cargo passage taxes.
    • Purchasing Conditions: An outfitter who obtained the armor as forfeit property from an unpaid dock fee or through an estate clearance will price the chest piece quickly to clear shelf space. The item is displayed among mundane bronze breastplates and reinforced leather jacks. The asking price fluctuates wildly based on local foot traffic and the current danger level of surrounding monster-infested roads, ranging anywhere from 35 silver pieces in a glutted port to 60 silver pieces in a threatened outpost. Guild and faction discounts are rarely granted unless the faction badge corresponds directly to maritime or outfitting cartels.
    • Selling Conditions: The proprietor will inspect the item for damage, requiring any broken hit points on the wood to be fully restored before accepting it for trade. Haggling follows the customary 10% reduction for a Tier 1 avatar, yielding an offer around 31 to 40 silver pieces. If the seller lacks established credentials or local standing, the shopkeeper will press for the lowest possible valuation, citing the extreme hazard of the armor’s reflective resonance as an excuse to lower the payout. All currency is remitted via the World Bank network, and the merchant logs the seller’s physical description in their acquisition registry.
  • Undercity Fence Dens and Black-Market Smuggler Caches:
    • Environment and Setting: Hidden away in damp sea caves beneath coastal wharfs, abandoned sewer channels, or unmapped cellars beneath central cities, these illicit trading dens operate away from the eyes of the royal guard and municipal tax collectors. Goods here are traded without serial tags, artisan makers’ marks are filed away, and questions regarding previous owners or dead avatars are strictly forbidden.
    • Purchasing Conditions: In the black market, items with volatile retaliatory properties are highly valued by criminal syndicates, cutpurses, and illicit bodyguards who operate in tight corridors. The seller’s market principles apply aggressively here: black-market vendors never offer guild discounts and demand full price or higher for functional protective gear. The chest piece commands an inflated price ranging from 60 to 90 silver pieces, or between 6 and 9 gold coins. Transactions are conducted strictly with physical coinage (such as silver coins or electrum pieces) rather than the World Bank system to avoid transaction fees and municipal audits.
    • Selling Conditions: If an avatar brings the armor to a fence to sell without leaving a paper trail, the dealer will inspect the piece to ensure it does not bear active trace curses or the mark of a royal household guard. If the fence has an immediate buyer or an order for reflective enchantments, they may pay up to twice what a normal street merchant would offer, yielding between 60 and 80 silver pieces in hard physical metal. If the fence has no pressing need for the armor, they pay a standard haggled rate of approximately 35 to 40 silver pieces. In either case, the seller is paid entirely in physical metal coins, retaining complete anonymity without entries in merchant logs or bank registries.

Environmental Tactics: Defensive and Offensive Application of the Ironwood Heart-Rings

  • Narrow Subterranean Caverns and Island Cave Systems:
    • Defensive Application: In subterranean mine shafts and natural limestone caverns, incoming physical strikes from subterranean beasts or burrowing monstrosities trigger the breastplate’s annular rebound in an enclosed, echoing geometry. Because stone walls compress the concussive burst, the wearer can plant their boots against a cavern wall to brace against the retaliatory shudder. When an ambush occurs in close quarters, the armor’s automatic reflection punishes tightly packed foes, transforming the wearer into a hazardous obstacle that discourages multi-target flanking in narrow five-foot bottlenecks.
    • Offensive Application: The avatar can deliberately bait a high-damage strike from a lead predator while standing directly within a tight choke point. By absorbing a deliberate blow, the retaliatory burst erupts outward, bouncing against the hard rock surfaces and catching every clustered monster within the damage radius. Simultaneously, the avatar triggers the Kinetic Expulsion Ring as a reaction, blasting the frontline assailants ten feet backward into stalagmites or over underground chasms, severing their approach and preventing dangerous enchantment resonance before following up with a main weapon attack.
  • Dense Tropical Jungles and Overgrown Mangrove Mires:
    • Defensive Application: Moving through dense, primordial foliage exposes an avatar to poisonous thorn-vines, predatory ambush cats, and constricting marsh creatures. The armor’s dendrochronological awareness lets the wearer touch the local flora to discern ancient rot, sap flows, and weak footing before an encounter starts. When predatory beasts pounce from the tree canopy, the reflective burst instantly radiates outward through the brush, tearing through the foliage and punishing any concealed beasts lurking within the striking radius without requiring precise line-of-sight tracking through the leaves.
    • Offensive Application: When fighting territorial flora or swarming insects that emerge from hollow root networks, the avatar steps directly into striking range, using the Core Sap Harden action to reinforce their defenses. As hostile plant tendrils or claw attacks land on the hardened amber channels, the resulting damage reflection tears through brittle boughs and creeping roots simultaneously. The avatar uses the clearing blast to reveal hidden paths through the tangled undergrowth, carving open avenues for allies to advance without having to clear brush manually.
  • Open Sea Lanes, Ship Decks, and Coastal Wharfs:
    • Defensive Application: Boarding actions along island sea lanes take place on rolling wooden decks where balance is unstable. The breastplate absorbs kinetic impacts from flying cutlasses and boarding pikes, while its annular cushion softens the physical shock of colliding with wooden railings, swinging cargo booms, or pitching decking. If a boarding party swarms the gunwale, the retaliatory burst catches maritime raiders across the damp boards, using their own strike energy to destabilize their footing on the slick timbers.
    • Offensive Application: While standing at the narrow gangplank or defending a ship’s helm, the wearer can invoke the Kinetic Expulsion Ring the instant an enemy officer lands a strike. The concussive blast repels boarding foes ten feet backward, hurling them straight off the side of the vessel into the churning ocean currents or crushing them against the mainmast. Furthermore, the wearer can actively examine the timber of an opposing vessel’s hull or decking; the dendrochronological affinity allows them to identify dry rot, grain weaknesses, or brittle repair planks, marking the exact structural spots where their allies should direct boarding rams or heavy fire.
  • Fortified Urban Streets and Narrow Alleyways:
    • Defensive Application: Within crowded central cities or fortified towns, mercenary crossfire and rooftop crossbow snipers present constant hazards. When an arrow or throwing knife strikes the cuirass, the retaliatory burst radiates through the street, driving back unarmored footpads and revealing hidden assailants who take damage within the blast radius. If surrounded by municipal guards or rival guild enforcers, the armor deters coordinated gang rushes, as every successful strike against the wearer damages every nearby attacker indiscriminately.
    • Offensive Application: An avatar cornered in a dead-end alleyway can trigger the Core Sap Harden ability to withstand an opening barrage, then intentionally absorb a heavy hammer or mace blow from a hulking street enforcer. The wide damage radius transfers that high-impact damage to all flanking cutpurses, clearing the surrounding street in an instant. Before any rogue equipped with a counter-enchantment can trigger a lethal feedback loop, the avatar fires the Kinetic Expulsion Ring, shoving the enemy front line into market stalls and wooden fences, creating an immediate breach to break the encirclement.
  • Volcanic Calderas and Ash Plains:
    • Defensive Application: In regions choked by subterranean magma flows and seismic tremors, the air is thick with superheated gas and burning ash. The ironwood slab, having been petrified through ancient geothermal cycles, resists the ambient radiant heat of the ground. When magma-infused creatures strike with flaming fists or burning stone, the armor absorbs the kinetic and thermal trauma, immediately casting back equal fire and force onto the surrounding elementals while insulating the wearer’s vital organs from burning embers.
    • Offensive Application: In an environment where every step risks triggering seismic crust ruptures or falling volcanic slag, the wearer uses the armor’s wood-memory insight to detect charred, petrified roots beneath the ash crust, identifying hollow ground or hidden lava tubes. In combat, by drawing a heavy elemental into striking the cuirass near a precarious ledge or cracking magma vent, the retaliatory pulse shatters the brittle volcanic crust beneath the attacker’s feet, while the kinetic knock-back shove drives the creature directly into open fissures or boiling mud pools.

Perception of Activation:

  • User’s Perspective:
    • Sight:
      • As the kinetic strike contacts the chest piece, the tightly packed concentric growth rings ignite with an intense, burning amber luminescence that flares from the central knot outward along the grain.
      • The user’s field of vision is momentarily washed in a vibrant gold-orange bloom that traces the exact physical shockwave expanding across the terrain, outlining the boundaries of the damage radius in sharp, glowing annular contours.
      • Fine trails of airborne embers and radiant wood dust appear to drift in midair, illuminating the trajectory of every displaced object and enemy thrown back by the concussive burst.
    • Hearing:
      • The impact registers as a deep, subterranean groaning reminiscent of a massive ancient tree trunk snapping under the weight of an earthquake, instantly superseded by a loud, resonant crack like thunder striking dry heartwood.
      • Immediately following the explosive report, a low-frequency hum vibrates through the air, sounding like hundreds of bowing strings vibrating in unison at the pitch of grinding timber.
      • As the retaliatory blast expands outward, an acoustic vacuum briefly pulls the sound from the air, creating a momentary, deadened silence before the surrounding environment crashes back with tumbling debris and enemy cries.
    • Smell:
      • The rapid conversion of stored impact force superheats the internal sap channels, releasing an overwhelming rush of charred cedar, vaporized turpentine, and smoldering pitch into the user’s nostrils.
      • Beneath the heavy resin aroma lies the sharp, metallic tang of ozone and scorched bronze, mixed with the damp, mineral scent of ancient forest earth disturbed by the outward shockwave.
    • Taste:
      • The air rushing past the user’s mouth carries a bitter, dry residue of wood ash and crystallized resin that coats the tongue and the back of the throat.
      • A persistent coppery, alkaline flavor lingers along the gums, caused by the intense static and arcane pressure conducting through the wooden plate into the torso.
    • Touch:
      • The user feels a massive, jarring shudder pass directly through their ribcage as the timber absorbs the incoming blow, followed instantly by a warm, rolling wave of tension that lifts outward off the chest as the energy discharges.
      • The bronze brackets and leather bindings pull tightly against the skin, delivering a firm, vise-like squeeze across the torso while the grain rapidly expands and contracts.
      • A prickling sensation of pins and needles spreads from the sternum down into the fingertips and toes, leaving the skin flushed with radiant heat as the ambient temperature of the breastplate spikes during expulsion.
    • Extra-Sensory Perceptions:
      • Mind’s Eye Data Manifestation: In the user’s mind, a translucent series of runic numbers and geometric circles flashes into focus, projecting the precise numeric value of the damage sustained, the exact boundary radius in feet, and real-time durability percentages of the heartwood’s remaining hit points.
      • Dendrochronological Chronoception: The user’s consciousness experiences a split-second temporal slip, feeling hundreds of years of growth cycles, past forest fires, droughts, and seasonal freezes pass through their psyche in the span of a single heartbeat, briefly distorting their perception of the present timeline.
      • Resonance Warning Sense: An instinctual, cold dread pulses at the base of the skull if an enemy within the vicinity possesses a reflecting or retaliatory aura, manifesting as an acute psychic ringing that warns the user of an impending recursive loop.
  • Observer’s Perspective:
    • Sight:
      • Observers watch the incoming attack strike the wooden cuirass, which instantly flashes with an eye-searing, concentric ripple of orange and amber light that radiates across the surface like rings forming on a pond.
      • A circular shockwave of displaced air and crackling orange fire bursts outward from the wearer’s chest, sweeping across the ground in a perfect disc that kicks up dirt, leaves, and fractured stone.
      • Enemies caught within the expanding ring are bathed in the same harsh, burning glow, their bodies momentarily highlighted in fiery amber outlines before being lifted and shoved violently backward.
    • Hearing:
      • To bystanders, the impact does not sound like metal meeting flesh or wood, but rather like a siege ballista snapping its tension cord, accompanied by a deafening, dry crack that reverberates off nearby surfaces.
      • The concussive wave creates a sharp whistling rush of wind, immediately followed by the wet thuds and scraping sounds of bodies crashing into the ground or surrounding architecture.
    • Smell:
      • The sudden explosion blows a hot gust of wind across all observers within twenty feet, saturating the area with the heavy scent of burning pine pitch, roasted resin, and scorched organic mulch.
    • Taste:
      • Nearby observers inhale a dry, chalky cloud of airborne sawdust and pulverized bark that leaves a gritty, astringent film on the lips and tongue.
    • Touch:
      • The concussive blast hits the bodies of all nearby creatures as a heavy physical slap against the skin and armor, rattling their gear and threatening their balance on loose soil or stone.
      • The air temporarily spikes with dry, baking heat, making the immediate clearing feel like the blast from an opened furnace door before dispersing back into the ambient climate.
    • Extra-Sensory Perceptions:
      • Aura Pressure: Arcane practitioners among the observers feel a sudden, jarring displacement in the local magic pressure, as if a large hole was punched in the atmospheric weave and violently snapped shut.
      • Intimidation of Age: Beings with natural or beast instincts experience a brief, unexplainable spike of primal fear, perceiving the wearer not as an individual avatar, but as an ancient, immovable colossus of petrified timber towering over the clearing.
  • Positives:
    • Total Damage Reciprocation: The wearer does not suffer injury in vain; every single point of incoming trauma is instantly replicated in kind and inflicted across every adjacent enemy caught within the blast perimeter.
    • Area-of-Effect Field Clearing: Against swarming minions or clustered foes, a single absorbed strike transforms into a multi-target counterattack that damages the entire perimeter without consuming an action or requiring an attack roll.
    • Tactical Crowd Control and Separation: The activated kinetic expulsion violently repels striking foes ten feet backward, disrupting their battle lines, freeing the avatar from grappling or pinning maneuvers, and negating immediate follow-up melee combinations.
    • Immediate Environmental Assessment: The activation highlights concealed terrain features, rot lines, and hidden enemies through the burning annular shockwave, stripping away the element of surprise from ambushing forces in brush or darkness.
  • Negatives:
    • Catastrophic Resonance Danger: If an opponent within the damage radius possesses a matching reflective enchantment or retaliatory matrix, the two fields can lock into an infinite, instantaneous feedback loop that completely annihilates everyone and everything in the vicinity in a single turn.
    • Indiscriminate Retaliation Radius: The reflective wave radiates out equally in all directions without targeting discretion; if allied avatars or neutral bystanders are positioned within the footprint of the damage radius, they suffer the full force of the reflected blow.
    • Sensory Disorientation and Ash Fog: The massive burst of sound, flash of blinding amber light, and heavy cloud of scorched resin can briefly disorient the wearer’s vision and hearing, making precise re-targeting challenging in enclosed spaces.
    • Attracts Hostile Attention: The explosive report, brilliant illumination, and pervasive odor of burning pine make stealth impossible, immediately alerting distant monsters, military patrols, and hostile scouts across a wide radius.

Recipe: Transmutation of the Annular Heart-Curass

  • Materials Needed:
    • One Seasoned Core Slab of Tasian Ironwood: Cross-cut trunk section containing no fewer than fifty intact concentric growth rings, free from unchecked radial splits.
    • One Tier 1 Magic Crystal: Sized and weighted to the equivalent of a standard coin, uncracked and fully saturated with ambient arcane energy to act as the primary catalyst.
    • Twelve Fluid Collector Vials of Petrified Tree Sap: Harvested directly from living ironwood boles via needle extraction, rich in natural resinous binding agents.
    • Four Fluid Collector Vials of Slain Beast Blood: Freshly drawn organic fluid from a creature possessing natural armored hide or physical retaliatory traits, serving as a sacrificial biological medium.
    • One Sacrificial Enchanted Kinetic or Warding Trinket: A Tier 1 or mundane enchanted item bearing minor kinetic, force, or defensive wards (to be fully consumed during the process so its latent kinetic transference passes into the wood).
    • Six Sand-Cast Bronze Retention Brackets and Studs: Forged metal fittings designed to bind the perimeter grain against explosive structural splintering.
    • Four Cured Leather Harness Straps: Heavy-grain hide bands with bronze buckles, sized to mount the wooden core to an avatar’s torso.
  • Tools Required:
    • Fluid Collector: Specialized syringe and needle extraction assembly used to measure, filter, and inject organic fluids without aeration.
    • Bronze-Bladed Drawknife and Adze: Hand tools crafted to shave, contour, and smooth ironwood along its natural growth boundaries.
    • Etching Burin: Hardened steel or bronze carving stylus used to trace runic paths, alchemical channels, and attunement boundaries into the grain.
    • Stone Crucible and Heating Braziers: Fueled by elemental steam or charcoal to melt, infuse, and refine resinous pitch mixtures.
    • Clamping Frame: Heavy wooden and iron vise jig to hold the circular slab under consistent mechanical tension during alchemical setting.
  • Skill Requirements:
    • Alchemical Crafting: Minimum Skill Level 5 (required to handle reactive bio-fluids, refine harvested sap, and dissolve the sacrificial catalyst into the matrix without volatile corruption).
    • Woodworking and Carpentry: Minimum Skill Level 5 (required to follow the annular timber grain, carve retaining grooves, and balance the core plate to prevent material checking).
    • Item Merging Proficiency: Minimum Skill Level 6 (required to channel the sacrificial trinket’s latent magic into the wooden matrix without incurring structural destruction).
  • Crafting Steps:
    • Step 1: Preparation of the Arboreal Core: Secure the ironwood cross-section in the clamping frame. Using the bronze-bladed drawknife, shave the face down to expose the central heartwood knot and all fifty concentric growth rings. Smooth the perimeter with sanding stones and bevel the edges to receive the bronze perimeter brackets.
    • Step 2: Alchemical Reagent Blending: In the heated stone crucible, combine the twelve fluid collector vials of petrified tree sap with the four vials of harvested beast blood. Bring the mixture to a slow simmer over controlled steam heat, stirring until the amber resin and biological fluids homogenize into a deep crimson, viscous bonding lacquer.
    • Step 3: Incision of Annular Conduits: With the etching burin, trace fine channels along the natural boundary lines of three distinct outer growth rings, carving delicate runic channels leading inward toward the center knot. Cut recessed seats into the perimeter edge to align with the shock-dispersion brackets.
    • Step 4: Transmutation and Magic Transference: Place the sacrificial kinetic warding trinket and the Tier 1 coin-sized magic crystal into the center of the crucible with the remaining lacquer. Apply focused arcane heat to dissolve the physical forms of both items, breaking down their structures while capturing their released magical essence within the boiling resin medium.
    • Step 5: Resin Injection and Grain Sealing: Using the fluid collector, draw the enchanted catalytic resin from the crucible and inject it directly into the incised annular channels and radial pores of the wooden slab. The glowing amber-crimson lacquer will seep along the internal growth rings, bonding with the dense fibers and permanently locking the kinetic resonance into the timber.
    • Step 6: Bronze Fitting and Harness Mounting: While the alchemical resin cures and cools to glass-like hardness, rivet the six sand-cast bronze retention brackets around the circumference of the slab. Affix the four leather harness straps to the reverse side through reinforced anchor studs, ensuring the breastplate sits flush and firm against a chest gear slot.
    • Step 7: Final Matrix Stabilization: Allow the finished breastplate to cure in a dry, shaded space for twenty-two hours (one full world day). Once set, inspect the amber veins through the Mind’s Eye to verify that the annular channels pulse with stable, latent retaliatory force, completing the creation of the Tier 1 armor piece.

Ringed Wood That Spat Back Axe-Biting

Hear this script of old talk, turned many times from strange mouthings into the tongue of people who build houses on the dirt. It is written down about the round tree-plate which does not take the hit in silence, but gives back the hit to everyone who stands near to smell it.

In the old age when the First People were waking up from the sky-fall, having the great head-forgetting sickness and wandering in the bushes with no clothes or gray clothes, there was a man-beast named Bran-of-the-Hills. Bran had two eyes that could see the numbers of things when he looked hard, but mostly he was a chopper of trunks who smelled of pitch and had very little silver in his pocket. He lived upon the dry island where the ground gets angry and shakes because the world has no plates to slide on, only the boiling soup of stone underneath that pushes like a pot on the hot coals. In those days, the woods were not polite woods. The green bushes had knives, and the tall iron-timbers had swallowed the lightning of the great Mother-Beast Gaialilith for many hundreds of years of seven-day weeks.

Bran had a great hunger for a log that would not turn to mush when the rain came down from the clouds. He went up into the high rocks where the air is thin and the wild winds blow from the east to the west, just like the salt sea does on the bottom of the world. There he found the Grandfather Iron-Stump. It was not a dead stump, but a tree that had stood since the elementals were throwing fire-buckets at each other before the moon grew cold. The tree had fifty times ten rings inside its belly, and every ring had tasted a fire, or a drought, or the teeth of an ugly monster that died before anyone had names.

Bran lifted his heavy bronze tool and struck the wood.

Clang-tock.

The ironwood did not bleed red juice like a goat, nor did it fall over. The tree made a sound like a great stomach grumbling after bad moss. The ring inside the wood shivered. The strike of Bran’s sharp tool did not go through the bark; instead, the wood spat the strike straight back into Bran’s elbow. The shock flew up his arm-bones, through his collar-ridge, and blew him ten long paces backward into a bush of stinging weeds. His tool flew into the air and landed in the mud with a dull plink.

Bran sat in the stinging bush and rubbed his elbow, which felt like bees had nested inside the joint. He looked with his open mind-sight, and he saw the air was full of glowing ring-shapes, like ripples when a frog jumps into a quiet pond. He said to his own mouth: “This wood is bad-tempered. If I chop it, it chops me. But if I wear it upon my ribs, then the great lizards of the ravine will chop it, and it will chop them instead of me.”

So Bran did not use the axe again, because he was not entirely foolish, though he was very stubborn. He took a tiny syringe with a long horn-needle, such as the fluid-takers use when they steal the milk of trees or the juice of dead cats. He sat beside the Great Trunk for forty-nine days, which is seven whole weeks of the magic calendar, watching the sun Helios go up at four and go down at sixteen, and seeing the great gas-belly VaporSphere eat the light until the darkness week came. He whispered to the bark. He poured warm fat from an ox onto the root-toes. He took the sticky sap that wept from the old fire-scars and put it into small clay pots.

When the tree was sleeping between the hot noon and the cold evening, Bran took a copper string with sharp diamond-teeth and pulled it very slowly through the heart of the wood, weeping and singing songs about his grandmother so the wood would not notice it was being cut into a platter. It took three moons of sawing, and his hands became like leather harness-straps, but at last, a round flat cheese of dark timber fell into his lap. It had rings so fine and numerous that counting them would make an owl go blind. The center knot was black like a cinder, and the edges were golden like hardened insect-tears.

Bran went down the mountain paths to the village where the little shopkeepers sold dried fish and clay pots. There was an old woman there named Vola, who knew how to melt things together so they did not fall apart when a goblin kicked them. Vola was a worker of the craft who had a license from the local mayor and a badge from the wood-carvers pinned to her dress.

“Look upon this turnip of wood,” Bran said, dropping the heavy slab upon her table so hard that three porcelain teacups danced and broke. “It bites when it is beaten. Make it into a shirt for my chest so I may go into the caves and steal the silver-lead from the great worm.”

Vola put her brass looking-glass to her eye. She peered at the wood until she saw the truth of it. “This wood is too full of memories,” she croaked, spitting black root-leaf into the ash-pan. “It remembers when the volcano threw hot mud eight hundred years before the people fell out of the sky. It remembers the cold year when the sky went black and the crops turned to ice. If a beast hits this wood, the wood will tell the air to hit everything that has ears. But if you meet another fool who wears a wood that spits, your two spitting-plates will talk to one another in a circle, faster and faster, until the whole parish goes up in a blue flash, and we will all be dead before the soup is cold.”

“Then put bronze around its neck so it does not talk too loud,” Bran demanded. “And put a kick into its belly so it pushes the other fool away before they can make the great boom.”

Vola grumbled many words that are not used in polite houses. She took six brackets of hammered bronze, marked with the signs of Helm and Tyr so the wood would remember to be just and not merely hateful. She took a small crystal from her drawer, no bigger than a copper penny that had been cut from the neck of a dead sand-crawler, and she ground it into sand with a heavy stone. She took a sacrificial copper ring that had a little ward against falling rocks, and she threw it into the pot with the black tree-blood until the copper disappeared like salt in a broth.

With her syringe-tool, she shot the hot red soup into the cracks between the growth-rings. The wood drank the soup. It hissed like a snake thrown into a campfire. The rings swelled, and where the timber had been brown and dry, bright threads of yellow fire began to run in circles under the skin of the bark. She riveted the bronze bands over the edges to keep the rings from flying apart like a smashed barrel, and she tied four strips of bull-hide to the back so it could be bound to a man’s ribs.

When she finished, the piece was heavy as a tomb-marker, but it smelled of sweet resin and dry summer pine.

Now, Bran put the wooden platter upon his breast. He tightened the straps until his breath came out in squeaks. He took his club and walked down into the wet sinkholes of the lower coast, where the mud-goblins had built houses out of dried sea-scum and whale bones. The mud-goblins were angry little people who did not pay taxes to the Queen and did not care about the World Bank or the laws of the four bodies of government. They had long spears tipped with jagged fish-glass, and they did not like men who walked through their bogs without giving them three silver pieces for the road-toll.

A dozen goblins jumped out of the tall grass. They had yellow mud on their bellies and sharp bones through their ears.

“Give us your boots, big legs!” screamed the chief goblin, whose name was Snag-Tooth.

Bran did not give his boots. He spat into the black water and stood like an ox that has nowhere to go.

Snag-Tooth ran forward with a great heavy stone hammer, lifted it above his ears, and brought it down with all his spite upon Bran’s chest.

THWACK.

The stone hammer hit the center knot of the ironwood. For half a tick of a water-clock, nothing happened. Bran’s eyes went wide, and his tongue stuck out because the breath was squeezed out of his body. Then, the annular rings inside the timber remembered the lightning that had struck them four hundred years before.

A great flash of orange day-light tore out of the wood. It did not go like an arrow; it went like a round wall of fire that grew out from Bran’s ribs in all directions at once. The sound was like ten trees falling down together in a dry gulley.

Snag-Tooth did not get to laugh. The very same hammer-blow he had given to Bran came back out of the wood and hit Snag-Tooth upon his forehead, his belly, and his knees all at once. But it did not hit only him. Every goblin within twenty feet—the length of the pain that had been given—was lifted into the air as if a great wind had blown out of a pipe. The shockwave smelled of roasted pine-cones and burning pitch. It hit the goblins and hurled them into the mud-pools, breaking their wicker shields and turning their dried-kelp trousers into rags.

Before Snag-Tooth could crawl up to strike again with his short bone-knife, the bronze brackets upon the wood let out a hard, dry bell-sound: TONG.

A wave of thick air, like a fist made of wind, leaped forward ten paces. It caught Snag-Tooth under the chin and threw him backward through his own house-door, smashing the whale-bone rafters and sending his cooking-pot into the ditch. The knock-back pushed the remaining goblins so far into the salt-marsh that they were out of striking distance, and their small charms could not touch the wood to make the terrible echo that swallows cities.

Bran stood alone in the clearing. His ribs were blue and purple under the wood, and his teeth felt like they were loose in his gums from the shaking. His ears had a high singing noise like a summer cicada that would not cease. But every goblin lay in the mud with his feet kicking the sky, groaning and holding his belly, because the wood had given back to each of them every speck of the bruise they had meant for Bran.

Bran laughed a thick, wet laugh and picked up his bundle. He saw through his mind-eye that the wood had lost only three small points of its health, and the resin in the center was already growing warm and hard again, ready to count the years of the next fight.

He walked all through the island nations wearing the round wooden plate. He wore it into the holds of pirate cutters where the deck-cleavers hit him and fell into the sea from their own rebound. He wore it into the dark stone tunnels where the big cave-bears swiped at him with claws like garden-rakes, only to have their own claws broken by the hardness of the rings that remembered being clawed before. He became a man of great renown, earning three or four points of fame in every tavern from Aterian to Banpo, and people bought him beer made of fermented cane so he would tell them about the tree that did not forgive.

Yet, as the years went around like the weeks of the moon, Bran grew fat and proud. He forgot that the wood was not his own skin, but only a piece of an old neighbor who had died on the mountain. He thought he was made of ironwood himself.

One evening, in the great port of Badarian, where the sailing vessels come in from the west with spices and dried snails, Bran sat in an inn called The Split Whale. He had drunk five horns of bitter spruce-wine and was bragging to the sailors that no blade in all the seventy-three lands could cut through his dinner.

In the corner sat an old mercenary from the northern states, a woman named Karlin who had silver hair and one ear missing from an encounter with an air-ship propeller. Across her shoulders she wore a cloak woven from the hair of a woolly mountain-beast, and under the cloak was a round pectoral made of petrified stone that had been carved with the self-same warding runes of the old mountain people.

“You speak very loud for a man with a wooden board on his chest,” Karlin said, her voice sounding like gravel being kicked down a well.

“I speak loud because my board has fifty rings that bite,” Bran roared, banging his clay jug on the table. “Strike me with your pig-sticker, old woman, and see if you do not find your own teeth in your pocket!”

“Do not play that game,” whispered the tavern-master, who had a guild-mark for selling ale and did not want his floor-boards broken. “The lady has gear from the deep rocks. When two mirrors look at one another, the light has nowhere to go but mad.”

Bran did not listen, for the wine was loud in his head and the pride of his forty-seven victories was thick upon his neck. He stepped into the center of the common room and slapped the ironwood breastplate until the amber veins flickered with an angry, hungry red light. “Come, grandmother! Give me what you have, and let the house see who is the master of the bounce!”

Karlin stood up. She was old, but her arms were like thick ash-poles from rowing against the east-to-west sea currents. She drew a short, heavy iron blade that had been quenched in the fat of an electric eel. She took one step and brought the point of the iron blade straight down against the center knot of Bran’s plate.

The iron met the heart-wood.

It was not a crack that came forth. It was a scream.

The ironwood caught the strike and threw it outward into Karlin’s stone plate. The stone plate caught the wave and threw it straight back into the ironwood. The ironwood took that doubled wave and multiplied it by the fifty years of fire inside its grain and threw it back into the stone. In less time than it takes an eye to blink or a soul to fall from the high clouds, the two plates began to hum like a pair of hornets caught in a glass bottle.

The air between them did not blow like wind; it turned white like the surface of the star Helios at midday. The amber resin inside Bran’s wood turned into fire that could not be put out by water. The bronze brackets began to bend and twist like soft worms. The walls of The Split Whale did not fall over; they turned into gray dust that drifted down like flour from a broken sack. The tables, the kegs of spruce-wine, the brass lamps, and the seventy-two sailors who were watching all became a cloud of fine purple smoke that smelled of burned pitch and lightning.

The whole house, and the stable behind it, and the pig-pen beside the stable, were wiped clean from the earth, leaving only a round hole in the dirt that went down until the dark salt water seeped through from the harbor.

When the smoke cleared away in the morning wind, nothing was left of Bran-of-the-Hills except his boots, which were mundane and had no magic in them, and nothing was left of Karlin except her iron belt-buckle. But deep in the bottom of the smoking hole, lying in the wet clay where the tide was rising, lay the round center knot of the ironwood plate. Its brackets were melted away, its leather was gone, and its outer rings were burned to charcoal, but the very deepest rings—the ones that had grown when Gaialilith was still taming the first red winds of the world—were still whole. They lay there in the mud, glowing with a dull, secret heat, waiting for some other foolish traveler to dig them out with a spade, tie them to a new shirt, and think that he could be struck without paying the cost of the striking.

Moral of the Story: He who carries a shield that returns the blow must not walk into the company of those who wear the same mirror, lest the violence they trade between them grow so tall that it eats the house, the master, and the innocent folk who only came to drink the cider. What you throw into the bush will come back to your face with the briars attached.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)

The Heart-Wood Aegis of Tasian

  • Item Classification: Ensorcelled Relic / Mythos Artifact
  • Physical Description: A heavy, round breastplate fashioned from a cross-section of dense, petrified ironwood, displaying decades of dark, concentric growth rings bound by corroded bronze brackets and secured with leather straps.
  • Sanity Cost: 1D4 Sanity points upon attuning to or intentionally activating the artifact’s eldritch matrix.
  • Armor Value: Provides 2 points of physical armor against firearms, bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing attacks directed at the torso.
  • Reflective Retaliation: Whenever the wearer suffers physical damage from an attack, the concentric growth rings flare with sickly amber radiance. The armor immediately releases an explosive, concussive wave dealing the exact amount and type of hit point damage suffered by the wearer to all individuals within a radius equal in yards to the damage sustained. If an affected entity also possesses an active ward of sympathetic reflection, an instantaneous Mythos feedback occurs, inflicting 10D10 damage to all living things within 100 yards and reducing the artifact to ash.
  • Kinetic Expulsion (Reaction): When struck by a melee attack, the wearer may spend 10 Luck points or 5 Magic Points to trigger the bronze rim-wards. All targets within 3 yards must succeed on an Extreme STR or Dodge roll or be hurled backward 3 yards, landing prone. This displacement occurs before any secondary retaliatory feedback can ignite.
  • Dendrochronological Insight: By touching wooden structures, antiquities, or arboreal growths and spending 1 Magic Point, the wearer gains a Hard Success bonus to Archaeology, History, or Natural World rolls regarding the object’s age, construction, and exposure to historical trauma.

Blades in the Dark

The Iron-Ring Carapace

  • Item Classification: Arcane Curio & Body Armor (Equipped Load: 2)
  • Description: A heavy torso harness mounting a thick, circular slab of fossilized wood from an extinct primeval forest, lined with glowing electroplasmic resin channels and held by hammered brass rivets.
  • Armor Trait: Functions as standard Armor (spend 1 box of Armor on your loadout to reduce harm from a physical blow by one level).
  • Special Quality: Retaliatory Discharge: When you take harm from a physical strike or close-quarters assault, you may tick 2 Stress to unleash the stored violence of the timber. Every enemy within immediate reach (a radius equivalent to the severity of the harm suffered: 1 pace for Lesser, 3 paces for Moderate, 5 paces for Severe) suffers equivalent violent trauma and is thrown off balance.
  • Catastrophic Feedback: If this discharge strikes an entity shielded by an active Ghostfield Ward or sympathetic spirit-reflecting amulet, the interaction generates catastrophic spectral resonance. You and the opposing entity immediately suffer Fatal Level 4 Harm as the items rupture the local veil, obliterating the physical room in an electroplasmic shockwave.
  • Kinetic Knock-Back: When expending armor or resisting close combat, you may take 1 additional Stress to declare that the concussive burst drives all adjacent assailants backward out of immediate engagement distance, preventing melee follow-up or arcane containment.
  • Spirit Timber Memory: When conducting a Study roll to examine wooden structures, ships, or relic timbers, improve your position from Risky to Controlled and gain +1 Effect, extracting past events, structural flaws, and historical fires recorded in the grain.

Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition / 2024)

Cuirass of the Ironwood Heart-Rings

  • Armor (breastplate), uncommon (requires attunement)
  • Base Armor Class: 14 + Dexterity modifier (maximum 2)
  • Weight: 20 lbs.
  • Annular Shock Retaliation: Whenever a creature hits you with an attack and inflicts damage, the armor unleashes a concussive shockwave of stored annular force. Every enemy within a radius equal to the damage taken (in feet) must make a Dexterity saving throw (DC 13). On a failed save, a target takes force damage equal to the total damage you sustained from the triggering attack, or half as much damage on a successful save.
  • Resonance Risk: If an enemy within the retaliation radius has an active ability, spell, or magic item that also reflects incoming damage back onto attackers, an uncontrolled magical resonance instantly triggers. Both items shatter, and an explosive rupture deals 8d10 force damage to all creatures within 30 feet.
  • Kinetic Expulsion Ring: When you are hit by a melee attack, you can use your reaction to vent the armor’s outer resin channels. The attacking creature and all creatures within 5 feet of you must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be pushed 10 feet straight away from you. This movement occurs before any retaliatory damage is calculated, preventing the triggering of mutual resonance risks. This reaction can be used a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus, regaining all expended uses upon finishing a long rest.
  • Dendrochronological Lore: While wearing this armor, you have advantage on Intelligence (Nature) and Intelligence (History) checks made to determine the age, origin, species, or structural integrity of trees, wooden structures, and worked timber.

Knave (2nd Edition)

The Concentric Ironwood Plate

  • Item Classification: Armor (Chest Slot, consumes 2 Item Slots)
  • Armor Value: Armor Defense 12 (Direct equivalent to light breastplate protection)
  • Item Quality: 3 / 3
  • Weight / Slots: 2 Slots (Bulky, worn on torso)
  • Annular Retaliation: When the wearer takes damage from an attack, the wooden plate violently discharges its stored kinetic trauma. Every enemy within a radius equal to the damage sustained (in feet) takes damage equal to the amount dealt to the wearer. If a target within this burst possesses an item that also reflects damage, both items immediately lose all Quality points, break permanently, and inflict 4d6 blast damage to every creature within 20 feet.
  • Kinetic Expulsion: Once per combat encounter, when struck in melee, the wearer may trigger a reactive shockwave to shove all engaged foes 10 feet backward. This forced movement resolves instantly, clearing the engagement zone.
  • Wood-Memory Insight: The wearer automatically succeeds on any non-magical check to determine the age, species, weakness, or fire history of any timber, wooden door, ship hull, or palisade wall examined up close.
  • Repair Limitation: If the item reaches 0 Quality, it cannot be repaired using ordinary smithing materials; restoring a point of Quality requires rare resinous sap and fresh organic biological fluids worked into the growth rings during a downtime rest.

Fate Core / Condensed

The Resonant Rings of Tasian

  • Item Aspect: Ancient Ironwood Heart-Plate with Retaliatory Rings
  • Function and Scale: Personal protective torso gear designed from petrified timber, maintaining an alchemical link between chronological wood-growth and kinetic dissipation.
  • Stunt: Annular Rebound: Because you are wearing the Resonant Rings of Tasian, once per conflict when you suffer a physical hit and take stress or a consequence, you may immediately inflict an equivalent physical hit upon all opposing characters in your zone. The severity of the hit dealt to each target equals the shifts of the hit you actually absorbed.
  • Stunt: Kinetic Shove: Once per scene, as a free action when you are attacked in melee, you may invoke the plate’s outer grain to automatically push all adjacent physical adversaries into an adjacent zone, clearing close contact before any further attacks resolve.
  • Stunt: Dendrochronological Lore: You gain a +2 bonus to Notice or Lore rolls when actively investigating the age, stress history, construction, or structural defects of wooden architecture, ships, barriers, or natural timber.
  • Trouble Aspect / Flaw: Unstable Reflective Resonance: If an adversary within your zone possesses an active aspect or stunt that also redirects or reflects incoming harm, the opposing effects interact catastrophically. Any player or the GM may invoke this aspect (with a Fate point) to trigger an explosive failure that destroys both protective devices and inflicts a 4-shift physical hit against every entity present in the zone.

Cypher System / Numenera (Discovery & Destiny)

The Bio-Chronological Torso Ward

  • Item Classification: Artifact (Level 4)
  • Form: A convex breastplate cut from a petrified, amber-veined arboreal core, bound with hammered bronze rim-brackets and heavy hide straps.
  • Armor Rating: +1 to Armor (Torso)
  • Depletion: 1 in 1d20 (checked whenever the active Retaliatory Wave or Concussive Displacement is triggered)
  • Passive Effect (Arboreal Insight): The wearer is trained in all intellectual tasks involving the identification, chronological age, and structural integrity of plant matter, wooden materials, and antique worked timbers.
  • Active Effect (Retaliatory Wave): Whenever the wearer suffers physical damage from an attack, the artifact immediately releases a pulse of kinetic energy in a radial burst. The radius of the burst (in feet) is equal to the points of damage sustained by the wearer. Every enemy within that radius takes ambient damage equal to the damage sustained by the wearer.
  • Resonance Risk: If an enemy caught within the burst radius is protected by a device, force shield, or cypher that also reflects incoming damage, the overlapping fields overload instantaneously. The artifact depletes automatically, and a violent feedback burst inflicts 10 points of ambient damage to all creatures within short range.
  • Active Effect (Concussive Displacement): As a reaction when struck by a melee attack, the wearer can expend 2 points from their Might or Speed Pool to trigger a secondary concussive pulse. All creatures within immediate range must succeed on a Might defense roll (against the artifact’s level) or be thrown backward to short range and knocked prone. This displacement happens before mutual resonance can occur.

Pathfinder (Second Edition Remaster)

Ironwood Heart-Rings

  • Item Header: Item 3 | Rare | Abjuration | Kinetic | Primal
  • Usage: Worn (breastplate); Bulk: 2
  • Base Statistics: AC +4; Dex Cap +1; Check Penalty -2; Speed Penalty -5 ft.; Strength 16; Hardness 5, HP 20, BT 10
  • Dendrochronological Lore: You gain a +2 item bonus to Nature checks to Recall Knowledge regarding the age, species, and structural health of trees, timber structures, and plant-based hazards.
  • Annular Retaliation (Reaction):
  • Trigger: A creature within your reach hits you with a Strike that deals physical or force damage.
  • Effect: The concentric growth rings flare with stored kinetic energy. All enemies within a emanation equal to the damage dealt (in feet, rounded up to the nearest 5-foot increment) take damage equal to the damage dealt to you (basic Reflex save against your class DC or spell DC, whichever is higher). If any creature damaged by this emanation has an active effect that reflects damage back to the attacker, a catastrophic magical feedback loop occurs: both items immediately become Broken, and all creatures within a 20-foot emanation take 4d10 force damage (DC 20 basic Reflex save).
  • Kinetic Expulsion (One-Action):
  • Frequency: Once per hour
  • Effect: You trigger the breastplate’s outer bronze dispersion brackets. Each adjacent enemy must succeed on a DC 19 Fortitude save or be pushed 10 feet away from you. On a critical failure, the creature is pushed 10 feet and falls prone.

Savage Worlds (Adventure Edition)

Tasian Ring-Plate

  • Item Classification: Minor Arcane Artifact (Torso Armor)
  • Armor Value: Armor +2 (Covers Torso)
  • Minimum Strength: d8; Weight: 12 lbs.
  • Wood-Memory: The wearer gains a +2 bonus to Academics, Notice, or Survival rolls when inspecting or analyzing wooden objects, wooden fortifications, ships, and forestry to determine their exact age, load-bearing integrity, or exposure to environmental trauma.
  • Annular Retaliation: Whenever the wearer is hit and suffers one or more Wounds from a physical attack, the plate detonates with a wave of stored concussive force. The burst template size depends on the trauma: 1 Wound creates a Small Blast Template, 2 Wounds create a Medium Blast Template, and 3+ Wounds create a Large Blast Template, centered on the wearer. All hostile targets within the template suffer damage equal to the total raw damage of the triggering blow. The wearer is immune to this retaliatory damage.
  • Resonance Risk: If an enemy caught within the retaliatory template also wears an item or maintains an active power that reflects damage, the opposing fields create a catastrophic resonance. Both protective items are instantly destroyed, and the blast detonates as a Deadly Hazard, inflicting 4d6 damage to every individual within a Large Blast Template.
  • Concussive Shove: When struck by a melee attack, the wearer may spend 1 Benny as a free reaction to trigger an outward kinetic blast. Every adjacent foe must make an immediate Strength roll at -2 or be pushed back 2 squares (4 yards) and knocked Distracted. This movement resolves before any retaliatory damage is applied, displacing foes to avoid resonance traps.

Shadowrun (Sixth World Edition)

The Dendro-Resonance Plate

  • Item Category: Enchanted Body Armor (Torso Attachment / Plate)
  • Defense Rating: +2
  • Capacity: 2 (Consumes 2 Armor Modification slots)
  • Availability: 14 (Forbidden / Arcane Relic)
  • Cost: 12,000 Nuyen (Base market estimate; varies heavily by regional talisman-leggers)
  • Annular Shock Retaliation: Whenever the wearer sustains physical damage (after damage resistance tests), the petrified core flares with astral and kinetic energy. The armor immediately projects a retaliatory blast in an area of effect. The radius of this burst in meters is equal to the total net boxes of Physical Damage suffered by the wearer. Every hostile entity within this radius suffers Physical Damage equal to the triggering net damage, resisted only by Body.
  • Resonance Rupture: If an enemy caught within the retaliatory burst possesses an active sympathetic ward, spell defense matrix, or foci with reflective damage properties, an immediate arcane feedback loop ignites. Both items are instantly burned out and rendered mundane, while an explosive burst deals 12P damage (resisted with Body + Armor) to all characters within 10 meters.
  • Kinetic Displacement Wave: When struck by a close-combat melee attack, the wearer may spend 1 Major Action or 2 Minor Actions to trigger the bronze perimeter conductors. Every adjacent adversary within 2 meters must make an immediate Strength + Agility test against a threshold of 3. On a failure, the target is shoved 3 meters away from the wearer and knocked prone. This displacement resolves before reflective damage is calculated, preventing the establishment of harmonic feedback loops.
  • Dendrochronological Lore: An awakened or mundane investigator analyzing wood, bio-engineered crops, ancient structural lumber, or arcano-botanical samples gains a +2 dice pool bonus on Memory or Knowledge Tests (such as Botany, Archaeology, or Forensics) to determine age, trauma history, chemical exposure, or structural weakness.

Starfinder (Second Edition)

Ironwood Annular Breastplate

  • Item Header: Item 3 | Rare | Kinetic | Tech-Magical | Torso
  • Price: 1,400 Credits; Bulk: 2
  • Armor Statistics: AC +3; Max Dex +2; Armor Check Penalty -2; Speed Penalty -5 ft.; Hardness 6, HP 24, Broken Threshold 12
  • Dendrochronological Analysis: You gain a +2 item bonus to Life Science and Physical Science checks to Recall Knowledge regarding the age, species, and structural integrity of alien flora, ancient timber, fossilized wood, or biodome bulkheads made from natural organic matter.
  • Annular Retaliation (Reaction):
  • Trigger: An enemy within your reach hits you with a Strike that deals physical or force damage.
  • Effect: The plate’s growth rings detonate with stored kinetic energy. All enemies within an emanation equal in feet to the damage dealt (rounded up to the nearest 5-foot increment) take force damage equal to the damage dealt to you, subject to a basic Reflex save against your Class DC. If an enemy affected by this blast is also wearing or using an active device or spell with a retaliatory damage reflection effect, an uncontrollable feedback explosion triggers: both items gain the Broken condition immediately, and all creatures within a 20-foot emanation take 4d10 force damage (basic Reflex save).
  • Kinetic Expulsion (One-Action):
  • Frequency: Once per 10 minutes
  • Effect: You vent the stored energy of the outer resin conduits. Every adjacent foe must succeed on a Fortitude save against your Class DC or be pushed 10 feet straight away from you. On a critical failure, the target is pushed 10 feet and falls prone.

Traveller (Mongoose 2nd Edition)

Precursor Ring-Bark Carapace

  • Item Classification: Relic Torso Armor (TL 14 Exotic Bio-Tech)
  • Protection Value: +4 Armor (Torso only, stacks with light vacc suits or sub-dermal armor)
  • Mass: 3 kg
  • Description: A convex plate sliced from an ultra-dense, petrified extraterrestrial flora specimen, bound in bronze-alloy dispersion conduits and stabilized by microscopic piezo-electric sap channels.
  • Kinetic Recoil Wave: When the wearer takes damage from an attack after subtracting Armor, the internal cell structures discharge their compressed kinetic load. The armor releases an expanding shockwave out to a radius in meters equal to the actual damage points inflicted on the wearer’s physical characteristics. Every hostile entity within this blast radius suffers damage equal to the amount of characteristic damage sustained by the wearer.
  • Piezo-Resonance Hazard: If an affected target within the shockwave radius carries an active gravitic repulsion plate, deflector screen, or matching kinetic reflection matrix, the overlapping fields create a catastrophic power cascade. Both devices suffer critical system destruction, and an uncontrolled detonation deals 4D6 damage to everything within a 6-meter radius.
  • Reactive Shove: When hit by an attacker in close quarters, the wearer may expend their next minor action as a reaction to fire the perimeter charge. The attacking target must make an immediate Athletics (Strength) check with a DM of -2. If failed, the target is thrown backward 3 meters, clearing the close-combat engagement range.
  • Bio-Archaeological Analysis: A traveler wearing or handling the carapace gains a DM+2 bonus to all Science (Life Sciences) and Science (Archaeology) checks when analyzing the age, radiation exposure, impact history, and cellular composition of alien wood, arboreal ruins, or derelict organic hull framing.

Warhammer 40,000 (Wrath & Glory)

Aegis of the Primeval Rings

  • Item Keywords: IMPERIUM, ADEPTUS MECHANICUS, XENOS, RELIC
  • Armour Rating: 3 (Torso)
  • Value / Rarity: 8 / Unique
  • Description: A relic breastplate cut from the heart of a petrified, xenos-tainted world-root. Dense growth bands are encased in sanctified bronze brackets stamped with ancient binary benedictions.
  • Annular Vengeance: Whenever the wearer suffers one or more Wounds from an attack, the ancient timber discharges a shockwave of wrathful energy. All hostile targets within a radius equal to the number of Wounds suffered (measured in meters) immediately suffer an amount of Mortal Wounds equal to the Wounds taken by the wearer.
  • Resonance Catastrophe: If an enemy caught within the Annular Vengeance blast possesses an active force field, relic, or warp power that also reflects damage, the unnatural interaction breaches realspace. Both items are utterly annihilated, and an immediate Perils of the Warp event is triggered, inflicting 2d6+4 Mortal Wounds to every character within 12 meters.
  • Concussive Repulsion (Reaction): When an enemy makes a successful melee attack against the wearer, the wearer may spend 1 Glory to activate the bronze rim-wards. Every adjacent enemy within 2 meters must make a successful Strength (5) test or be thrown back 4 meters and knocked Prone, resolving immediately to break engagement before reciprocal damage triggers.
  • Chronological Memory: The wearer adds +2 bonus dice to all Scholar (Intellect) and Survival (Agility/Intellect) tests made to inspect, date, or analyze ancient worked timber, jungle ruins, wooden structural supports, and arboreal bio-constructs.