Dryadwood
Wood made from a dryad's tree, simply enough. Has regenerative properties and is perpetually fragrant and healthy, no matter what the environment.
Those are the qualities that are there no matter what.
Nymphs obviously don't stay still and let anyone hack at them, so to get it, you can either ask, or you can try and forcibly take.
Allowed Nymphwood is even stronger than its standard. The regeneration happens as the damage happens. To carve it is a trick, you have to more or less tell the thing what you're going to do with it. If it likes the idea, it will actually help, hardening and softening in places when necessary, and never splitting. If it doesn't, it will actively resist. (You're going to be hardpressed to find a thing the piece of wood doesn't want to do.) And, here's a fun bit--smaller pieces heal completely even after allowing a carving. If you carved it into a doll for a child, and now the child is grown, you can tell it that it doesn't have to be the doll anymore, and it will decide when it's done being a doll, and you can find it later just as you received it.
Stolen Nymphwood heals, but slower. It is dead, except for whatever primal energy it can feed on, and so it does not 'allow', meaning no matter how you cut it, shape it, bind it, it will always try to go back to the way it was when it was removed from its tree. (The trick is to cut it into lengthwise strips and I did not want to know that.) Cutting it is a bitch and a half, it spits out nails and bolts unless you can figure out how to pinion it properly, it warps metal banding and cement groundwork alike, this shit is unstoppable and impossible. Iron can be used to suppress, but it doesn't heal worth a shit, and will rot it.
Of course, there's also trying to get a nymph to stay still long enough for that to happen, because she can and will murder the everloving fuck out of you in either shape. Trees have been known to fling people miles, and the bipedal shape has all kinds of charms and confusions that work for escape or even creating gaps to stab in.
Those are the qualities that are there no matter what.
Nymphs obviously don't stay still and let anyone hack at them, so to get it, you can either ask, or you can try and forcibly take.
Allowed Nymphwood is even stronger than its standard. The regeneration happens as the damage happens. To carve it is a trick, you have to more or less tell the thing what you're going to do with it. If it likes the idea, it will actually help, hardening and softening in places when necessary, and never splitting. If it doesn't, it will actively resist. (You're going to be hardpressed to find a thing the piece of wood doesn't want to do.) And, here's a fun bit--smaller pieces heal completely even after allowing a carving. If you carved it into a doll for a child, and now the child is grown, you can tell it that it doesn't have to be the doll anymore, and it will decide when it's done being a doll, and you can find it later just as you received it.
Stolen Nymphwood heals, but slower. It is dead, except for whatever primal energy it can feed on, and so it does not 'allow', meaning no matter how you cut it, shape it, bind it, it will always try to go back to the way it was when it was removed from its tree. (The trick is to cut it into lengthwise strips and I did not want to know that.) Cutting it is a bitch and a half, it spits out nails and bolts unless you can figure out how to pinion it properly, it warps metal banding and cement groundwork alike, this shit is unstoppable and impossible. Iron can be used to suppress, but it doesn't heal worth a shit, and will rot it.
Of course, there's also trying to get a nymph to stay still long enough for that to happen, because she can and will murder the everloving fuck out of you in either shape. Trees have been known to fling people miles, and the bipedal shape has all kinds of charms and confusions that work for escape or even creating gaps to stab in.
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