# Materials Taxonomy

Working draft. The vocabulary that everything else hangs off of — expedition drop tables, recipe authorship, refining stations, Stockpile filter chips, component overlay sprite library. Polish later.

## Categories

### Raw materials
Gathered direct from expeditions, unprocessed. The "what your gatherers come back with."

| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Ore | iron, copper, moonsilver, mithril, obsidian |
| Wood | hardwood, softwood, ironwood, ebony, lacquerwood |
| Hide / leather | deer, bear, drake, exotic |
| Botanicals | moonpetal, nightshade, sunroot, healwart, herbalist greens |
| Bone & teeth | skeleton bone, drake fang, ghoul fang, ancient ivory |
| Liquids | oil, sap, swamp-water, blood, alcohols |
| Stone & rough gems | rough sapphire, jade, lapis, ruby, granite |
| Cloth fibers | flax, raw silk, cotton, wool |
| Beast parts | feathers, claws, horns, tails, eyes |
| Magical raw | fae dust, soul shards, ectoplasm, manacrystal |
| Gnomish steampunk raw | brass scrap, copper wire, gear blanks |
| Necromancy raw | shadowsilk, grave-dust, soul-essence, bone fragments |

### Refined materials
Single-step crafted from raw at a refining station. The intermediate stock you build crafts from.

| Type | Refined from | At |
|---|---|---|
| Ingots (iron, mithril, brass) | Ore | Forge |
| Timbers (seasoned hardwood, lacquered wood) | Wood | Carpenter's Shop |
| Cured leather (light, heavy, exotic) | Hide | Tannery |
| Distillates / tinctures / powders | Botanicals, bone | Alchemy Table |
| Cut gems (faceted, polished, cabochon) | Rough stone | Jeweler's Bench |
| Spun thread (silk, woolen, gold) | Fibers | Loom |
| Glass (clear, stained, leaded) | Stone + flux | Glassworks |
| Worked bone | Raw bone | Carpenter's Shop / Jeweler |

### Components
Multi-step sub-assemblies, ready to slot into a final craft. Multiple refined inputs.

- **Hilts** — tempered hilt, ornate hilt, gem-set hilt
- **Pommels** — silver pommel, jeweled pommel, runed pommel
- **Vials** — clear vial, stoppered vial, runed vial
- **Stocks / clockwork frames** — steampunk crafts
- **Settings** — jewelry mounts
- **Stringings** — bowstring, wire, sinew

### Consumables / catalysts
Spent in crafting, no output mass. Influence quality and effect.

- Fluxes, mordants, catalysts (additives)
- Inks, quills (scribing)
- Fuel — charcoal, oil, lamp wicks (per-craft consumption, often abstracted)

### Trophies & curiosities
Special, often unique or quest-tied. Lives in the Special tab of the vault, not the Stockpile.

- Recipe scrolls — single-use to learn a recipe
- Lore relics — for Scholars to decipher
- Patron tokens / faction sigils — affect reputation
- Bestiary trophies — display in Library, sometimes valuable to specific patrons

## Supply chain depth

General pattern: **Raw → Refined → Component → Final Item** (3-step pipeline). Variations:

- Some items skip a step: Crude Pickaxe = Refined Iron + Hardwood Timber, no separate Components needed
- Some items add a step: Legendary weapons may require sub-sub-assemblies (e.g., enchanted runed pommel = runed pommel + magical infusion + scholar inscription)
- Quality bands compound through the chain: a Masterwork weapon often requires Fine+ components, which require Fine+ refined materials, which require Fine+ raw

## Quality at every stage

Every tier supports the same five quality bands (Crude / Common / Fine / Masterwork / Legendary). A Crude Iron Ingot is interchangeable with another Crude Iron Ingot but stacks separately from a Fine Iron Ingot. Quality cascade rules (whether a great Engineer can rescue a Crude component) are still TBD — see [03-crafting.md](03-crafting.md).

## How materials enter the game

- **Expedition drops** (primary) — raw materials, occasional refined, rare components from special encounters
- **Patron rewards** — sometimes specific refined or component items as part of payment
- **Scholar research** — can convert lore relics into refined materials of unusual provenance
- **Beast taming** — Beastmasters may tame creatures that periodically produce specific raw materials over time
- **Market** (when bazaar ships) — buy from other players

## Open questions

- Do we want a "scrap / salvage" mechanic — break a finished card into components for partial refund?
- How aggressive is the Crude → Common → Fine quality progression? Should Crude be common from low-tier zones and Fine be rare even in high zones, or does the floor rise with zone tier?
- Should some materials have unique properties beyond quality (e.g., moonpetal is *fundamentally* a magical reagent, regardless of quality), or is everything reducible to type + quality?
- Steampunk and necromancy material pockets — are they geographically gated (only found in specific zones), or do they crosscontaminate (e.g., gnomish brass scrap shows up rarely in mainline forests because gnomish travelers passed through)?
- Cataloging: how many distinct material entries do we author for v1? Probably ~30 raw, ~25 refined, ~20 components for a playable starting set.