Ancient Wood Plank bears a salt-streaked patina, its surface a weathered map of decades spent at sea. The grain runs in tight, stubborn rings, like a whispered memory of a forest that dared the ocean’s bite. A few flecks of pitch cling to the edges, and along one long side a line of runic notches has faded to a whisper, perhaps the apprentice’s signature or a shipwright’s tally of repairs. When you lift it, there’s a quiet give to the wood, not the brittle snap of fresh pine but the forgiving resilience of timber that has learned to bend with wind and tide without breaking. Those marks carry more than age; they carry stories. Some say the planks hail from a wreck near a forgotten harbor, salvaged by hands that bound a fragile hope to a stubborn hull. Others insist these particular boards saw the hands of a shipwright who carved blessings for a voyage, a kind of quiet ward tucked into the planks’ grain. The lore isn’t a single tale but a chorus: sailors who pressed their luck on rough seas, carpenters who traded sleep for a chance to turn driftwood into shelter, lovers who believed in building something lasting from weathered wood. In the telling, the Ancient Wood Plank becomes a thread in a larger fabric—an artifact that keeps reappearing in quiet workshops, in forgotten chests, in the hands of traders who prize what has endured. In gameplay terms, the plank is more than a relic; it’s a practical thread in the world’s craft and economy. It’s prized for carpentry recipes that require real timber, allowing builders to fashion sturdy furniture for encampments, repair a ship’s minor hull panels after a skirmish, or upgrade a wooden mechanism that powers a camp’s lanterns and safekeeping devices. It’s not flashy, but it’s dependable—one of those materials that nudges a risky expedition toward a safer harbor, a reminder that progress in this world often travels on patient, well-seasoned timber rather than bright ambition alone. The planks invite explorers to think about their routes and their camps—the way a well-worn plank underfoot helps you measure the distance between shelter and storm, between a memory and a plan. Market life gives the Ancient Wood Plank a second, shrewd significance. I watched a quiet exchange unfold at Saddlebag Exchange, where a veteran trader weighed a plank against a handful of copper and a fragile promise of future barter. The price isn’t merely metal; it’s a dialogue about where the wood has been and what others hope to build with it. A single plank might fetch a modest sum, but in the hands of a cartographer or a craftsman who knows how to coax character from timber, its value grows. The plank isn’t just wood; it’s a bridge—between past voyages and present ambitions, between a vendor’s ledger and a traveler’s campfire tale. So the Ancient Wood Plank keeps moving, as it always has, riding along the current of ships and stories. It rests for a moment on a workshop bench, then it’s back in a cart, back in a market, back into a hand that will make something worthy of the wind and the waves.