Mad Professor

Agarwood has the added bonus of requiring the use of gunpowder-impregnated carbon pucks to release the aromatic oils. Pete gave me some of the real natural variety (which costs $30/gram and up; according to Wikipedia, it's the most expensive wood in the world.) and some "fluffed-up-for-the-suburbs type, which has been perfumed with something." The real stuff, as you might guess, is much better. You only need a matchhead-sized piece to make the whole room smell like oud.

Again, quoting Wikipedia: "Formation of agarwood occurs in the trunk and roots of trees that have been infected by a fungus. As a response, the tree produces a resin high in volatile organic compounds that aids in suppressing or retarding fungal growth. While the unaffected wood of the tree is relatively light in colour, the resin dramatically increases the mass and density of the affected wood, changing its colour from a pale beige to dark brown or black."

I can't begin to describe how it smells, because there's really nothing else quite like it. Wikipedia says "The odour of agarwood is complex and pleasing, with few or no similar natural analogues." Chandler Burr, author of one of my favorite books, The Emperor of Scent, describes it this way:

It knocks you over, clubs you like a falling stone. Its vast dimension is what astonishes: a huge smell, spatially immense and incredibly complex, a buttery layer as deep as a quarry, entirely animalic in impact, and yet the oudh itself is not actually an animalic, spicy without being a spice. The fungi - the tiny organic bugs that have eaten, digested and defecated this sensual wood - have left behind their fragrance and oudh is the smell of this rotten, priceless wood and billions of tiny dead animals.

I don't know where you can buy real agarwood. Of course, plenty of websites sell "pure," "unadulterated" agarwood, but who knows? I'm sticking with my source, Blind Lightnin' Pete.