I don't remember anyone addressing dieing of old age, but AFAIK escaping the DR is supposed to give you your body back. Now even if dieing of old age lands you in the DR, escaping doesn't help you much. You will return shortly because your body will just fail again. I think I read somewhere there are plans for NPCs that live in the DR permanently. If that was official and is still in the plans, any character who was absent for very long can still claim to have been lost in the DR.

As far as i know any of the common edges can be made with nothing but a whetstone. Some need more complicated motions than others, but if you learned the motion and can recognize which edge a given item has, you can sharpen it. This is something you should be able to do with relatively low skill, compared to the skill cap. But using the wrong technique on an edge is still a danger early on.

But restoring a edge that's been damaged is something else. You lost material in that case, at least in something like 90% of the time. It is not just making that section sharp again, but you need to sharpen it in such a way that.. I don't really have the word in english. You have to keep the shape of the edge intact. No places where the edge moves back from the cutting line, no wavy line along the edge. The techniques to do that are not noticeably harder than just sharpening, they are mostly the same actually. But the knowledge which to use and on how much of a length of the edge to apply them, and when to stop, judging when, or even if, you have achieved a proper flow of the edge again, is very difficult.

And that last bit, while wholly fitting for tools, is not as rigid for weapons. IIRC the vaunted Katana needs quite some maintenance and a normal battle of its time could routinely destroy more swords than it killed fighters. Nonetheless it is considered a good, useful weapon.

It might be better to rename what is currently repair into maintenance and have actual repair as a subset of crafting recipes.

Oiling and removing gore and fluids before they set in and cause smell, rust or imbalances in handling. Rewrap the grip, tighten connections, sharping edges on weapons. Oil the leathers, tighten straps, straighten out dents on armour. I'd place the limit on fixing small failures, i.e a patch under a cut that didn't go quite trough a leather armor or replacing a few broken rings on a chain mail. All that would be the played out aspects of what you do with a current repair kit and the repair skill. That is what you can do without major tools in the field and why i think renaming repair to maintenance would be better.

Damage that goes beyond the above, i.e holed plate, cut up leathers and ripped chain for armour and broken blades, shafts or heads for weapons, would require actual crafting. As you need to make the damaged part anew - reforge the blade, head or plate, cut and carve a new shaft, replace the cut up or ripped facing with a new one. That should need more time, replacement ingredients and crafting tools.

I have a wish/an idea that i believe fits into this. I would like to see the trade system expanded by trade incidents. A trade incident is something happening that influences the prices in a region. They happen at random, influence the price of a selection of goods, and their influence drops over time.

An example incident: In Hydlaa vermin got into the grain stores and soiled half the stored produce. Immediately the prices for grain and grain products, like bread, rise by 10% at all NPC traders in Hydlaa. NPC in Hydlaa will complain about vermin in the grain storage and NPC in other regions may comment on the incident. Over the next week or so they drop down to normal levels for each NPC trader.

Other incidents could be an exceptional or poor harvest or hunt, renovating a manor, a medium fire, the upper crust replacing their wardrobes, throwing a public feast for a wedding, a rampaging draft animal ruining a delivery, a noble/merchant in money problems flooding the market. Some are more probable,and thus mire frequent, than others. Same with the amount of influence. The effects of a wedding feast should be shorter lived and weaker than a poor harvest, for example.

Occasionally the incidents could be coupled with or triggered by an GM event, but normally they  occur with out an event.

It would bring more life into the play of a merchant character. Just running always the the same route might not work all the time anymore. At the same time there are opportunities to make extra profits if only you keep your ears open and maintain a network of contacts in the different regions. It would also bring more life into the world and support that the NPC's have live outside of player character interactions.

Rygwyn for this to work we're going to have to assume that a faction does in fact speak about you by  name, broadcast information about you to other members etc. Among npcs this will be the case because in order to advance we're going to depend on npcs detecting faction for someone to even be able to get the advanced quests.

I would suggest this talk about you only applies to the open or public factions. The hidden groups, like the Cabal should rely more on markings, secret handshakes or pass phrases. As you advance you learn the higher level recognition signals and their npcs only admit to their faction if you give the right signals. I think that would do much to emphasize their hidden character.

Perhaps armor should not be one size fits all. Surely kran armor would take more material than that for a lemur. Also it would be good to allow for more exotic furs/metals eventually.

What sort of dimensions are you imagining for the strips/cloths? Surely Yliakum rats are large enough to make one human sized glove if not two. a Tefusang would appear to provide enough material to completely clothe  a Hammerweilder.
The skill of the leatherworker ought to influence the yield from the carcass.

If you leave one size fits all behind, i would actually prefer a system where the intended wearer has to be present to try on and see if it fit one or two times during the crafting process. It would promote more contact between the armor crafter and the client and gives a bigger difference between an armor crafter and an armor merchant.

I have always imagined Anti-Magic as a kind of seventh, glyph-less or even anti-glyph way. IMHO the usual six ways are about learning to manipulate energies into a pattern defined by the glyph(s), with all glyphs in a way defining related patterns. Now Anti-Magic is about manipulating energy in disruptive patterns aimed against all glyph patterns.

If it would be always active your own Anti-Magic should make it harder for you to cast spells on others and for others to cast spells on you.