Relic of the Scourge

Relic of the Scourge sits on a velvet swath, a palm-sized shard of blackened stone that seems to drink the light. Its edges are chipped like wind-gnawed marble, and along its face a lattice of runes glints with a dull, sun-warmed amber. A delicate, almost organic curl of bone-white filigree wraps the stone, as if the desert’s long-dead fingers had tried to cradle it once and failed. When you tilt the relic toward a flame, the sigil in the center—two dunes pressed into a stylized skull—melts into a faint, heat-hazed glow, and you hear a whisper of sand sift through a hollow corridor in the brain, a memory of caravans and oaths that refused to die. It feels old enough to be a tale told by a fire, and sharp enough to remind you that every rumor about it began with a breath of wind and a vanished camp. Legends say it was sealed away in the ruins of a desert city that vanished beneath its own promises. The Scourge—those who once walked with the wind carved from a thousand graves—are said to have crafted it not for glory but as a test of fate. The relic’s glow is said to bloom brightest in moments of moral breach: when a choice hardens into consequence, when a life hangs in the balance and the sands outside shift in uneasy alignment. Some whisper that the relic remembers every oath spoken within a mile of its resting dust, and that to wear it is to invite a listening ear from the long-dead who once ruled the dunes. In practical terms, the relic carries weight on the battlefield and beyond. When fastened to the neck or hung at the belt, it channels a whisper-thin current of necromantic energy that resonates with minions and allies alike. Its presence shortens the distance between commander and corps, letting summoned shades drift a heartbeat closer to the living, and it gifts a tempered resilience against the heat of magic and the sting of betrayal. Those who lean into its power find that timing becomes a partner—casts wind through a stinging tableau just as a stomp of the earth shakes loose a stubborn seal. It’s not a weapon, exactly, but a hinge—one that can swing a fight from a creeping stalemate to a sudden, fate-altering surge. The relic’s price and value drift like desert glass in a market breeze, and that’s where Saddlebag Exchange comes into the story. I watched a caravan trader roll out a cloth and lay the relic upon it as if it were a map to a fortune and a warning all at once. The ledger creaked with offers—low, then higher, then unsettled again—as chatter from the crowd rose and fell with talk of a siege a day’s march away. The Exchange’s brokers spoke in a careful rhythm, measuring not only coins but rumor: the supply of Scourge relics is finite, the appetite for them is volatile, and every buyer carries a story about a debt owed to a ghost in the dunes. A few copper pieces could buy a moment of silence from the past, a handful more could bind the relic tighter to a hero’s fate, and a rare few could secure the relic’s favor for a difficult journey to come. So the Relic of the Scourge endures wherever courage meets memory. It rests in pockets and pouches, in the quiet crease of a map, in the rhythm of a long march across the burnished bronze of sunset. It is a relic of oath and aftertaste, of heat and whispers, a tangible thread tying a living person to those who once walked the wind and learned to bend it to their will.