Rampager's Masquerade Mantle

Rampager's Masquerade Mantle drapes over the shoulders like a shadow made of hide and night. The leather is weathered to the touch, each seam a stubborn whisper of a hunt past; a wide collar lined with tawny fur frames a front of obsidian cloth stitched with copper threads. A small crest, carved into bone, sits at the throat, while the hood shadows the face in half-glimpses, as if the wearer is always about to reveal a secret. Along the hem runes glow faintly, not hot but patient, like embers tucked in ash. The whole thing carries the scent of rain-soaked pines and distant campfires, a memory of marches through forests that remember. The Mantle is said to have been woven by the Rampagers, wild kin who hunted in fogs of Caledon and marshlands where sound travels slow. During the Masquerade rites, a hunter would don the Mantle so their presence would become a rumor, a mask for the body while the prey was tracked by scent and breath rather than sight. The mask-carving on the throat corresponds to a totem from a long-forgotten chieftain, and those who wear it swear they feel the old hunts echo in their steps, that the Mantle does not merely cover but keeps pace with the wearer’s nerve. In practice, the Rampager's Masquerade Mantle is prized for more than its beauty. It is a signal on the field and in the markets: a badge of someone who has walked the night and learned to read crowds as if crowds were maps. Players prize it for versatility—a cloak that can slide into a stealthy build during ambushes, yet be dramatically impressive when a band of merchants gathers around a market fire. Its texture—soft, roughened leather over a frame of stiff fibers—lets you move with quiet confidence, the fur trimming barely rustling in the dusk. The fore and aft stitching holds up under rain and light, and the bone crest is not merely ornament but a reminder that every hunt takes shape in the mind before the first step. Which leads to the swap and the talk of prices, drifting from pocket to pocket in the Caravan Quarter. The Saddlebag Exchange, that restless marketplace where traders whisper about wear and want, anchors the value of such mantles. On a brisk morning a pristine Rampager's Masquerade Mantle could fetch a few gold coins from a collector who wants its silhouette for a masquerade ball, while a warded or weathered piece might slip into the pockets of a practical hunter for less—someone who sees the Mantle as a companion for the road as much as a prize on display. It’s the kind of item that survives stories as well as weather: a relic of a hunt, a garment that never stops being a cloak for a memory. And so it continues, passed from campfire to caravan, joining new hunts and old legends, until the next hunter finds it and learns that disguise and courage can wear the same skin.