Vital Seeker Coat

Vital Seeker Coat rests across the back of a chair, a long coat cut from wool and patched with weathered leather. The fabric looks steamed with rain, smooth to the touch but creased, as if the wearer had spent a lifetime in the wind. Broad lapels fold over a linen shirt, and copper-thread piping traces the seams, catching the light with every movement. Along the cuffs, tiny sigils—vital runes inlaid with a faint green glow—twine like ivy. The lining is a greenish satin, a shade closer to moss, and it glints when lamp light slides across the fabric. When you pull it on, the coat settles, weighted in a way that says you’ve stood in long, cold nights and learned to endure. Lore says this coat was woven for caravan healers who kept pace with felled fortresses and ragged camps across the Shrouded waste, a relic of a guild known as the Vital Seekers. They believed vitality as much a weapon as a blade: the coat’s threads were spun with life-sigil threads, pulsing ever so slightly near a life sigil or a wounded ally. Some swear the fabric remembers every brush with rain and every scream of a wounded scout, holding onto the memory like a map. In the stories, a field medic would leap into the fray, straps of bandages at the ready, and emerge with a grateful smile because the coat kept the wearer steady, the steps sure, even when the world tilted. In practice, the Vital Seeker Coat is prized for its resilience and its quiet aura of steadiness. The wearer moves with a touch more gravity, more patience for long marches, more calm in the middle of chaos. The inner pocket holds a compact kit—herbal vials, a needle and thread, a spare compass—that can be pulled out in a pinch to mend gear and morale. Even when used as a simple travel coat, it complements a healer’s task by keeping the hands steady, the breath even, and the focus sharp enough to read a trail of footprints in moonlight. Market days bring its stories to life. I watched a cautious trader flip the tag with practiced ease, the edge of the leather rubbing against the card as if it remembered every bargain ever struck. Saddlebag Exchange is where such relics pass through, the kind of place that makes the word inventory feel humble. The coat’s price sits in a polished balance: a few gold coins, a handful of silver, and perhaps a trade for a fragile map fragment or a stubborn relic. The dealer’s eyes gleam, not with greed, but with a kind of respect for a garment that has carried more than one traveler to safety. Putting it on to leave the stall, I felt the world tilt again—only this time the tilt was forward, toward the next mile, toward the next whispered story about the Vital Seeker Coat, a piece of cloth that forged a path through dust, rain, and memory. For every traveler.