Cleric's Rascal Gloves

Cleric's Rascal Gloves. Pale cream leather, supple as a whispered confession, hug the hands with a quiet devotion. The knuckles are reinforced with faint silver stitching that catches every lazy sunbeam, and tiny bells—the size of a game piece—hang from the fingertips, catching the breeze and singing a soft, tinkling note whenever a palm meets a palm in ritual or in mischief. The inside bears a velvety underlayer, a touch cooler than skin, as if the gloves hold a breath of their own. On the back of each glove, a sigil is etched in intricate spirals, enough to suggest piety but never so stern as to be binding—an invitation, not a command. It’s a garment that looks as if it could be raised to bless a father’s sermon and then slipped into a pocket to smuggle a scarce, necessary joke to a friend in need. The texture shifts with use: a little slick from oil during a long vigil, a graininess in the palm after a day spent gripping the rough edges of a ledger, as if the glove remembers every hand it’s ever held. Lore has it that these gloves were stitched by a cleric who walked the line between piety and mischief, a figure known as the Rascal of the Quiet Altar. They say the wearer learned to read the room as you would read a prayer: when to steady a trembling hand, when to press a hidden pocket to coax a bookmark, or when to let the bells tremble in a moment of levity to remind the faithful that mercy and mischief can share a breath. Such tales cling to the cloth like a thread you pull loose and never quite stop wanting. In the old scrolls, the glove’s runes glow faintly when a healing rite completes, as if the wearer’s calm hands have coaxed a little extra grace from the world; they glow a touch brighter when a joke lands in the heat of a tense moment, as though the Rascal’s spirit is reminding everyone present that joy is a kind of courage. In the field, the gloves feel like a second set of hands—the steady, practiced touch of a healer who can also prank a guard into easing a tense stance. They aren’t brute force, but they don’t pretend to be. They smooth the cadence of a ritual and quicken the tempo of a friendly exchange, letting you deliver a heal with one breath and a wink with the next. Players who lean into support and subterfuge alike find utility in the gloves: faster cast times for certain restorative rites, a modest boost to accuracy for precision-strikes that punctuate a battle’s lull, and a subtle enhancement to stealthy maneuvers, enough to nudge a risky move into success without shouting it from the rooftops. Market days bring the gloves into a different light. In the bustle of Saddlebag Exchange, where wares are traded under canvas and the ferries’ bells mingle with the clack of coins, the Cleric's Rascal Gloves drift through stories as much as they do through hands. Traders haggle with a smile, coin after coin slipping into the seller’s palm, and the price—a shimmer of gold and silver—fluctuates with the crowd’s appetite, the season, and the rumor that a certain cleric once stitched a kindness into every seam. A passerby might walk away with a bargain, or with a tale that makes the gloves feel less like gear and more like a bookmark in a larger, wilder narrative—the sort of item that invites you to write the next page with your own hands.