Carrion Emblazoned Shoulders

Carrion Emblazoned Shoulders hang heavy with bone-white plates, their edges carved with crimson sigils that twist like veins beneath lamplight. The texture is cool and smooth along the raised ridges, then grainy where bone meets lacquered leather, a tactile reminder that something old and living once wore these very bones. A faint, coppery scent clings to the seams, the odor of rain on stone and long-forgotten rites, as if the shoulders keep a whisper of the corpse-touched rituals that chiseled them into shape. The emblem at the stern of each plate—an ashen skull crowned with a thorny wreath—glows faintly when the wearer calls upon dark resonance, a signal to the wary that this is not mere armor but a tablet of memory, a relic that remembers what the living often forget. In the market light of the harbor, I learned to read such things like a language. The shoulders feel heavy not just with weight but with lore: the carrier is meant to carry more than armor. They are a badge of the carrion-worshipping sect that once threaded its way through shadowed alleys and fevered nights, stitching fear into the bones of those who opposed them. When I held them, I could imagine a necromancer prowling a ruined pier, cloak snapping, eyes gleaming with the kinless glow of conjured kin. The emblems tell a story of control—over death, over fear, over the battlefield itself—yet there is a restraint to their design, a promise that power here is earned by discipline as much as by force. The shoulders feel like a vow etched in ivory and iron, a compact between wearer and world that whispers, “Keep your bargains with the dead, and you may barter with life again when the price is paid.” So they have a role in play, beyond their striking silhouette. They belong to a family of gear that suits necromancers and condition-focused builds well, where the aesthetic is a narrative device as much as a stat sheet. Slowing the pace of a skirmish is not the loudest trick these shoulders offer, but their presence can tilt the moment—convincing allies that the bearer has walked through victory and sacrifice alike, and that the air itself remembers the cost of every spell cast. They complement a playstyle that leans into bone-ward magic, pestilence, and the subtle art of bleeding enemies while staying upright long enough to tell the tale at the end. The market, of course, has its own script. A trade-worn tag on a threadbare rack in the Saddlebag Exchange tells the price with a rough honesty: gold coins measured in a careful balance of risk and desire. The seller’s lamp flickers, and a slow smile forms as the haggling begins, a conversation about rarity, condition, and what it means to wear history. It is not simply a purchase; it is a handshake with the past, a decision to carry a piece of that old carrion faith into the next skirmish. When the shoulders settle into a wearer, the world seems to tilt with a quiet gravity—less a battlefield cloak and more a walking chronicle. They are not mere armor; they are a doorway to a certain memory of power, a reminder that some relics live as long as the story they carry remains worth telling.