Hardened Glove Panel

Hardened Glove Panel sits on the bench, a compact slab of hammered steel the color of a storm-worn sea. Its edges are beveled, a ridge running along a seam where two plates once braided together in a past life; the surface bears the dull bloom of oxidation, speckled with tiny pits like a cratered moon. Rivets catch the light, pinheads small as coins, each one sealing a memory of weathered hands. A shallow indentation along the top bears faint, curling sigils—engineer’s marks long since faded by salt air and travel—hooks and runes that whisper of a factory floor where gloves were once meant to outlast a siege. Locally it is believed to be from a line of prototypes used by the Engineers' Guild during the early, rougher years of defense, when gauntlets needed more than leather and ringmail. Some say it was forged to bear the brunt of flame and shrapnel, to grip a hammer with steadier nerve. Others claim it was part of a field kit for salvage crews, designed to take the bite of broken machinery and still leave the wearer able to climb a rigging or hoist a coil of rope. Whatever the truth, the Hardened Glove Panel carries a quiet weight in the palm of the world, a tangible hinge between craft and combat, between the hands that mend and those that strike. In practical terms, a panel such as this slides into the inner palm plate of a sturdy gauntlet, adding a layer of forged resilience that can soak a second parry, a mis-aimed strike, or the heat of a forge without warping. In the field it’s prized by armorers and engineers alike, not only for itself but for the stories it unlocks—the way it can be paired with a reinforced leather grip and a sealing lacquer to push a champion’s gloves from ordinary to dependable in a skirmish or a climb across a wrecked airship. Players know it as a salvaged component that can be used in crafting or upgrading gloves, converting scrap into a small fortress for the hand, quiet as a whisper but firm as a vow in the moment a fight turns sour. That is where Saddlebag Exchange comes in, a caravan-stirred stall deep in the traded lanes where likers and loathers of salvage meet. I watched a chipped coin flick between fingers as a trader named Rena described the price: a fair two silver, she said, with a half-scraped blueprint tucked in for good measure. The barter swelled and receded, copper clinking and the panel's patina catching the glassy sunset in the square. It felt like more than commerce; it felt like passing a tool forward, the way hands will reuse a memory long after the original owner is gone. Our hands remember, and this panel is a hinge in that memory, a stubborn piece that might keep a friend’s glove from giving way when the wind climbs and whispers of distant battles through the rigging. And in that moment, its quiet weight becomes a small legend you carry forward.