Carrion Scallywag Gauntlets of the Citadel

The Carrion Scallywag Gauntlets of the Citadel cling to the wrists like weathered sea-leather, each fingerless knuckle sculpted from dented brass and chipped bone. The main plate bears a rusted sigil—the Citadel’s coral-branch crest—ringed by pocked leather that smells faintly of brine and old powder. Barnacles cling to the edges where salt haze froze over the metal, and a seam of black thread snakes along the forearm as if stitched by a salvage crew after a long night aboard a storm-wracked galley. The inside is lined with a pliant, eel-dark leather that creaks when you flex your hand, a sound like old wood waking in a tide-washed room. In the light they look more scavenger than soldier, more rumor than weapon, and that is exactly the point; these gauntlets were forged for those who thrive among wreckage and wrack, for those who barter with fate and the shadows of the Citadel’s corridors. In lore, they were worn by the Citadel's black-salt scavengers, pirates who turned fallen decks into currency, who could read the language of corroded hinges and torn sails as if the ship wrote its own ledger. Say you slip them on during a dive into a sunken fortress; the glow on the metal shifts with each scrap you lift, as if the gloves are tasting the salvage. They grant a nimble edge to any scavenger build: faster looting, a steadier grip on slippery relics, and a little lifeblood returned when you strike true, earned from the fallen's last breath. Characters who chase salvage honors—the kind who carry a satchel full of dented keys and rope coils—find these gauntlets sharpen their focus, letting them press into creaking holds and pull out rare trinkets before the pool of rivals closes around them. They aren’t about brute force; they are about salvaged history, letting the wearer squeeze a little more utility from each encounter. In the world’s telling, that extra heartbeat is the mercy of the Citadel’s ghosts, blessing a hand that knows how to listen to rust. I watched a trader named Rook at Saddlebag Exchange, his stall a tangle of copper coins and weathered belts, appraising a pair of carrion gloves with the practiced eye of a man who has weighed dozens of fates on a scale. He pointed to a faded ink sigil and whispered that the gauntlets fetch a premium when the Citadel’s scavenger lore is in vogue, but today the market muscles can flex—dipping to a modest price for those who bring not just wealth but a story. The Saddlebag Exchange is a living map of the world’s appetite for relics: you barter tales as well as coin, you trade with those who know that a brass hinge and a share of salt can open a gate to someone else’s memory. And so the gauntlets go from wreck to wrist, from rumor to reality, as another raid ends and another buyer steps forward, asking what the Citadel’s ghosts want to remember this time. In the end, the Carrion Scallywag Gauntlets of the Citadel are more than saturated metal and a pirate’s graffiti; they are a passport to a particular kind of salvage—the short, bright pulse before the ship sinks into history, the way a hand can lift a relic and tell a story that outlives hulls and horizons. History lives on.