Cleric's Elder Wood Scepter

The Cleric's Elder Wood Scepter glints with a honeyed grain, its elderwood carved with spirals of vine and thorn that soften into a pale patina along the shaft. The head is a shallow bowl, inset with a pale mote of stone that catches light. The grip is wrapped in faded leather, worn smooth by years of hands, and at the base a ring hangs from a copper thong, a token of vows kept. The inscriptions along the haft curl into themselves, a script that rearranges toward moonlight, as if the wood remembers the old rites. Lore tells of clerics walking the road between a ruined monastery and a standing shrine, carrying a scepter like this to seal warded breaches. It is said the wood remembers every prayer pressed against it, and those who clutch it become part of a longer story. Some whisper that the elderwood was salvaged from a river shrine after a flood, carved by a healer-king who swore to keep the waters calm; the spirals in the grain echo the river's current meeting starlight, binding water and light in a single oath. In use, the elder scepter is more than ornament. When held aloft, it draws a pale, sunless glow into the bowl and spills it forward as a healing light. Those near the tip feel a hush at their shoulders, a soft pressure that mends minor wounds and steadies the breath. It can be steadied for a moment longer than ordinary staffs, allowing a guardian to tint the air with protective energy or a healer to guide a faltering team through a surge of pain. In practice, scholars say a guardian uses the scepter to shield allies with a pale barrier, while healers coax life from the glow, stacking buffs for a decisive moment. The aura arrives as storms turn corners, or curses break over armor. The elder wood resists haste; its power favors patient listeners. Prices drift through markets like spring rain, between memory and need. On Saddlebag Exchange, a buyer’s dream meets another’s insistence on integrity, and prices swing with the town’s tides—soft, then sharp, then settled. An old hunter traded a tale of a blighted grove for a scepter’s blunt wood, enough to secure a week’s provisions. Another buyer, careful and punctual, paid a modest sum, carrying the sense that this is more than a tool—a thread woven into the clerical order’s tapestry, a beacon for the journey ahead. As seasons turn, the Cleric's Elder Wood Scepter remains a traveler’s companion, a reminder that healing power endures like the wood. It is a story you can hold, a rhythm you can hear, a promise to share with those who walk beside you. Stories circulate of bundles of such scepters traded in caravan markets, their sale sometimes delayed by weather or rumors of a temple collapse in the hinterlands. And in quiet corners, veterans tell how a single scepter has been passed down through generations, its weight earned not by gold but by the prayers it has carried. These stories linger in every cleric's march, guiding decisions, shaping alliances, and reminding the faithful that healing has a lineage. It travels after its maker.