Carrion Hard Wood Scepter

Carrion Hard Wood Scepter rests in the palm of a sculptor's hand—a long, slender haft carved from a dark, knotted branch. The wood carries the scent of rain-soaked forest and old tombs, a warmth under the fingers that contradicts its outward chill. Along its length run pale inlays like bone, aligning into a sigil of hush and hunger. The head is a compact bulb surrounded by chipped brass, a skull motif half-sunken into the wood, the eye-sockets catching a green flicker whenever an incantation is whispered. The surface bears a weathered patina, as if it has learned the touch of many wielders, each scuff telling a different tale. In the lore of caravan-buried villages, the Carrion Hard Wood is said to come from a tree that grew on the edge of a battlefield, its rings thick with memory and its sap dark as late dusk. Those who handle it report hearing soft, dry rustles—like leaves that rustle only when the dead are listening. To hold it is to feel a conversation begin: the scepter seems to pull the air into itself, turning life into something you can bend with a flick of the wrist. When you cast, sigils awaken along the bone inlays, and a patient, measured glow travels up the haft to the skull-head, guiding your necromantic energy. It’s not a weapon for quick, bright display; it speaks in measured tempo, leaning toward control. A wielder can claim lifeforce from a foe, raise one of the fallen as a fleeting minion, or weave a curse that lingers like a shadow on the backs of enemies. In party play, the scepter becomes a conductor: pulses of health siphoned from threats extend the team’s staying power, while the bone wards you conjure can buffer damage just long enough for a decisive push. The real strength, though, is in the scepter’s resonance with the world’s older wounds—the way it makes the living acknowledge the cost of every victory and the dead’s quiet insistence that memory remains. Market days bring a different pulse. I watched a trader roll back the price of the Carrion Hard Wood Scepter as a crowd pressed around a freighter’s cart; glints of copper on the fittings matched the trader’s own eyes, and somewhere in the throng a buyer whispered of a match at Saddlebag Exchange. There, the same scepter would be measured not by bravado alone but by its enchantment’s staying power, its ability to be paired with other toys of bone and ember. The clerk slid the haggled coin on the counter, and the tag glowed as if in agreement: rare, coveted, and worth every quiet promise a buyer makes to a world that does not forget its dead. In that market, the Carrion Hard Wood Scepter is more than a tool; it’s a story you can carry, a reminder that trade is a ritual as old as the roots it springs from. Carry it long enough, and the forest remembers your choices as surely as your name.