Knight's Elder Wood Focus

The Knight's Elder Wood Focus is carved from a single slab of elder wood, its oval form fitting perfectly in the palm. The grain runs in light and dark rings, like a map of a forest remembered. The surface is satin-smooth from hours of polishing, cool to the touch, with tiny checks where the wood held its breath during carving. A narrow seam of burnished brass threads along its edge, catching the light with every tilt, and at the center rests a small ember-red core—a glassy shard that seems to inhale with your own pulse. On the spine, runes in silver inlay tell of a vow, and the crest of a knightly order is carved in relief on the back. To hold it is to feel a whisper of lore come to life: elder wood, in old tales, remembered the land’s footsteps and bound itself to those who swear to protect the weak. The Knight's order kept such focuses as both badge and tool, symbols of resolve and conduits for the light they carried. When drawn in the heat of a march or a quiet moment before dawn, the focus seems to hum, as if the heartwood itself recognizes the oath. In gameplay, the Knight's Elder Wood Focus acts like a steady hand on a stormy night. It channels energy, bending it into barrier wards that ripple outward to shield allies, and it sharpens the wielder's most precise spells. Wielded by a careful mind, it can turn a caravan's guard from arrows into a living wall of luminescence, or extend a healer's calm into a radius that steadies the brave and the frightened alike. It is not a weapon of razors and roars, but a tool for shaping the fight, guiding fortune toward mercy while the world tests itself against night. Prices drift with the seasons, and the Saddlebag Exchange—the bustling corridor of whispers and handshakes—receives the news of scarcity and desire in real time. A Knight's Elder Wood Focus can vanish from a stall at dawn, only to surface again two days later with a new tale etched into its brass edge. Some mornings it trades for a handful of silver if demand is light; at festival times, when caravans swell the market, the same piece can fetch a small fortune in gold, enough to buy a month of warm meals or sturdy boots for a squire. It travels through the Exchange and beyond, a memory of oath and oaken lacquer, carried by traders who see value in story as well as rarity. And so the focus endures, memory rather than metal. It rests in the palm like a quiet heartbeat, a reminder of knights who walked long roads, guarding elder trees and travelers alike. The wood breathes, the core glows faintly, and when the light catches the brass line just so, it feels less like a tool and more like a vow kept, a story pressed into grain that will outlive the rider who first claimed it.