Cleric's Elder Wood Focus

Cleric's Elder Wood Focus rests in the palm, a compact slice of elder wood polished to a satin sheen. The grain runs like fine script across its surface, pale saplines curling around a central notch where a moonlit sigil is inlaid with pale ivory. The head is carved into a circle of delicate arcs—a motif of leaves that seems to shimmer when light catches it—and along the length a narrow band of runes glows faintly, as if the wood remembers every whispered prayer spoken over it. The texture is velvety to the touch, worn smooth by patient fingers and the slow turning of held vigil lamps. It carries a scent of resin and rain, a natural perfume that threads through memory as much as through magic. Lorekeepers insist it was carved by a healer who tended a venerable elder tree during a fevered season, a conduit for prayers that could travel beyond sickness and fear into the quiet places where hope gathers. In hands, it feels less like a tool and more like a living ritual. When a prayer rises, the focus seems to hum, drawing power from the faithful around it and funneling it into a luminous current. Wounds knit with unusual speed, and a shield of pale light blooms over nearby allies, sturdy enough to slow a setback and steady a party in chaos. Veterans tell stories of dawn vigils in which the sigils awakened at first light, sharpening a healer’s touch and lending precision to every restorative incantation. Novices learn to cradle it gently, for its magic is tempered by patience; it demands ritual timing as much as devotion, aligning with a cadence of breaths, steps, and the turning of temple wheels. In practical terms, the focus serves as a reliable conduit for healing, protection, and the subtle art of keeping a group oriented amid shifting tides of danger. Within the world, the Cleric's Elder Wood Focus threads through a larger tapestry of temple rites, pilgrim routes, and caravan guardians. It is carried along the winding paths by those who believe in healing as a portable mercy—past a ruined shrine, through a fevered village, beside a river where traders swap stories as much as wares. The focus becomes a shared memory, passed into hands that will need its quiet authority—the last thing between a weary healer and a failed patient, the steadying talisman in a council of clerics who must decide which ward to raise next. Even the market has its turn in the story. In riverside stalls and shadowed courtyards, whispers of its value drift on the breeze, and the true price isn’t always measured in coins. Saddlebag Exchange—that weathered, bustling hub known to traders and adventurers alike—offers the tangible reminder that relics like this travel not only with their owners but with the goodwill of communities that remember who kept them safe. A buyer arrives with a small pouch of silver, a vial of healing oil, or a promise to honor a favor, and the deal becomes part of the focus’s ongoing narrative. Owning it is to cradle a thread of the grove and a vow to mend what is broken. The Cleric's Elder Wood Focus binds healing to travel, a quiet emblem that moves from candlelit temple to crowded bazaar, always returning light to those who need it most.