Carrion Elder Wood Trident

The Carrion Elder Wood Trident sits on a weathered merchant's counter, its shaft carved from pale elder wood veined with sickly-dark lines, the texture grainy like dried bark under your fingertips. The three tines, carved from bone, curve inward with a silent snarl, and the metal tip catches lamp light with a cold gleam. Resin inlays, bubbled and amber, wind around the grip, locking in the scent of damp earth and sea spray. The leather wrap is frayed from years of handling, scored by calloused thumbs that know the weight of a charged moment. Lore has it that the trident was grown from a sapling said to have fed on carrion rites, rooted in marsh graves where spirits whisper through the reeds; elders claimed that elder wood remembers every oath spoken above it, and every touch of the dead that glides past its surface. When you hold it, you can sense the resin-hard grip of the marsh, the memory of tides, and a promise that it is more than a weapon: a token of pact and survival. In the markets of the world, its presence invites stories as much as it invites eyes. Those who carry the trident speak in hushed tones about its balance and reach, about a point where speed and control meet, letting a traveler hold line against a skirmish of shrieking foes. In combat, it is said to favor posture and restraint—the kind of weapon that asks its wielder to read the floor beneath booted steps, to anticipate a lunging strike, to time a parry with the breath of a marsh breeze. It suits ritual-minded hands as well, where the wielder dreams aloud of binding mischief-makers and reining in restless minions with a patient, whispered word. For storytellers, the trident is a prop with provenance: a hunter’s tool that doubled as a ceremonial baton, a caravan guard’s emblem of who commands the dusk in swampy dawns. Its lore threads through campfire legends about revenants and keepers of graves, turning a simple weapon into the centerpiece of an evolving narrative about protection, rot, and renewal. Markets reflect that dual life, and a stall at Saddlebag Exchange will tell you as much with a single glimmer of a price tag. The tag quotes a mid-range value for rare relics, a balance between desire and memory, between the care someone took to preserve it and the debt someone owes to the item’s past. A seasoned trader will lean in and murmur about how elder wood tightens with age, how the resin glows faintly when moonlight brushes its surface, and how a negotiator can steer the deal toward something fair, perhaps a trade or a silver for a future favor. The Saddlebag Exchange is less a shop and more a crossroads where histories meet needs, and the Carrion Elder Wood Trident sits there as both proof and promise—an artifact that might guard a caravan at the marsh’s edge or puncture a line of hungry risks in a night-lit skirmish. Seen through that lens, the trident becomes more than a collectible or a stat-stick. It is a hinge on which a small world can turn: the moment a vendor speaks of a pact, the wind shifts at the reed-choked shore, and a traveler tightens the grip, stepping forward into another chapter of the story the marsh keeps repeating with every tide.