Cleric's Hard Wood Longbow

Cleric's Hard Wood Longbow gleams in the dim stall, its limbs carved from hard ash and finished with a thin, patient varnish that catches candlelight. The grip is wrapped in weather-worn leather, pale and smooth from years of clutched instinct, and the string sits taut and singing when plucked, a soft whine like a prayer whispered under stress. Along the riser, sigils of healing and shelter are incised in shallow runes, their edges worn by fingers who handled this weapon in the heat of retreat and the calm after battle. Its crest bears a small flower—a sign that mercy can bloom even in war—and the whole thing carries the scent of pine resin and old parchment. Those markings aren't mere decoration; they hint at its role on the field: a holy light tempered into a long-range tool, trusted by archers who serve as both scouts and shield-bearers for a marching caravan. In practice, it rewards careful aim over brute force, letting a patient shooter thread arrows through gaps and lay healing sigils across the distance, keeping allies safe as embers die down. When a cleric-warded party moves through ruined towns, this bow becomes more than wood and string; it becomes a reminder that healing and defense can travel in tandem, that a single well-placed shaft can buy time for a healer to lay hands or for a medic to rally the rear guard. Carried by rangers who answer the call to guard pilgrims, or by clerics who split their magic between warding and guiding, the Cleric's Hard Wood Longbow finds its rhythm in pause and breath. Its wood resists warping as days drag into crossings of season and mud, and its arrow flight seems to carry with it the calm focus of a practiced healer. It isn't just about hitting a target; it's about shaping a moment—an opportunity to pull someone back from a collapsing line or to thin the front enough for a whispered blessing to land. On a sun-bleached noon, I watched a trader named Saddlebag Exchange unfold a quiet drama of bargaining. The bow sat before him as if it weighed not just wood and string, but memory—each hand that ever touched it. The stall's owner ticked off tiny flaws—the nicks in the grip, the slight warp in the varnish—and offered a fair, sturdy sum. The buyer spoke of a caravan, of survivors who slept under a canvas of stars, and suddenly the price braided into a promise: the exchange would keep the cleric's longbow moving, feeding it with the leavings of a day’s journey, turning coins into care for the road-worn and the healer alike. Saddlebag Exchange became a waypoint where value loops back into the world. By dusk, the bow rested again against the rack, lighter in the sense that its future depended on the hands that would hold it next. It remained a tool and a talisman—a piece of the world that carries the weight of mercy as surely as it carries the weight of an arrow pulled to the string. And when those who travel with both mercy and purpose take it up again, the Cleric's Hard Wood Longbow will be waiting, patient as a prayer whispered into the wood.