Carrion Darksteel Hammer lies heavy in the palm, its head a slick block of obsidian-dark metal marred by pale, bone-white inlays that trace a skeletal motif along the face. The texture is cool and smooth at the edges, rough with micro-scratches where the smith struck heat into the steel, and a faint coppery tang clings to the grip. The haft is wrapped in cracked leather braided with sinew, the grip narrow at the center and broadening toward the butt where a ring of carved bone is set like a tiny sentinel. When you tilt it toward a candle, the runes along the haft flicker with a pale green light, and if you listen closely you can swear you hear the distant scavenger call of carrion birds, the tool whispering of secrets best left to the dead. It’s not simply a weapon; it’s a memory of road-worn caravans and the bargains cut with shadow. In the markets, storytellers claim it carries a curse or blessing depending on who holds it, a ledger of battles etched into the metal by a smith who traded fear for form. Those who wield it speak of a moment when the armor around a foe cracked open like a shell, and their own heartbeat synchronized with the hammer’s rhythm, as if the weapon itself kept time with the world’s darker hours. In practice, the Carrion Darksteel Hammer is prized for its balance and the way its strike unsettles foes who cling to life by a thread. Swing, and the hammer’s weight carries a sense of inevitability; glancing blows cut into the armor’s edge, and the edge-fed energy lingers, buffeting enemies still trying to stand. For necromancer-leaning builds, it is not merely brute force but a connection to the carrion economy of the city—harvesting the slow, patient decay that nourishes the living with earned resilience, a macabre kind of currency. People talk about it in whispers at the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders weigh metal with caution and count on the stories as much as the coins. The price tag reads in gold, a sum that speaks to rarity and the attention it draws from artisans who know its uneasy charm. A buyer might walk away with a hammer and a tale—an exchange that is almost sacred, as if the weapon itself demands a decision: to break the deadlock between fear and order, or to leave the world as it is and carry the memory of a graveyard in the palm. By night, when lanterns gutter and the market noise dulls to a hum, the Carrion Darksteel Hammer becomes more than steel and leather. It becomes a character in a larger story—the kind of object that sows a rumor, holds a line of friends and foes in tension, and keeps a blade useful even when nothing else in a story quite fits. Some nights the hammer hums softly, as if a long-lost smith still watches over the trade and tests the worthy. Its glow answers only to courage.