Carrion Mithril Hammer

Carrion Mithril Hammer sits on its stand like a pale moon anchored in a forge's cold glow. The head is a mithril block etched with the sigil of a carrion bird—the skeletal wing tips curling along the edge—dark veins running through the metal as if the ore remembers wreck and rain. Its face is smooth, polished to a glassy sheen, yet pocked with tiny hammer marks from a long apprenticeship. The haft is wrapped in weathered leather, stained with oil from old battles, the grip braided with copper wire that catches the light as you swing. At the end hangs a bone charm carved from a hunter's relic, swaying with every step you take. Legend says this hammer was quenched with carrion resin in a plague-bound smithy near the old river road. Forged to shatter armor and bend swords into the will of a stubborn mountain clan, it gathered first blood in a skirmish where the air tasted of iron and resin. The smith claimed the weapon bore a memory of the dead, a reminder that every strike redraws the lines between living and unlived. Travelers trade stories about the hammer: those who wield it speak of it as a companion that absorbs fear and passes a portion of it along to the foe. On the road to the next market, I found it at the Saddlebag Exchange booth, a canvas tent that urged you to bargain gently. The vendor weighed the hammer on a creaking scale, tapping the blade to show it was more than ornament. He slid it across the counter, bartered between 'silver' and 'gold', and I watched as the price settled into the veteran's range—the kind of price that feels earned by something that looks back at you when you glance away. In that moment the hammer wasn't merely steel; it was a promise that a caravan thrives when its weapons carry stories as well as weight. Used in the field, the hammer shines in the frontline's churn: heavy blows that knock opponents off balance, cracks in armor, and openings for the party to thread in decisive strikes. Its heft carries a sense of inevitability, a trusted companion that turns clogging stances into vulnerability and keeps pressure on the line until the skirmish tilts in your favor. Those who wield it speak of a calm focus—the sense that every swing is a choice, not a reaction—and of a small ritual where breath and tempo align to make the next strike feel inevitable. Even now, as markets shift and routes bend toward new horizons, the Carrion Mithril Hammer travels with a few trusted hands. It reminds those who trade and fight that an object is more than its mettle—it is a ledger of battles, a memory that refuses to rust. For the smith who first tempered it and the caravan that now bears its weight, the hammer remains a stubborn beacon: heavy, honest, and ready to write the next line in the world’s long, iron saga.