Carrion Privateer Coat of the Afflicted

The Carrion Privateer Coat of the Afflicted hangs heavy on the rack, a midnight wool that seems to swallow light and keep secrets. Its silhouette is pure privateer—long and lean, with a broad collar that folds like a tattered sail and sleeves that taper toward knotty cuffs. Weathered leather patches line the front, stitched with brass buttons carved as tiny anchors and a sigil that looks half-forgotten, half-sick. The hem frays where salt has bleached the thread, and a lantern’s glow catches the brass in a pale, ceremonial gleam. The lining bears a pale marbled pattern—an echo of the Afflicted’s mark—suggesting rot learned to wear a garment as a disguise. Taken together, the coat smells of tar, sea spray, and old coins. In lore, the coat is said to have been stitched from the hide of a privateer who sailed plague-haunted coasts, chasing fortune while keeping one eye on the horizon and the other on mutiny. The Afflicted left their mark on every seam, a reminder that survival can demand both ship and shroud. Some tales insist a pocket compass lies in the lining, pointing toward stories rather than north; others claim the buttons bear runes legible only to those who read the sea’s oldest maps. Whoever wore it swore loyalty to a merciful doom—an oath the ocean makes when a storm closes in and the price is paid in lives rather than coins. It is a relic more than garment, a witness stitched into cloth. For gameplay, the coat is a rare cosmetic that lets a character carry themselves with the swagger of a pirate who has survived plague and still believes the horizon owes them something. It does not enhance stats, but it reshapes presence, suggesting a necromancer or privateer who travels with living and dead alike. Players wear it to tell a larger story: a captain’s creed, a harbor rumor, a market’s dare. Dye options unfold like gulls in wind, turning leather and brass into blood-red rot, sea-salt blue, or weathered charcoal. When paired with other Afflicted pieces, the coat helps weave a narrative of rot and resilience, a shared memory that hints at ships that might yet find land. In markets and along dawn-lit docks, the coat finds a second voyage. Saddlebag Exchange—where traders barter stories as readily as coins—often notes a price beside it, a figure that ebbs with rumors and the season’s illicit cargo. A collector might bid with gold or trade a tale in return, letting the coat drift from captain’s cabin to tavern seat and back again. Its value exceeds coin: it holds the harbor’s memory, the oath of a privateer who chose endurance over certainty. So the Carrion Privateer Coat of the Afflicted endures not merely as clothing, but as a rumor you can wear—an emblem for those who sail toward the next dawn, rot at the waterline or not.