Shaman's Cabalist Gloves of the Afflicted

Shaman's Cabalist Gloves of the Afflicted lie on the desk like a fragment torn from a longer myth, the leather storm-dark and stubbornly cool to the touch. The surface wears a fine network of scuffs and minute creases, as if each crease holds a whispered memory of battles won and vows broken. Knuckles are reinforced with short copper rivets that catch the light with every careless movement, and along the forearm a braid of sinew threads its way through the leather, a ritual scar worn as decoration. The back of the hand bears a shallow sigil—circles and sigils interlaced in a pattern that seems to shimmer faintly when the moonlight touches it. The lining, a soft, tired wool, smells faintly of resin and rain, a comfort that the wearer would recognize even in the worst storms. They feel alive in a way a mere garment cannot, as if the gloves hold the memory of every hand that ever pressed into them, every bargain struck, every oath kept or broken in the flicker of candlelight. Lore has always clung to these gloves as if to a whispered rumor that refuses to die. The Shaman-Cabalists who once tempered their magic at perilous crossroads were said to braid power from the Afflicted—the plague-sick, the cursed, the haunted—transforming their suffering into a conduit for higher purpose. These gloves, forged in a ruined shrine and touched by a Cabalist who learned not to fear the fever but to redirect it, became a conduit that could bend the wild energy of pain into something that could be guided, not unleashed. They carry a memory of ceremonies where bone charms hummed and the ground exhaled a smoky breath, a memory the wearer can still sense when they slip a finger into the palm of the glove and listen for the old words threaded into the seams. In gameplay terms, the gloves feel like a thread running through a larger tapestry. Players who lean into conditions—the little bleeds, poisons, and burns that slowly drain an enemy’s vitality—find the gloves to be a steady ally, weaving those effects with more grace and persistence. They act as a conduit for ritualist-style tactics, letting the wearer fuse disruption and control with a degree of resilience against the sudden twists of combat. It isn’t simply about raw numbers; it’s about shaping encounters, about turning a battlefield into a space where pain is reorganized into strategy, and where the afflicted can, for a moment, become the instrument of their own deliverance. The market and memory of these gloves drift through towns like a story told at dusk. In a sunlit corner of the market, the Saddlebag Exchange hums with chatter and brass tags; a buyer and dealer trade glances, both aware that such a relic is more than loot—it’s a hinge in a larger door. The price, pegged in the whispered language of gold and copper, drifts with the day’s mood, influenced by dye, wear, and the patch of sigil that still glows faintly under lamp-light. A patient keeper of relics might fetch a good bargain, a fortune for someone seeking a quiet, dangerous power, and a cautionary tale for the one who would wield it without listening to the whispers stitched into the seams. So the gloves remain, an artifact of pain transformed into purpose, a reminder that power tethered to compassion can guide a village through a plague of memory as well as any blade could cut through a night.