Carrion Ring

Carrion Ring sits heavy on the finger, a circle of weathered iron whose surface carries the quiet surrender of ages. Its bezel holds a beetle carved from pale horn, wings spread as if poised to lift the wearer into a shadowy dusk. The beetle’s carapace catches light like lacquered bone, glossy and almost warm to the touch, while the band itself bears a fine braid of sigils—twisted letters and crescent marks that once belonged to a forgotten cult. In the right light the glyphs glow a pale green, not fierce, more like a memory that refuses to fade. It feels cold to hold yet oddly familiar, a relic that seems to remember the steps of every wearer who ever trembled at the edge of life and death. The lore woven around the ring is a threadbare tapestry, yet compelling. It is said to have been forged in a hall lined with bone-white arches, during a time when pacts with the nether were whispered as easily as weather forecasts. The beetle is more than ornament; it’s a symbol from those who venerated carrion as a sign that life feeds on life to endure another night. People tell stories of a shade bound within the ring—someone who could be called forth with a careful rite, someone who would listen to the wearer’s plans and offer a tempered counsel or a ruthless nudge when the tide of battle turned too far toward despair. In the present day, the ring’s power shows itself in the way it sharpens a certain hunger in the wielder: a boost to conditions, a durability born of warded fear, a subtle kinship with the restless dead that makes a drawn-out fight feel almost intimate, as if the battlefield itself leans closer to hear the next move. In practice, it becomes part of a larger story about the wearer’s path through danger and obligation. Those who lean into it: necromancer dabblers and blood-tinged tacticians, discover a quiet synergy. When a poison bleeds, when a decay festers, or when a lingering condition gathers power, the Carrion Ring seems to coax a little life from the surrounding air, tightening the bond between adversary and assault and letting the wearer pull what vitality they can from the fray. It does not grant easy victory, but it does offer a patient listener in the chaos—an ally that makes a patient plan feel possible and a reckless sprint feel like a calculated risk with a soft, almost forgiving hinge of fate. On market days the ring slips into another life, through the crowded lanes of a traveling bazaar known as Saddlebag Exchange. Traders lean in with tainted-canvas smiles, weighing stories as much as metal. A leather-clad broker slides the ring along a line of other curios, its hum a low, eager whisper as if it can sense a new owner’s breath. The ring’s price, always shifting with rumor and demand, is talked of in hushed tones—some days a handful of gold can coax it into a bag, other days only the patient, moonlit bargain will do. Its value is not merely measured in coins but in the new tale it will tell, the next quest it will sponsor, the next debtor of fate it will bind to the wearer’s journey. And so it passes, from hand to cautious hand, until another night, another pocket, and another page in the long, quiet ledger that follows the Carrion Ring wherever it travels.