Carrion Ring

Carrion Ring rests heavy on the finger, a circle of tempered iron with a matte, pewter-dark sheen. Its surface is pitted as if weathered by years of damp air and the brush of dead leaves, the band narrowing toward a comfortable back crest. In the center sits a shard of bone-white stone, opaque and slightly milky, carved with a sigil that resembles a curled constellation of bones. The sigil glows faintly—an eerie amber-green that crawls along the edges whenever the wearer steps close to decay’s edge. The ring’s edge is burnished smooth, the interior whisper-soft with ritual oil and the faint scent of damp earth whenever it grows warm with blood. It feels almost alive when you slide it on, as if the metal remembers every corpse it has touched. The lore it carries is not loud as a bell but persistent as a rumor told by lantern light. Some say the ring was forged by a caretaker of plague pits, a keeper who learned to listen to the slow drum of rot and to barter with the dead for a few more breaths of life. Others insist it found its way into the world through a lineage of necromancers who believed that decay could be tempered, that death could be braided into living skin in order to endure the long, hard hours between dawn and dusk. The sigil itself—bones arranged in a patient, almost patient star—seems to hum with a promise: that influence over life and death does not require thrashing force, only a patient hand and an unflinching gaze toward the quiet places where rot gathers. In practical terms, the Carrion Ring feels like a companion for a walker who negotiates with danger rather than rushes headlong at it. Its presence is said to magnify a wearer’s bond with decay and lifeflow, giving a tactile sense of how long a fight might endure and how much life might be drawn from a weary enemy. Players who favor necromantic or condition-based playstyles often notice a subtle amplification of sustain—the way a strike seems to pull a little vitality back, or how the ring’s sigil blanches the air with a faint green after glow as bleeding enemies pile up their misfortune. It becomes less about raw offense and more about turning slower, steadier tactics into a pipeline of return—each bite of rot reopening a small door to health, each decayed foe feeding a momentary resilience. The ring also feels like a mark of a story you could tell on the road. In late-day markets and quiet camps, travelers trade not only coin but memory, and the Carrion Ring is a conversation starter. It’s a piece that invites whispers about the old plague pits, about the careful kindness of those who walked the line between life and death, and about how a single ring can turn a worn blade into a stubborn, stubborn ally. At the Saddlebag Exchange, where the market’s pulse flickers with rumor and demand, the price of such relics changes with the mood of the day—slippery when fear is high, steadier when courage is collected. I watched a hawk-nosed dealer tilt the scale with a nod and a smile, swapping a bundle of oils and a faded idol for a ring that promised more than a mere stat line—promise of a longer, quieter journey through the rot and renewal of the world.