Carrion Cabalist Hood

The Carrion Cabalist Hood sits before me like a shadow made wearable: a hood woven from obsidian-black cloth and pale bone, its edges twined with coarse sinew that creaks softly when the wind shifts. The exterior bears rubbed runes in a lazy, hungry script, as if some forgotten smith etched promises of life and decay onto the fabric. The texture shifts from smooth, almost lacquered leather at the crown to the rough, grainy touch of bone panels along the sides, where the weave gathers into a whispered contour that frames the face with a somber dignity. Inside, a fur lining—darker than a moonless night—catches the warmth of the body and holds it, as if the hood were a quiet vault for breath and memory. When you lift it, the scent of rain-soaked earth and old stone rises, and the bones along the edge gleam faintly, catching candlelight as if they remembered every hand that touched them. Lore threads through the hood like a weathered ribbon. The Carrion Cabalist Hood is said to have been sewn by a priestess who learned the Carrion rites—an order that traded a measure of life for the potency of decay and shadow. Those who wore it claimed to hear the soft chime of carrion bells and to feel a pale wind coil beneath their skin, a reminder that vitality is a currency as fragile as skin and salt. In story and in whispers, the hood is both shield and sigil: it hides the wearer in darkness while drawing attention to the necromantic craft, announcing a willingness to walk with the dead’s patient patience and to turn their silence into a weapon or a mercy, depending on the hand that wields it. In moments of glyph-lit battle or hushed midnight patrols, the hood reveals its true purpose. Its wearer often leans into necromancer play—minions, life-steal, and the careful manipulation of curses—because the hood’s presence seems to bend luck and lingering energy toward the wearer’s will. It’s the sort of piece that makes companions pause: a look that says I am listening to the pulse of the world’s wounds, and I know how to patch them or let them fester. Practically, the hood is prized for its aesthetics and its synergy with carrion-oriented builds: it complements staffs and daggers that siphon life, it frames a skulllike mask or a roguish hood, and it carries an aura that invites enemies to underestimate the quiet observer who commands shadows as if they were witnesses. The market hums with it, too, in a way that feels almost like a rumor you can touch. On Saddlebag Exchange, I hear tell of prices that dance with the hood’s mood—two gold coins or a bit more, sometimes less, sometimes a little more if the runes glow with a rare green light or if a vendor has a tale of near-miss bargains to tell. It’s a piece that splits the room: some buyers prize its lore and its haunting presence, others seek its combat utility and the way it completes a look that says the wearer has learned to barter with death. As the day winds down and the stall candles gutter, the Carrion Cabalist Hood remains: a wearable relic, a narrative threaded through leather and bone, a reminder that in this world stories are worn as surely as armor, and often, as deadly.