Crest of the Magi

Crest of the Magi rests on the desk like a nocturne coin: a circular badge, the size of a palm, carved from onyx-black obsidian and edged in a whisper-thin ring of burnished bronze. In the center, a star-sapphire core pulses with a patient light, refracting the room into blue and violet facets as you tilt it toward the lamp. Runes arc along the rim in a script that feels ancient and almost musical, and a barely perceptible seam runs along the back where two thin sheets of metal meet. When you hold it, the air cools and a soft whisper seems to travel under your skin, the tale of a long-lost order echoing in the hush of your breath. Legend says the Crest was pressed from the crest of the Magi, a guild of scholars who guarded the world’s oldest equations—the ones that bind magic to memory. They vanished in a night called the Quiet Eclipse, and the Crest is all that remained—a token, a key, a reminder that magic, too, has guardians who never asked for praise. Some say the sigils were hand-worked by artisans who learned their craft from star-motes that drifted down into the world like winter dust. Others claim the center stone is not a gem at all but a fragment of a fallen comet, cooled and cut to focus the memory of a spell the world almost forgot. In play, the Crest of the Magi is prized for the aura it lends to spell-weaving—an edge to those who stand at the edge of a mage's theatre, where discipline meets risk. Those who wear it feel a steadier pace to their magic, a hint of clarity when chaos hums at the edge of their nerves. It doesn't turn a poor plan into a perfect strike, but it does smooth the passage of thought, helping elementalists align their elements with mesmer's illusions, and giving scholars a moment to anchor their focus in the heat of a fight. It is the kind of trinket players pass from hand to hand, traded across markets and memory, turning small moments of luck into a longer, almost narrative arc of battles won by a story rather than brute force. In the market, traders claim it's overpriced; a Crest rarely sits quietly on a shelf; more often it is sought after by travelers who trade tales as readily as coin. Saddlebag Exchange, a bustling bazaar tucked behind a tangle of alleys, is where the Crest's price drifts with the weather and the mood of the crowd. Some days a single crest fetches enough gold to tip a captain’s hat; on others, it moves for metallurgy scraps and rare inscriptions, depending on who tells the right story that day. The sellers tell of a buyer who listened to the hum and then offered a mix of ascended rings and rare inscriptions, and the hallways ring with the gossip that Saddlebag Exchange makes or breaks fates just as much as any raid boss does.