Major Rune of the Afflicted

The Major Rune of the Afflicted is a palm-sized tile of obsidian-black glass, its edges worn smooth by countless handling. The surface is carved with thorned sigils that coil like ivy, the lines filled with a dull crimson that flickers faintly when the room grows cool. On the back, a small maker’s mark and a shallow groove hint at a time when this rune was pressed into a charm rather than worn openly. If you tilt it to the light, specks of bone-white dust seem embedded in the glass, as if the afflicted themselves lent their memory to the ward. The texture is cool and glassy, save for a patient warmth that settles into your fingers as if the relic remembered every fevered night and every whispered vow to endure. The legend murmurs of a covenant between healers who studied plague and fighters who faced it head-on, a vow to bend suffering into a shield for those who carry the rune. In the street-lit hush of a market night, the sight of it always pulls a crowd, not merely because of its beauty but because of what it promises in crunching, practiced moments of combat. When you slot the Major Rune of the Afflicted into your gear, its quiet glow steadies your breath and tightens the weave of your plans. It does not shout its power; it whispers, a tactile reminder that pain can be redirected. Practically, it lengthens the duration of conditions you throw onto foes, so Bleed and Poison persist through hiccups in a fight, granting you a longer window to press your advantage. It also offers a subtle resilience—an emblematic shield of sorts—that recoils against the worst of affliction-based onslaughts, letting you stay on your feet when the map grows grim and the tempo of waves rises. The result, in real play, is a sense that every scratch of misfortune is not a stop sign but a turning gear, letting your party ride a tougher cadence through a tough encounter. For builds that weave sickness into power—poison clerics, bleeding barbs, or the dreaded “ Afflicted” flavor that thrives on turning pain into tempo—the rune acts as a quiet multiplier, a memory-touched crank that keeps the engine turning when the world around you would rather fall silent. I’ve watched traders parry with the wind at the Saddlebag Exchange while classifiers and their charts whispered of value. A broker, name long forgotten, laid the rune on a velvet cloth and, with a tradesman’s care, slid it toward a curious traveler who asked more about its memory than its price. The price, like a rumor in a fevered city, rose and fell with fear and hope: a gold coin or two if the crowd believed in the plague’s withdrawal, a touch more when fear of its return rode the night train into the market. Someone else traded spools of silk and a pouch of rare herbs for a chance to carry that weight with them. And in the end, the Major Rune of the Afflicted moves from stall to hand not just as a piece of gear but as a thread in a larger story—the old, stubborn belief that hardship can be transformed into a shield, and that the memory of those who suffered can be made to bolster the living who walk on.