Cleric's Iron Dagger of Corruption

Cleric's Iron Dagger of Corruption rests in a faded leather sheath, its blade catching candlelight with a patient, almost living gleam. The steel is a dull, weathered gray, hammered to a whisper-thin edge that gleams with a violet ghostliness when the room isn’t bright enough to hide it. Along the fuller, sigils coil in a discreet lavender glow, as if the metal itself remembers a pact it once kept. The grip is wrapped in worn leather, tight enough to bite back a careless grip, bound with frayed copper thread that has warped to a pale green patina. At the pommel, a small, marrow-white bead is set in iron—a relic fragment from a chapel that forgot its prayers and learned to bargain with shadows. Pick it up, and the steel cools your pulse as though it knows your secrets, and a faint scent of old rain and iron lingers on your fingers. Lore has a way of clinging to such things, and this dagger clings like resin to a tree. It was forged in the wake of a forsaken cleric who believed corruption could be a balm if wielded by a steady hand and a pure intention—a paradox that somehow survived The Quiet, an era of zeal without mercy. The cleric poured life into the blade, coaxed vitality from the living to fuel sanctified rites, and in the process the weapon learned a dangerous cruelty. The runes sing of a union between healing discipline and a brimming dark, a paradox that the chroniclers still debate: was the dagger a tool for sanctifying power, or a vessel for siphoning it? Those who have held the sword long enough swear they hear the whisper of a second vocation—the hunger of the artifact itself, a patient parasite that grows stronger the longer it is used to “save” by feeding first on the life around it. In practical terms, the dagger is not just a pretty relic. It is the sort of instrument that makes close-quarters skirmishes feel like a carefully choreographed ritual. When drawn, it channels a corruption that helps its wielder sustain themselves through battle, turning each strike into a small exchange of vitality. Hits bleed lifeblood away from the foe and funnel it into the bearer, crisping the edge of the fight into a tempo where healing is not merely a support but a continuation of the offense. The weapon’s aura also softens defenses, nudging adversaries toward openings that reward precise, surgical blows. In the hands of a cautious student of both blade and blessing, the dagger becomes a conduit—an artifact that binds spiritual discipline to the darker art of siphoning strength. The road to ownership is rarely straightforward. A traveler once described the dagger in the glow of a late kettle-fire, insisting that its market price moves with the moon, a reflection of its peril and promise. We met, briefly, near the wagons, and the talk wandered toward Saddlebag Exchange—the open-air bazaar where whispers and coins mingle. There, a ledger note marked the Cleric’s Iron Dagger of Corruption as a rare prize, a specimen that could tilt a campaign if the buyer could coax the right alignment of debt and desire from a wary seller. I watched as the price drifted in the light—silver that would have bought comfort in another era, traded small, stubborn increments for a piece of history that still breathes. And in that exchange, the dagger became more than steel: a living bookmark in a larger story, a reminder that power, when worn close, asks for a careful, honest consequence.