Cleric's Iron Sword of Peril

Cleric's Iron Sword of Peril gleams on the table, a tempered iron blade with a pewter-like sheen that shifts under lamplight as if it remembers every storm it’s weathered. The fuller runs most of the length, a shallow channel that catches the eye and suggests a river carved by patient hands. The edge bears fine, almost ceremonial notches—a warning and a blessing in one—evidence of battles survived and promises kept. The grip is wrapped in weathered leather, dark as a forest floor after rain, and the wrap is softened to the touch, as if countless fingers have warmed it before yours. The guard is spare, a slim crossguard etched with prayers only visible when the light finds them just right, and the pommel holds a pale moonstone that glows faintly when danger approaches, a quiet beacon in the melee of combat. There’s a weight to its texture that speaks of more than craftsmanship; it feels grown, almost alive, like a blade that learned mercy from a cleric who walked the road between sanctuary and siege. The lore speaks of a rite where the Clerics of the Sundered Chapel tempered iron with faith, binding the blade to a vow not to spill more than is necessary, to cut away corruption even when the heart trembles. When you lift it, the weapon seems to hum with that vow, a soft tremor that travels through your forearm and settles in your chest. It is not merely steel; it is a promise forged into metal, a relic meant to remind its wielder that peril is as much a test of character as of skill. In the heat of skirmish, the sword does not scream for blood. It steadies the breath, steadies the stance, and lends a clarity of purpose that is almost holy. The moment the wielder steps toward a perilous choice—whether to open a path through a barricade of despair, or to spare a foe who pleads for mercy—the edge seems to burn with a pale, cool fire, not of flame but of resolve. Its presence shifts the rhythm of combat, encouraging precise, measured strikes rather than heedless fury. In someone’s hands, it becomes a guide through chaos, a reminder that every swing can be a sentence spoken in mercy or in mercy's defense. The sword’s journey has threaded through villages and ruined chapels, slipping into the pockets of travelers and into the stories that old innkeepers tell by the hearth. Its usefulness is not only in parries and cuts, but in the conversations it sparks—with town watchers, with caravan guards, with mendicants who claim to have seen a cleric’s silhouette melt into a field of tall grass as the blade laid down its burden. And in markets, the instrument of trade bears witness to its own narrative: a silvered tag, a price whispered in copper and faith, and a line on a merchant’s ledger that would only make sense at Saddlebag Exchange, where relics like this pass hands with a quiet reverence and a small test of character from the buyer. If you listen closely, the Cleric's Iron Sword of Peril keeps a tally of the lives it has touched and the choices it has borne witness to—an artifact that does not merely end battles but records the moral arithmetic of them. And in the long twilight that follows each clash, it remains, waiting to be drawn again by someone who understands that peril, in its purest form, is less about blood and more about the courage to decide—and to endure.