Hearty Soft Wood Scepter of Ice

The Hearty Soft Wood Scepter of Ice rests on the workshop bench, its shaft pale as new snow and smooth as a well-loved spindle. The wood, a surprisingly resilient heartwood, yields a tactile warmth when you cradle it, even as frost halos cling to every carved edge. The head is crowned with a pale, opaline orb of ice, held in place by slender silver wires that seem to hum with a chilly readiness. Fine runes arc along the length in a serpentine braid, catching lamplight and throwing back a pale shimmer that makes the room feel colder with each blink of the eye. The texture, matte at the grip yet glimmering where the filigree meets the core, tells a story of forests far to the north and merchants who learned to barter with both frost and fire. When you tilt it, the frost-scented air escapes in a tiny sigh, as if the scepter is exhaling the last winter's breath. Locals say it was carved by a woodwright who apprenticed under a frost priest, a relic that binds sentiment to steel and spell. The heartwood is said to remember every winter it felt the weight of a hand, and when wielded, it lends soft resilience to the bearer, a steadiness that frost will not easily crack. The Ice Scepter, as the old quartermaster calls it, has passed through kitchens and guardrooms, then into the hands of scholars who study how cold can heal as well as harm. Some tales say it once cooled a fever in a dying child, others say it chilled a traitor's oath into silence. The truth, as always, lies between what the wood remembers and what the bearer dares to dream of. In gameplay, its presence means the wielder can weave ice-laced diplomacy and combat; its frost aura slows opponents, creates ice fields that hinder movement, and it channels the cold into focused bursts that heal allies with a crisp, quiet efficiency. It harmonizes with water and earth to sustain long skirmishes, letting the wielder thread through a battlefield with patient, glacial precision. Cast an orb of frost to freeze a single target, then retreat behind armor of glacial shards to shield companions—these are the moments when the scepter feels less like gear and more like memory taking shape in your hands, a quiet promise that winter will wait for you, even as you press on. On a damp autumn morning, I watched a dealer at Saddlebag Exchange lay out the scepter’s value in coins and rare spindles. The chatter around the stall swirled with comparisons to other frost wares; the price sat between the mid-tier and the high street, not a king’s ransom, yet far from pocket-change for a traveler who moves with caravans and stories. The stall keepers spoke in careful murmurs: the soft wood can crack under heat, and the ice orb’s glow remains steady only if the bearer treats it as a companion, not a trophy. For the right buyer—the scholar who has tracked winter’s path or the guardian who needs steadiness in a siege—the Hearty Soft Wood Scepter of Ice is a partner, a conversational piece of history you can cradle as you walk. Carrying it through a night-wind crossing and a frost-slick pass, the scepter becomes more than a weapon; it is a memory etched in wood and ice, the hinge that links a questing heart to the cold, patient world.