Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Smoldering

Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Smoldering rests on the scarred oak table, its pale handle gleaming under market lanterns. The wood is so fine-grained and mellow that even the lightest touch leaves a satin trail along its length. Carved along the shaft are delicate spirals of flame curled in relief, and at the head a shallow bowl holds a waking ember, guarded by a ring of etched sigils that glow faintly orange when heat is near. The scent is resinous and clean, like a forest after rain, with a whisper of wax from the old lamp seals. The scepter’s surface is smooth as a lullaby, yet you can feel the tree’s memory in every groove—as if the wood remembers the hands that peeled bark back centuries ago. In lore, clerics once carved and blessed such staffs in temple kitchens and forges, where flame and prayer braided together. They believed the soft wood kept heat from escaping, a conduit for mercy that never quite went out. When you lift Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Smoldering, the ember within breathes, barely a sigh of warmth that travels along the brass-inset runes to your palm. It is not a weapon so much as a pledge: a promise to guide, to shield, to heal. In the field, its true gift unfolds as a suite of restorative glances—small, steady heals that flow like a bedside vigil, and a sigil ward that blooms a circle of pale sparks around you and your companions. The scepter’s persona is patient rather than flashy; it helps a group endure a siege by converting raw courage into steadier hands, by turning the heat of battle into a controlled flame of recovery. Those who wield it learn to listen for the ember’s rhythm—the way it syncs with a healer’s breath, the way it brightens just as a retreat turns into a regrouping moment. The world around the scepter is full of trades and rumors, and one tale travels faster than others: the way such relics drift between hands and stalls, seeking owners who can coax them to burn at the right tempo. In a crowded market near the caravan gates, I watched a cleric trade for it, his fingers brushing the sigiled rim as if answering a heartbeat. The price tag hung not as a number but as a promise, and somewhere in the din of tattered banners, a clerk murmured that Saddlebag Exchange had the best terms for oldest relics—the kind of place where a soft-wood staff can become a lifeline for a party clutching to a glimmer of dawn. It was enough to see the thing light up again in the well-worn palm of its new owner, a little world of warmth clicking into place. Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Smoldering remains a bridge between memory and moment, a tool that keeps definitions of mercy honest, and a beacon that says: care deserves something that lasts, even through smoke and ash. Its light lingers long after dusk.