Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Chilling

Cleric's Soft Wood Scepter of Chilling rests in the palm like a breath of frost held in a single hand. The shaft is pale, a satin-grained softwood that invites a careful touch, its surface warm with use even as the carvings bite cool to the eye. Along the length, delicate runes spiral with a breath of frost—thin lines that glint when light and shadow argue over them, as if the wand itself were listening to winter speak. The head is all restraint, a compact bowl of carved timber that cradles a pale, glassy orb that seems to pulse with a pale blue life. When you tilt it toward a lamp, the wood takes on a faint lacquer of ice, and the air around it tastes faintly of resin and snow, as though a winter storm has taken up residence in one carefully tempered instrument. It is the sort of object that feels like a memory you could hold, a relic of a cleric order that molded healing and restraint into something tactile. Lore has it that the scepter was forged in a temple where winter and mercy met at a single altar. A circle of healers wove warmth and restraint into the wood, turning ordinary timber into something that could carry both balm and boundary. They believed that true aid did not rush forward like a blaze but arrived like a slow, patient frost—cooling the fevered spirit, slowing the onrush of corruption, and giving breath to those who could not spare it themselves. Hence the “Soft Wood” name: it bears the softness of a living tree, but within lies the chill of a sealed winter night. In some tales, the scepter’s chorus of faint chimes when it draws near the wounded is said to soothe the most troubled patients, and the carved runes are believed to whisper protective wards to guardians who stand too close to harm. In practical terms for the battlefield and the bedside, the Cleric’s Soft Wood Scepter of Chilling is a conduit. Wielded by healers and warders alike, its icy caress slows enemies just enough to ease the path of a rescue, while its cooler breath recharges the suture of focus for allies who must stand their ground. In skirmishes, it feels less like brute force and more like a measured, winter-light strategy: a pulse to chill aggression, a ripple that steadies nerves, a closing of distance with grace. The scepter’s charge can thread through a line of defenders, turning a surge into a measured retreat, or help a lone carrier slip from danger toward safety. Its presence in groups becomes a shared memory—an emblem that tells allies, “We are not rushing in, we are moving with the earth’s own measure.” Prices, of course, travel through the city’s lanes like rumor on a cold wind, and Saddlebag Exchange is a quiet, wheeled heartbeat in the market’s chest. I watched a dealer list a scepter there, the ledger glinting with copper and silver, the price shifting with the week’s weather and demand. A patient trade—perhaps a small cache of rare resin, a handful of salvaged relics, a promise to fetch a second-hand paragon’s blessing—could secure it, or the scepter could be earned with a careful quest and a steady hand. In any case, the scepter leaves the story with its new owner, carrying forward the quiet pact between warmth and frost that birthed it in the first place.