Berserker's Soft Wood Scepter of Ogre Slaying rests on a weather-worn cloth, its pale sapwood catching the lamplight with a quiet, almost shy glow. The shaft is slender and smooth, the grain curling like a map of old battles told in wood, warm to the touch and never cold as steel. The head of the scepter is carved into a snarling ogre’s maw, teeth carved in precise, deliberate notches, a ring of muted brass binding the jaw to the shaft. The wood’s surface bears the tiny scars of a hundred encounters—little nicks where a blow glanced off, a smear of resin that hints at rain-soaked days spent in the warrens of the frontier. Runes, etched in dark ink and sealed with resin, spiral down the length of the handle, each symbol a token from a long line of berserkers who believed fury could be tempered by ritual and wood alike. It feels surprisingly light, as if the soft wood itself longs to give way to action, to be used and then carefully put away again, only to be drawn anew when ogres drum their war chants in the distance. Lore says the scepter was born in a timber town that stood at the edge of a swamp where ogres sometimes wandered as if drawn by memory of ancient quarrels. A legendary Berserker, famed for a roar that could shake loose the leaves from the trees, carved this emblem into the stave after a victory that turned a riverbank into a field of ash and seed. The ogre’s head—more memory than sculpture—was meant to remind its wielder of restraint and purpose: the bite of the weapon matched by the bravery to walk away when the moment no longer serves. Since then, the soft wood has become a conduit for a particular kind of courage, one that recognizes both peril and mercy in equal measure and uses the scepter’s light touch to channel a healer’s steadiness or a hunter’s precision depending on the moment’s need. In gameplay, the scepter has always carried a reputation for weaving the wielder’s stamina with a feral, but controlled, temper. Those who have held it speak of a steadying breeze in the heat of the fight—a surge that steadies the hands, sharpens the eye, and lends a second breath when the ogre drums grow loud. Parry, strike, and a whispered chant—these are the rhythms that the Soft Wood Scepter seems to request, inviting the wielder to balance aggression with restraint, to fight not only for glory but for another dawn. Its uses whisper through the group, turning skirmishes into coordinated plays where a well-timed thrust and a measured roar can turn a charge into a retreat, and a retreat into a plan. On a bustling market day, a trader at the Saddlebag Exchange laid the scepter atop a velvet cloth, describing its history with a practiced reverence that drew curious eyes. The price—two gold and thirty silver—found its way into a traveler’s hands after a careful weighing of memory against market sense, a reminder that some things, even in a crowded bazaar, are valued as much by story as by coin. The exchange was a chorus of muffled haggling and soft laughter, but the scepter’s quiet presence kept its own counsel, a reminder that some relics merely wait for the right voice to awaken them again.