Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn

Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn rests on a sun-warmed counter, its pale grain catching the light like a whispered legend. The instrument's body is carved from soft wood, smooth to the touch but threaded with tiny ridges where fingers once traced battle maps. The mouthpiece is darker, worn by breaths drawn and released in spurts of tempo, as if the horn itself inhales the room before each blast. Along its flank run slender runes—practical marks rather than showy sigils—coldly eloquent in their promise: call the herd, steady the front, keep your pace when the road grows long. The edges wear a soft amber glaze from years of sun and rain, and a faint resinous scent clings to the wood, a reminder of the forest that fed it. In lore, it is said to have been forged from the heartwood of a stout, patient tree spared by fire, then treated by a guild of warm carvers who knew that a horn must breathe as much as the hunter who wields it. The Rampager who owned it first walked with beasts at her side, listening for threats in the brush, and every blow of the horn stitched a story of loyalty into its hollow chambers. In the thick of skirmishes, the warhorn does more than mark a moment of charge. Its notes ripple through the line, waking the sluggish limbs of the weary and stitching courage into the lungs of those who have fought through long hours. Players speak of its rhythm as if it were a heartbeat you can borrow, a way to synchronize a camp’s tempo or to coax a struggling group into a tighter circle. When blown with purpose, it conjures a sense of momentum, a temporary boon to movement and focus that can tilt the balance just enough for a second wind to arrive. Some quiet evenings in field camps reveal a dozen horn-blown echoes curling into the air, each tone a thread in the same tapestry: a hunter’s oath, a guardian’s vow, a friend’s quiet plea to stand together. Market mornings bring a different kind of scene. Traders at Saddlebag Exchange tilt their hats and weigh the wood, judging not only the sound but the promise in its fibers. The price, they tell a curious passerby, moves with weather and demand, sometimes skirting a silver or two in the right season, sometimes resting at a touch more when a known rampager seeks her emblem anew. The truth, though, lies in the horn’s second life: in the way a veteran taps the mouthpiece and smiles, knowing that a single breath can rally a camp, calm a skittish scout, or remind a wandering apprentice that courage can be shaped from soft wood and loud, faithful sound. For travelers crossing frost-bloomed marches, it becomes a companion, turning risk into rhythm and strangers into watchers, watchers into allies. When the horn rests, the forest seems to approve the journey, as if every gust carries a memory of the vow it once sounded.