Mighty Soft Wood Warhorn of Debility

Mighty Soft Wood Warhorn of Debility sits on a threadbare cloth, its mouth curved like a sleeping crescent. The body is carved from soft wood—perhaps cedar—its grain a pale honey that catches candlelight and seems to pulse with a living warmth. A thin brass band runs along the bell’s edge, etched with runes that whisper of old forests and bargaining winds. The surface bears small dents, each one a remembered trade—the horn once pressed into the grip of a caravan guard, then handed along to a traveling apothecary. When you tilt it, the wood gives a faint sigh, as if the horn itself remembers the moment it was first breathed upon. Legends say the horn was forged where trees reached for the sky, a craft of timber-smiths who learned to temper sound into something that could bend a fight’s tempo. When dark deeds pressed in the market, healers and captains would lend their voices to the horn, not to boast, but to steady nerves and scatter the moment of panic. The Debility itself is a subtle enchantment—bells of its breath dulling the quickness of an opponent, slowing their strike, draining their vigor as if the forest were borrowing their strength to feed its own roots. The horn’s first owners learned to use a short, controlled blast to separate skirmishes into survivable pockets, a heartbeat between danger and relief. It feels almost shy in hand, then suddenly decisive when a decision must be made under pressure. From a distance, the horn looks like a harmless relic, but in the right hands it becomes a quiet instrument of control. Wielded by a strategist or a veteran trapper, it can tilt a siege or a raid toward a more favorable rhythm. The first note is a soft, almost proud sigh; the second gathers into a deeper note that travels across the line of advance, coaxing foes into misstep and making allied lines breathe a little easier. It is less about brute power and more about timing—the horn’s magic works in concert with heals and stuns, weaving a lullaby that invites enemies to lower their guard while allies press forward. Markets in the caravan districts hummed with talk of such artifacts, and late one afternoon I followed a line of traders toward Saddlebag Exchange, a stall where wares rest beside maps and weathered coins. The clerk there weighed the horn in his palm, murmuring about supply and season: the days when soft woods flourish, the price of a bargain. A sturdy traveler negotiated, and the price—about four gold—felt steep but fair for something that could redraw a skirmish’s contour. The Saddlebag Exchange ledger bore the sale like a stamp of approval, a note that the horn’s power would travel again, across camps and crossroads, until its next owner pressed it to lips and the world found its breath once more. Out in the dawn-lit courtyard, the Mighty Soft Wood Warhorn of Debility found a new rider, its grain catching a sliver of sunlight as if to remind us that even a weapon is a memory—of forests, of markets, of the careful hands that temper sound into strength. And as the horn’s note slides through the air, you can hear the city exhale and resume its march, the forest listening, always listening, for the next twist in the road.