Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn of the Geomancer

Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn of the Geomancer rests on a weathered workbench, its pale wood grain breathing under the lamplight. The horn curves with a natural swell, as if a river once carved it from a living sapling, and the surface holds dozens of valleys where rain has pressed the resin into gleaming ridges. A thin brass band coils around the mouth, catching every glow and sending it back in a coppery halo. The base is wrapped in a strip of leather braided with care, the knot aging into a stubborn crease. When you cradle it, the air smells of sap and damp earth, and the carved sigils—roots curling into stones, geologic runes winding like small rivers—seem to shimmer as if listening for a distant tremor. It is a weapon, yes, but also a relic of a pact between forest and hill. Lorekeepers tell of a line of geomancers who walked the shade of culverts and quarries, coaxing the land to lift and shield. In their hands a horn like this spoke not only to creatures of flesh but to stone and soil themselves. The Rampager’s horn, they say, could loosen a soldier’s feet from marching tempo or harden the earth into a living barrier, a wall that rises when the call comes and recedes when the moment passes. Its wood, famed for its springy resilience, would not shatter under the stress of a siege; instead it yielded a tremor that jolted pursuers or steadied a toppled sentinel. In the field, its voice is a river-sculpted thing: a deep, resonant note that rolls through armor and banner, a signal that rallies weary allies with a pulse of courage. A single gusty note will steady the formation; a flurry of quick breaths can rake the ground into a shallow ramp, sending a wave of dust and roots outward to slow a flanking march. For the Geomancer, the horn is a conversation with the living earth—fingers pressing into soil until it answers, guiding roots to seize a slip of wall, or coaxing shale to part so a troop can slip through a narrow alley. Prices drift through the market like wind through pine needles, and the Saddlebag Exchange has seen its share of such relics. I watched a buyer haggle with a clerk about this horn, the paper ledger rattling with coins and copper, while the trader spoke of rain-soft timber and a geode’s memory. The listing, tucked between maps and talismans, carried a price that turned heads: three gold coins, with a patient discount if the buyer could show a map of hill routes. It wasn’t a steal, not exactly, but a promise—of hidden tunnels, of safe routes, of director’s whisper that the earth would remember your name. And so the tone of wood and earth continues to travel, from hand to hand and heart to heart, a rhythm echoing ground beneath our feet, a reminder that some tools are born to listen as much as they are born to shout.