Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn of Agony

Rampager's Soft Wood Warhorn of Agony rests on a rough oak counter, its body carved from pale, almost bone-colored softwood that holds a subtle springy give under your fingers. The horn sweeps in a generous arc, the bore broad enough to swallow a whispered command, and its surface glints with a lattice of runes burned into the wood and inlaid with brass that has darkened to coppery patina. A wick-soft glow lingers in the grain, as if the wood remembers the fingered calm before a storm. The mouthpiece is worn smooth by generations of lips, the edges rounded by use, and a strip of leather wraps the base where it meets the grip. A frayed tag tied with twine records its origin—crafted in a Rampager’s scriptorium, tempered by the roar of banners and the bite of frost, then seasoned in a field’s damp shadow. The "of Agony" suffix seems less a name than a vow, a pact between wood, wind, and the throats of soldiers who once stood shoulder to shoulder and learned to shoulder the weight of pain. In the mouth of a veteran, the horn hums before it’s blown, a kind of prelude that makes the air feel heavier. When the first breath passes over the lip, the room tilts a fraction, and the chorus inside the horn awakens—a chorus of echoes from battles long settled in memory. It does not merely announce a charge; it threads sound through the body like a cord, tugging at courage and caution in equal measure. Those who march with it swear the weapon carries the world’s ache, a reminder that victory is not free, but earned in the throat’s steady breath and the drum of feet on hardened ground. In steady hands, it becomes a tool for more than menace: a rallying cry that steadies the line, a warning to foes, and a conduit for a healer’s energy to thread through a skirmish with sharpened intent. Prices drift through the market’s fevered air as stories are traded along the way to Saddlebag Exchange, where a careful dealer weighs memory against metal. A buyer might offer a handful of gold, another a promise of future trade, yet the horn resists quick bargains; its worth seems to grow the longer it sits in a camp corner, listening to distant drums. Still, a price is named, and the tale of this weapon passes from trader to hunter, from campfire glare to rain-smudged window, until the next escort of riders comes to claim it, or to ask it to carry them from one fragment of war to the next. And so the Rampager’s Soft Wood Warhorn of Agony remains—not merely a tool but a veteran’s ledger, etched in wood and sound, a relic that remembers the pain of victory and the grace it buys in the moment when the line holds or breaks.