Cleric's Soft Wood Focus

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus rests in my palm, a slender rectangle of pale, honeyed wood that seems to hum with a patient warmth. The grain curls in soft ribbons across its face, as if wind had written a quiet prayer there, and the edges have been rounded by years of careful handling until they feel almost like a shoreline worn smooth by the tide. A shallow groove runs its center, cradling a tiny amber core that glows faintly when the lamps dim and the world grows quiet. On the sides, delicate runes are carved with patient care, their lines softened by time, telling a hymn not spoken but remembered—an elegy to healing and restraint. The scent of resin and sun-warmed wood lingers when you lift it, a fragrance that feels almost like a memory of fields and quiet chapels. Locals say the wood itself carries a memory—the soft heartwood of a grove tended by clerics who believed in healing as a living covenant. The focus is more than ornament; it is a conduit, a hand-held vessel that gathers discipline and devotion and releases them as healing light. In those stories, the amber core holds a seed of life, a speck of warmth that responds to the user’s breath and heartbeat, brightening whenever a prayer is whispered aloud or a patient is steadied by a steady, supported hand. The carvings around its rim are not mere decoration but a map of trust: wards that deflect despair, sigils that slow the pace of fear, a pledge that even the softest wood can bear the heaviest burdens when tended with care. In practical terms, the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus is a healer's instrument as much as a talisman. Wielded as a focus, it gathers the user’s energy and channels it into restorative gifts, amplifying the strength of healing skills and guiding protective wards to where they are most needed. It feels lighter than its weight would imply, a quiet reminder that healing is less about force and more about presence—an attentive partner who stands between harm and the fragile spark of life. In the right hands, its amber core flickers with a tide-like rhythm, syncing with the caster’s breath and turning a tense moment into a glimmer of relief. Its lore ties it to a lineage of clerics who walked into ruined sanctuaries with lanterns of patience, leaving behind little relics like this focus to mark the path of those who follow. On a pocketed street that smells of rain and leather, I watched a trader negotiate a moment’s memory with the Saddlebag Exchange. The market’s chatter rose and fell like a tide, and the focus moved between fingers as if it remembered every patient it had ever steadied. Prices drifted with the weather and the stories traded by merchants who know every bargain hides a prayer; it was said a few silver could secure a piece like this, a price that could rise or fall with the crowd’s need and the temple’s rumor. I walked away with it tucked safely in my satchel, and the focus felt heavier with significance than with steel, as if its lineage and its promise had found a new home in my care. It travels now with the keeper who learned to listen to the room before the room learned to listen to him, and in his hands the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus continues its quiet work, a soft beacon in the dark.