Cleric's Soft Wood Focus

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus rests in my palm like a relic carved from a quiet river, a slender shaft of pale wood smoothed to a satin finish, the grain curling in intimate whorls as if the tree still exhales. Its surface bears the careful touch of hands long practiced in healing craft, with sigils of healing etched in shallow, patient lines and filled with a warm resin that catches the light and breathes a faint amber glow. A narrow leather thong wraps near the base, frayed at the edges from years of travel, and at the tip a tiny milky bead sits, catching a glimmer of dawn and keeping it close as a patient would keep a promise. The whole thing feels alive with stories, as if it has learned the road, the weather, and the burden of a dozen pilgrims who carried it before me. Lore says this focus was born from a grove that survived when other sanctuaries fell silent, carved by hands that believed healing could be as patient as the wood it was made from. Clerics who tended the sick and guided those fleeing the night trusted the Soft Wood to hold steady their prayers even as marches or skirmishes pressed in from all sides. In their hands, it becomes more than a tool; it is a tether between ritual and relief, between the heart’s quiet insistence on endurance and the body’s stubborn will to mend. In the field, the focus is a conduit. Wielded by keepers of light and balm, it channels the prayers that turn into wards, into renewals, into the calm after a clash. When laid on the field, it promises a thread of healing power that threads through allies, opening small windows of mercy where hope has frayed. In moments of danger it offers a shield of resolve, a brief sanctuary of vigor that helps a frontline priest or guardian coax a wounded scout back from collapse. The focus doesn’t shout; it hums, a soft reminder that mercy can be precise and strong, not merely generous and loud. On a dusty market day I followed a procession of merchants and wanderers through the lanes that cradle the city’s edge. A weathered ledger clipped to a stall spoke in a tone of practical reverence about the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus, noting its rarity and the quiet demand it commands among healers who prize steadiness as much as power. The price, quoted in whisper and measured coins, drifted toward the Saddlebag Exchange, that informal crossroads where travelers and traders trade memories as readily as metal. There, a cleric’s soft wood focus rested briefly in the palm of a merchant queen’s apprentice, priced at a modest two silver and fifty copper, a sum that buys more than metal—it buys the chance to cradle a moment of mercy when it’s most needed. As I turned away, the focus glowed softly again, as if the wood remembered every life it has touched and every road it has walked. It is a piece of the world that remains faithful to its calling—a token of healing that travels with its bearer, turning quiet rituals into visible acts of care. In the end, the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus feels less like a thing and more like a memory made tangible, a compass for the heart when the map grows uncertain.