Cleric's Soft Wood Warhorn of Corruption

The Cleric's Soft Wood Warhorn of Corruption gleams with a pale, honeyed grain, its curves smooth as a whispered vow. The soft timber feels warm to the touch, and a faint resin-dark streak runs along the bell like a vein of quiet power waiting to be coaxed into sound. The mouth is carved with an intertwined sigil of hands meeting in a circle, while the neck narrows to a tip that bears a line of slender runes, half-eroded by rain and use. Lore says it was carved by a cleric who walked between sanctuaries and shadow, choosing this pale wood for its warmth and its retentive memory, the way it holds a note the moment it is blown. When the horn is coaxed to life, it does not so much roar as exhale a slow, deliberate breath, a whisper that travels the air before bloom and ruin split the sky. In the field, its purpose feels less like a weapon and more like a story being told aloud to steady frightened hearts. The notes carry a dual gift: they bend the tide of fear and, at the same time, tighten a shield around allies. In the heat of a skirmish, the horn’s call sounds a measured cadence that unsettles roving threats—a chorus that seems to pull the corrupted whispers from enemies, forcing them to reveal their patterns. Simultaneously, those melodious bursts knit a shimmer of resolve around the party, nudging out idle panic and guiding hands back to careful, deliberate action. It is not a brute force instrument; it is a conductor, a way to marshal the chaos into a coherent, purposeful ebb and flow. The corruption it channels never fully consumes; instead, it lends the wearer a tempered edge, like a candle’s flame held steady in a gust, bright enough to light the next step but not so wild as to scorch the floor. I’ve watched a small caravan pause beneath a column of basalt when a cleric drew the horn and blew two measured notes. A hush fell, and the ground itself seemed to exhale; the air turned dense with the scent of resin and old sanctuaries as shadows withdrew and a few battered companions found the strength to push on. It felt like a hinge in the world’s old door—a reminder that light and shadow travel together, that power can heal as easily as it can wound, depending on the heart that wields it. Pricing, of course, makes its own kind of music. In the lanes near the market stalls and along the back routes of the trade winds, whispers of Saddlebag Exchange rise and fall with the horn’s allure. A buyer might offer a cache of luminescent crystals, a stack of guild marks, or a direct gold sum, while a seller measures risk against memory, patience against demand. The horn’s value is as much a ledger of journeys as it is a price tag: it costs a quiet courage to keep it close, and a louder courage to let it go.