Berserker's Soft Wood Focus

Berserker's Soft Wood Focus rests on a leather-wrapped pedestal, its pale wood seeming almost to glow in candlelight. The wood is soft to the touch, with a velvet-smooth surface where the artisan's gouges left a delicate lattice of grain. A rune-carved band circles the center, its sigils pressed with a thin, iron-gray inlay that catches the flame and flares into sparks whenever the focus meets steel. The head is compact, the facets cut to catch air and breath, the small knob at the tail polished until it feels like a seed of heat in your palm. The look is both rustic and ceremonial: a tool built for quiet forests and loud battle, a bridge between two worlds. The lore whispers that the focus was carved from a sapling blessed by a forest spirit, grown in a grove tended by veterans who survived the first siege of the old wars. When the wood matured, they tempered it with ash from a fallen banner, binding the focus to its owner's intent with a promise of ferocity and balance. The result is a piece that seems to breathe, not through magic alone, but through the memory of every swing, every oath sworn beside a campfire. In the world, wielders find it more than a weapon; it is a signal. Guardians and revenants alike hold it to their side in quiet moments, letting the wood's warmth anchor a plan before a clashing chorus of steel erupts. When the focus clicks in hand, the wielder feels the tension in the muscles tighten into a rhythm—like a drumbeat that only the devoted can hear. It doesn't just buff stats; it tunes the body to the pace of battle, granting a momentary edge that makes a leap or a parry land with a storyteller's certainty. The wood's resilience—the way it yields without breaking—teaches patience to those who lean into its weight, reminding them that even berserk fury must be tempered by craft. Market stalls in the city cluster with rumors about this item. One morning, a dealer at Saddlebag Exchange laid out a pristine example on a linen cloth, its light sheen catching the morning dust as if stars clung to the grain. The price tag looked almost laughable to some: a few gold coins for a focus said to have survived more campaigns than anyone alive. Yet the chatter shows respect as well as desire. Buyers haggle over chimes and trade scraps, not just for power but for story—for a piece they can carry into the next skirmish and later tell to a child about the night they stood in a cold hall and chose to fight with focus rather than with fear. So the Berserker's Soft Wood Focus travels between hands, its story growing with every touch, until the forest itself feels close enough to lean on in heat and noise of the battlefield. Its wood remembers every hand that held it, and every battlefield it graced, as if the forest itself keeps watch.