Cleric's Soft Wood Warhorn of Blood

Cleric's Soft Wood Warhorn of Blood rests on the table like a found note from a long-vanished choir: the body carved from pale, sun-bleached soft wood, its grain curling like quiet rivers under a thin lacquer. The mouthpiece is wrapped in weathered leather, threads fraying where fingers would have gripped it in a rush to prayer. Along its length, delicate reliefs of thorned vines coil toward a small sigil at the bell; when the sigil catches lamplight, it blooms a faint crimson glow, as if the horn remembers a wound long healed. Whispers say this thing was forged in a temple workshop, from heartwood rescued after a plague of blood-magic haunted the precincts. The wood’s name—soft wood—describes not fragility but the way it drinks words and songs, bending them into sound. Those who hold it feel a warmth travel up the horn when the chants begin; the glow tightens, and a faint scent of resin and iron lingers, like rain after a storm. The lore surrounding it speaks of clerics who learned to harmonize mercy with consequence, turning a scream into a hymn that steadies the marching feet of those who would otherwise falter. In the world where its legend travels, the horn is less a weapon and more a companion—a quiet promise to the weary. When drawn, it pours a resonant note that washes over friends and foes alike. The healing melody pours back into the party, mending minor hurts with almost tangible threads of light, while the deeper notes thread a shield that softens blows and buys seconds for a retreat or a counterstrike. It feels like a living instrument, responding to the sender’s breath and the room’s breathless tension, as if the horn itself has learned to listen to the prayers whispered in its shadow. In skirmishes and sieges, its voice cuts through din, a reminder that mercy can be a strategic force as surely as spear and spell. Players speak of its versatility: a healer’s delight in a crowded room, a ward’s whisper during a plunge into ruin, a ritual partner for those who walk the line between blood and blessing. The warhorn’s significance stretches beyond mechanics into a larger tale of faith and consequence. Some lore-keepers insist the Cleric’s Soft Wood recalls the names of those saved by the healers who once tended the wounded in ruined temples, singling out the living for protection while not erasing the cost paid by the fallen. In this way, the horn embodies a delicate balance in the world: every note of mercy invites a duty to remember, and every shield raised invites a choice about what blood is spent to keep others breathing. Market whispers drift through the corridors of the saddle-street bazaar as surely as the horn’s hum when tipped to the light. On Saddlebag Exchange, a bustling, barter-minded hub for wanderers and merchants, a few listings hover in the same breath as rumor: the Cleric's Soft Wood Warhorn of Blood commonly fetches around eight gold pieces, sometimes more if a buyer offers rare runes or salvaged relics to sweeten the deal. Prices sway with need, with memory, with how loudly the world recalls the clerics who once walked its streets. It’s not merely a transaction; it’s a passing of stories, a transfer of responsibility, a way for a stranger to join the old choir for a little while longer. And so the horn travels, sometimes resting in a knapsack between fights, sometimes perched by a hearth where prayers are whispered into the night. Its beauty lies not just in its wood or its glow, but in the way it keeps asking who will lead with mercy when the world grows loudest.