Rampager's Soft Wood Focus of Ogre Slaying

Rampager's Soft Wood Focus of Ogre Slaying rests on a scarred workshop bench, its shape a gentle arc of pale wood that seems almost alive in the lamplight. The wood—soft as ash yet stubborn in its grain—dispenses a honeyed sheen where fingers have traced it for years. A narrow row of runes runs along the spine, etched with a jeweler's care, the letters catching coppery highlights as the light shifts. At its heart sits a small amber gem, a spirit-glass core that flickers faintly whenever magic stirs nearby. The brass cap at the tip is carved with tiny ferns, and the opposite end wears a worn grip of leather that mends to a hunter's palm. It feels warm to the touch, as if the wood remembers the hands that carried it through mist and mud, through two cycles of ogre-sightings and skirmishes at the forest edge. Locals tell a story in hushed tones: the wood was salvaged from a fallen elder tree after a skirmish where ogres pressed a village's gates, and in the aftermath a ranger-smith carved it into a talisman meant to focus those who would face the ogre's rage again. The name Rampager's hints that its first bearer kept pace with ferocious swings—the kind of blows that break shield and skull with a measured patience. Some say the sigils are the forest's memory, recording victories and near-misses and turning danger into a guide for restraint. On the field, the focus is not a flashy spell but a companion that nudges a fighter's tempo. Those who carry it report that when the aura flares, the first strike lands with a cleaner cut, the second follows with a greater chance to crit, and the focus seems to guard against the worst missteps—the stumbles that let ogres close a gap. In Rampager builds, it belongs to the toolkit that seeks to blend raw power with the fortitude to weather a melee storm. It isn't about blasting through armor with loud magic; it's about shaping a fight: a parry, a punishing riposte, and a path through ogre ranks carved by careful, deliberate blows. Trade talk around the river market often threads this piece into conversations about value. In the bustle of Saddlebag Exchange, a few merchants will name a price in gold that drifts between the mid single digits and the low teens, depending on horned talk of scarcity and the buyer's reputation. One vendor, her stall smelling faintly of resin and linen, will note that a Rampager's Soft Wood Focus of Ogre Slaying can fetch around nine gold coins in fair weather, sometimes dipping when the market flags. The price isn't only about metal and wood; it's about stories, about the man who carried it into a dozen dawns and the ogres that finally learned to respect a patient hand. Cradled in the palm, the focus is a compact chronicle—a weapon for the mind as much as the hand, a reminder that some oaths are kept in wood and light and the echo of a brave hunter's steps.