Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of the Geomancer

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of the Geomancer is a slender piece of pale ash, its grain winding like a quiet river under lamplight, the surface satin-smooth from years of patient handling. A copper ring circles the base, etched with sigils—the earth rune, a sprouting fern, and braided roots—that catch the glow as you turn it, tiny halos blooming where flame falls upon it. The ends are carved with subtle vein-work, as if the wood itself remembered the feel of soil and stone, and the midsection bears shallow grooves that invite a thumb to map their secret geography. The whole thing exudes a warmth that's almost fragrant, a scent of rain-washed wood after a long drought, as though the focus drew its power from the living timber rather than from any manufactured strength. Lore threads through its polished surface a tale of a sapling that grew in the outskirts of a geomancer’s circle, nurtured by clerical chants that asked the ground to listen. They say the tree bent toward the whisper of earth, and when it finally yielded its first leaf, a cleric’s vow settled into the grain. To hold the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus is to borrow that vow: to hear the soil’s patient counsel, to translate the ground’s tremors into decisions that protect the living and anchor the fragile with stone and seed. The focus seems to carry a memory of roots wriggling through damp caves, a memory the leather strap and copper ring coax into a steady, almost communal breath when held by a trusted hand. In practical terms, the item acts as a conduit for earth-aligned magic, a channel that makes geomantic training feel tangible and intimate. Those who wield it discover their wards and barriers tightens to a mother’s hold, while mineral pulses travel through the wood with a measured heartbeat, granting steadier energy to earth-warded techniques. It is not merely decoration; it is a compact to the world’s oldest builders—the miners, the root-writers, the stone-singers—offering increased resonance for restorative rites and defensive invocations. Healers and guardians alike learn to time their calls to the ground’s cadence, as if listening to the land’s whisper while the focus politely glows in their grip. Its presence invites steadier aim and a calmer breath, a sense that even the wildest cavern walls are patient tutors when the Kerf of chaos tries to rush through a skirmish. Prices drift in markets with the same patience the earth itself insists on, and somewhere beneath a canvas awning near the Saddlebag Exchange, a trader speaks softly of the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus as if naming a relic rather than a commodity. The going chatter places it in the mid-range, a few gold here and a handful of rare shards there, with seasoned merchants nudging the price downward for a fair companion who has proven their loyalty to the craft. Bargains, like rivers, wander; a buyer’s shrewd smile and a seller’s stubborn wind can tilt the last digit by a fraction, and that tiny shift matters when you’re choosing whether to bless a tunneling party or mend a broken hillside. So the focus travels through hands and histories, carried by wanderers who hear the earth’s patient voice and refuse to ignore it. In the continuous churn of quests and quiet uprisings, the Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of the Geomancer remains a tactile reminder that some powers are meant to be worn, not just wielded—a living bridge between soil and spirit, between shelter and the step that follows after the fall of rock.