Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of the Geomancer

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of the Geomancer sits in the palm like a seed waiting to sprout, a slab of pale, honeyed wood carved to resemble a miniature staff crowned with a smooth, emerald flame of glass set in a brass bezel. Its surface is softly porous to the touch, as if the tree itself remembered every rainfall, every tremor, and every footstep that crossed its soil. The grain runs in tight, sleepy rings, and along the length there are delicate runes incised with the mercy of a patient hand—geode-blue sigils that seem to pulse when the object catches a stray beam. A fungus-green lichen, almost a whisper of a sculpture rather than a growth, clings to the base, catching light and turning it to a thousand glints. It feels alive, as if a tiny woodland chorus hums through the wood whenever someone breathes on it; and when it rests against the skin, you can feel a quiet hum beneath your pulse, a whisper of the earth’s slow, stubborn heartbeat. Locals tell a story of a geomancer-priest who wandered the basalt wastes, listening for the soft tremors that traveled through stone and soil. They say the Cleric’s Soft Wood Focus was carved from a branch salvaged at the moment a spring-fed cavern cracked open to give the world a new map of its own bones. The tool isn’t merely aesthetic—a conduit whispered to connect the wearer to the bedrock beneath their feet, coaxing minerals to respond to intent, to hold, heal, or unmake with a careful press of the wrist. The lore threads the focus through temples and tethered caravans alike: a scholar’s companion on a canyon survey, a healer’s brace during a drought, a broker’s steady hand when the land itself seems to bargain with time. In practice, the focus is a patient instrument, designed for the Geomancer’s discipline yet irresistible to anyone who wants a touch of the earth’s agency in combat or restoration. Wielded, it channels earth-ward magic into shields that breathe stone into the air, into healing that feels like the slow seep of mineral water through cracked skin, and into tremor-laced wards that bend the ground to protect those who stand too close to a cliff’s edge. It’s not flashy, but it is precise: a careful tap of wood can anchor a circle of earth-drawn wards, or coax a glimmer of mineral energy to seal a rift in the party’s defenses. The texture—soft, almost velvety—makes every action feel deliberate, as if the focus asks you to slow down, to think with the land rather than against it. Market days tint the air with coppery tangs of metal and resin. I watched a trader at Saddlebag Exchange unwrap a similar piece, the wood breathing warm as if warmed by a kiln that never fully burned out. The price drifted in silver, then settled as stories and seasons shifted; a traveler traded a small coil of rope and a pinch of dried herbs for it, bargaining down from a stranger’s high expectation to a fair, earth-steady offer. The transaction wasn’t merely monetary—it was a transfer of a quiet philosophy: that the ground can be a patient ally when you learn to listen, and that a focus like this one is less a weapon and more a conversation with the world beneath your feet.