Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of Bloodlust

Cleric's Soft Wood Focus of Bloodlust sits in a glass-topped case, its pale frame carved from spring-soft sapwood that still carries a faint, resinous hum. The wood’s grain swirls like pale water, and the surface is so delicately sanded that you can run a fingertip along it without catching a single splinter. A small, octahedral gem, ruby-dark and almost ember-warmed to the touch, is set near the tip, surrounded by a lattice of copper filaments that braid along the length of the focus as if they’re veins carrying a private current. The runes burned into the grain—thin, precise lines of ink-black magic—trace sigils from a forgotten rite, catching the glow of any nearby flame and throwing it back in short, flickering sparks. The finish is a satin sheen that makes the whole thing seem to breathe with a patient, almost inaudible rhythm, as though the wood itself is listening for a need to answer. Lore says it was carved by a cleric who walked the narrow path between mercy and hunger, a keeper of sanctified blood who believed power could be coaxed from the body’s own tremors without tearing the person apart. In the hands of a bearer, the focus becomes a quiet, intimate chorus rather than a thunderous weapon. While the world insists on bright displays of force, this item speaks in a softer cadence: it channels the wearer’s vitality into focused bursts of power, and in return the bloodlust within the stone seems to murmur approval, a steady pulse that grows stronger as the user harms or heals with precision. The lore-threads around it describe a lineage of clerics who learned to bend the raw hunger of life toward protection and cleansing, never letting the feast tip into ruin. In practical terms, the Cleric’s Soft Wood Focus of Bloodlust lends its strength to short, decisive engagements—spurring a quick, disciplined cadence of strikes, sharpening the user’s ability to weave lifeforce into resilience, and granting a notable boost to persistence when battles demand restraint as much as ferocity. Players don’t simply equip it; they invite its history to ride along, letting the focus’s quiet current guide careful decisions—when to push healing, when to press the offense, and when to swallow a growing urge to seal a fight with a single, decisive moment. Market chatter around such an artifact rarely remains quiet for long. I found a tight, sun-warmed corner of the saddle-rack district where merchants talk softly about demand as if it were a tide. At Saddlebag Exchange, the clerks measure worth not just in coins but in stories—how many nights the wood slept in a shrine, what battles it witnessed, which hands it passed through before landing in a buyer’s palm. Today, a pristine example with just enough glow to hint at its inner drive is priced in a way that will make a patient buyer balk at the thrill of a quick sale, and a willing one grin at the investment. The price floats, shifting with the room’s appetite, with tales of a recent purchase that slid from a cautious two gold toward more generous figures as rusted hinges clicked and the gem shivered a new spark. The exchange isn’t merely a marketplace; it’s a living archive where the worth of a sacred wood and its blood-honed purpose is renegotiated with every whispered negotiation, every careful offer, and every nod that says, “Yes, this is the right kind of history to carry forward.”