Rampager's Soft Wood Torch of Fire

Rampager's Soft Wood Torch of Fire sits in my palm like a small, living flame. The thing feels half wood and half memory: a slender shaft of pale softwood, its grain running in river-veins, the surface sanded to a velvet smoothness that warms to the touch as if the wood itself remembers heat. The head is clamped with a narrow iron collar, a wick bound in leather and wax that smells of resin when it catches the first spark. Its glow is not a single color but a slow, breathing amber, with a pale blue core that only shows when the flame is tucked close to old sigils engraved along the stave. You can tell a careful hand carved this—Rampager's mark, a hunter's sigil, pressed into the wood in a circle of runes that promise steadiness through rain and night. In the field, the torch is both tool and talisman. It lights up a tunnel like a tether to the world beyond the darkness, reveals hidden runes etched in crumbling stone, and pours a shoulder of warmth onto cold, bruised fingers. The Soft Wood Torches burn clean, with a steady flame that doesn’t gutter under damp air, and that reliability is what keeps scouts from straying when the night closes in. When used in the right hands, its heat loosens resin-slick drips on the walls, making some treacherous corners less slippery for a careful step. Its value isn’t merely in the light; it’s in the way a flame can pull a party together—one spark, and a circle of voices forms around a small, bright center. The lore whispers that Rampager's torches were once standard gear for forward scouts who moved stalwartly through ruined camps after the fall of a great log-wood fortress. This one, though, carries a touch more history: a signature burn that seems to respond to a veteran's hand, as if the flame recognizes the tread of a certain road-worn pathfinder. It’s not a weapon, in the strict sense, but in a pinch the torch becomes a blunt reminder to a suddenly tense group, a shield against the creeping shadow and a signal to comrades buried under the ripple of footsteps and wind. It burns away fear as effectively as it burns oil-flecked tinder, and it smells of pine smoke and home. On the market path, the stalls of Saddlebag Exchange hum with brisk barter. I watch a trader talk down a hunter’s satchel and then lift the Rampager's Soft Wood Torch of Fire as if it were ember. The clerk’s eyes measure the flame and the worth of its memory, naming a price that sits in the air like a coin you hear clink. A handful of silver, perhaps with a trade for a map or a spare wick roll. It’s part of a larger exchange—stories for flame—because in this world a torch is not only a source of light but a beacon that keeps a caravan moving and a campfire alive when the night yields. Tonight.