Rampager's Soft Wood Torch of Venom

Rampager's Soft Wood Torch of Venom rests in my hand like a pale, living shard of the forest, its shaft a smooth, honeyed soft wood that glows faintly beneath a weathered lacquer. Carved along its length are serpentine runes that catch the lamplight and seem to ripple with a life of their own, while a brass nozzle, dulled by rain and travel, tapers into a wick soaked in a venomous resin. The grip is wrapped in worn leather so that it sits as naturally in the palm as a familiar friend, and when you tilt it just so, a pale green breath of flame flickers at the tip, as if the lantern itself remembers every thorn and river it has crossed. It isn’t merely a tool; it feels like a link to a forgotten pact among those who walked the marshes and learned to listen to venom rather than fear it. The wood’s softness lends a quiet warmth to the world around it, and the scent—sage, sap, and a hint of something bite-sized and dangerous—drifts through the air like a whispered warning. In the field, the Rampager’s torch is more than light. Its venom-infused flame doesn’t burn so much as it clarifies—an ally that helps you press forward when the swamp fog clings to your boots and the shadows collect like wary birds. When you strike the wick to life, the torch gives off a ghost of green haze that seems to slow the world for a heartbeat, revealing the faint glimmer of hidden spore caves and the rusted glint of old weapons buried in the leaf litter. It’s a companion in tense negotiations with the night: the glow makes old glyphs along ruined walls legible again, and the venom’s scent keeps the air taut, as if the forest itself expects you to prove yourself worthy of walking through where others falter. Those who carry it learn to read light differently, to anticipate danger by the way the green halo sinks or rises with every breath of wind. The torch’s lore sits close to the heart of its usefulness. Rampager’s gear is associated with ferocity and swift, decisive action, and this torch feels like a companion to that ethos: it heightens your senses without weighing you down, turning every shadow into a potential clue and every corridor into a corridor worth fighting for. It’s whispered in the market as a relic of a time when healers traded cures for courage and scouts braided venom with light to walk the untamed paths. People tell stories of explorers who lit their way through necrotic swamps, never looking back, because the torch kept a path visible and an enemy at bay. I found it once, tucked between crates at the edge of the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders hawk trinkets from distant caravans. The stall’s skein of leather straps and coin clinks made a soft chorus as I bartered. The vendor set the price at twelve silver, a sum that felt fair for something that could turn a night into a map—negotiable, of course, if you offered a vial of venom-touched oil or a scroll of shelter from the rain. In the end, the torch found a hand that would carry it forward, and so the story continues, lit by green breath against the dark, a reminder that the world still has pathways worth walking, even when venom waits to greet you at the door.