Berserker's Soft Wood Torch of Hobbling

Berserker's Soft Wood Torch of Hobbling sits in the palm, a slender beacon carved from pale, soft-grained wood that has forgotten nothing of rain or road dust. Its shaft gleams with a waxy patina, the grain curling like a map of long-ago wounds, and the head is bound in weathered rawhide, stitched with copper thread that catches the light as if it possessed a pulse. A small amber ember glows within a brass brazier, kept alive by careful breaths and resin-wax that fans out in a coffee-colored ring along the rim. Runes etched in a wind-worn script march along the length, telling stories of berserkers who trusted flame to cut through fog, fear, and the sudden scream of night. The Soft Wood itself feels almost warm to the touch, as if the tree that bore it carried a memory of a summer storm and shared its stubborn resilience with whoever held it. The Hobbling in the name is not mere theater; it is a lore-bound whisper among frontier scouts and roadwarders—the belief that fire, when wielded with discipline, can tighten a chase and slow the stride of a foe who would flee into the dark. People speak of the torch as a companion in long marches, a lantern for the night when the road suddenly forks into whispering pines and the shadow of an ambush seems almost polite enough to ignore. The craft, too, betrays a lineage of hands trained to balance fury with focus: blunt grooves for a steady grip, a weight that keeps your elbow locked, and a wick that refuses to surrender its glow even after a dozen tours of torchlight through rain. In the wild, the torch is more than a spark—it's a character that interacts with the world. When swung, the flame reveals hidden tracks in the muck, traces of tar and clay where a hunter might have stood. In tight corridors, the warm halo it casts turns a black maw of stone into a readable map, letting a fighter time a strike with a precision that feels almost tactical. The Berserker’s mark on the blade-touched world is amplified by the torch’s embers: not only does the wearer boast heightened aggression and the cadence of a brutal pace, but the glow itself steadies nerves, clarifies silhouettes, and makes a campsite feel less like a trap and more like a planned stop on a journey. Even the lore of Hobbling—whether thought of as a pact, a technique, or a superstition—feeds into the narrative the moment the brass head flares and sends a ripple of light across a pile of fallen branches or a slick cobblestone street. On a fog-washed dawn I watched a dealer at Saddlebag Exchange lay the torch on a cloth of rough linen, the brass cap catching a sliver of sun and breathing back a warm, stubborn gleam. The price was anchored to the week’s chatter—the haggled increments of silver and copper trading hands as mercantile caravans flickered in and out of the square. Nine silver and a handful of copper, the vendor said, shifting the weight of memory with the same care that had etched the runes. A curious buyer tucked the torch away with a reverent nod, as if purchasing not only a weapon or a tool but a story that could be carried for miles, through rain and rumor, toward the next line in the road. By dusk the torch rests again in its place, but its glow lingers in the evening air—the kind of glow that makes travelers lean a little closer to one another, listening for the soft crackle of a flame and the promise of a road that remains open, if only for a little while longer.