Cleric's Soft Wood Torch of Corruption

Cleric's Soft Wood Torch of Corruption sits in the palm like a seed of shadow, its shaft a pale, almost weathered cream of softwood that trembles with a quiet heartbeat when gripped. The grain runs like thin rivers beneath a satin finish, smooth to the touch yet somehow grain-dusted with ash from ages of ritual fires. A dull brass head clamps the top, etched with sigils that curl into the air when the torch is raised, and a wick scorched black sits at its heart, as if it has swallowed a dozen midnight prayers and kept their ashes. The flame that roars to life is not orange or gold but a stubborn, sickly green, a ribbon of light that breathes and flickers with a life of its own. The whole thing radiates that curious paradox common in relics—soft to the touch, almost comforting in its warmth, and yet steeped in a memory of corruption that gnaws at the edge of calm. In the worn stories of the road, this torch is not merely a tool but a storyteller. It was said to have been carved for a cleric who refused to bow entirely to the creeping shadow along the rift-laced coast, a keeper who believed that even corruption could be coaxed toward revelation rather than surrender. The wood remembers hands that prayed, and the brass head holds echoes of whispered oaths. When night crowds the trail and the world tightens its grip, the Cleric's Soft Wood Torch of Corruption becomes a small, stubborn beacon—a signal to fellow travelers that there is still a path through the dark, even when the path is lined with the memory of things that should have stayed asleep. The glow it casts seems to push back only the surface of fear, not its root, and yet that modest push is enough to keep a campfire from becoming a mausoleum. Its significance in gameplay emerges as a natural extension of its lore. The torch serves as a portable ward, a light source that both reveals and repels. When carried into corrupt-tinged ruins, it can reveal hidden sigils etched into the walls, triggering ritual mechanics that would otherwise lie dormant. In combat, its green flame can disrupt certain necrotic effects, a subtle but meaningful advantage for explorers who must thread through areas where corruption clings to the air like damp cloth. More than that, the torch acts as a catalyst for encounters—part of a larger chain of quests and investigations where lighting the right brazier or unsealing a corroded shrine moves a story forward. It is a relic that props open the door between the living and the taint, offering a chance to purify or at least understand what stains the world’s memories. As stories travel through the market corridors of the world, the torch finds itself traded and bargained over with equal measures of reverence and practicality. Saddlebag Exchange becomes a kind of crossroads for these relics: a scrupulous buyer weighing the torch’s value against the risk of attracting the wrong kind of attention, a merchant counting on the allure of mystery to fetch a fair price. In whispers, the price drifts—roughly eight to twelve silver pieces, depending on the market’s pulse and the hooded rumors that accompany a night market—though some traders swap for a jar of night pollen or a fragment of preserved dusk. For the right hand, the Cleric's Soft Wood Torch of Corruption is more than metal and flame; it is a thread—a story that can be pulled to unravel a larger history, or perhaps to illuminate a future where light, even of an unquiet kind, leads the way.