Cleric's Soft Wood Staff of Air

Cleric's Soft Wood Staff of Air sits propped against a weathered doorway, its pale grain gleaming like driftwood polished by rain. The shaft runs roughly six feet, light as a whisper, a breath of wood eager to be blown apart yet stubbornly refusing to yield. The wood itself feels soft to the touch, almost sponge-like, with knots that yield under a careful fingertip and then spring back into place. Along its length, the marks of storms are visible—the shallow gouges where rain once carved tiny rivers, now worn smooth by hands that have held it through many prayers. At the head, a ring of wind-etched runes encircles a polished node of lighter timber, as if a miniature cyclone had been bottled there. The grip is wrapped in worn leather, darkened by rain and time, and a small bronze clasp keeps the wrap from slipping when a healer’s hands are swaddling a patient in wind and warmth. The tip ends in a clear, faceted bead that holds an ephemeral air sigil, a pulse of pale blue light that flickers with the breath of the room when the staff is raised into a draft. This is not mere wood and metal; it is a piece of a larger memory. The Cleric's Soft Wood Staff of Air is said to have been carved by a wind-worshiping order that tended villages felled by storms, a staff that learned to listen to whispers left by those who prayed for rain and relief. In legend, healers carried it into ruined shrines where gusts rattled doors and the air itself seemed to carry the scent of resin and ozone after a thunderclap. Those stories are not just poetry; they guide a wielder to move with the wind, to lean into gusts rather than against them, to heal with a touch that feels like a warm breath rather than a spark. In the world, the staff channels wind and renewal in equal measure. When a caravan is caught in a squall, the bearer uses it to coax a trail of calm through the panic: a soft gust to tilt a shield from a biting rain, a wider breath to coax a wounded rider back into formation, a field of air that slows arrows just enough for a moment of safety. Its lore suggests that whoever wields it learns to talk to the air—the murmurs of hidden currents that guide a healer toward the closest sign of life in a ruined town. It remains a coveted tool for those who must keep hope intact when stone and sky argue. And so it moves from hand to hand, gathering stories with every exchange. On a sun-warmed morning I watch the Cleric's Soft Wood Staff of Air rest in a stall at Saddlebag Exchange, its case propped open to reveal the faint glow in the bead. The vendor, a weather-beaten trader named Nara, tells a tale as she tests the staff's balance with a practiced swing: the wood has seen storms, the sigil has seen prayers, and the air seems to carry a quiet promise. The price tag, roughly twenty silver, is not just for the wood but for the stories it has carried—of healers who stood against the gale and of towns that found shelter in a whisper of breeze. Negotiations drift around the stall like leaves in a draft, whispered offers and careful questions about durability, about how often the sigil must be tended, about whether the wind will always listen. By afternoon the deal is done, or deferred, depending on the next gust, and the cleric’s staff passes to someone who will walk with the wind instead of against it. It does not end with a trade; it begins again, carried by a new hand into the world’s weather and its softer, kinder gusts.