Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow of Corruption

Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow of Corruption rests in my hands like a watched secret. Its limbs, curved as a whisper, are carved from pale softwood, the grain wavy and pale as dawn-lit ash. The surface is smooth as a lake, polished with resin and elbow grease until every ridge catches the light. Along the belly, runes coil in ink-black strokes, a pattern of thorned ivy that seems to move when you aren't looking directly at it. The bowstring, a sinew taut with patient use, carries a faint green sheen at the notch, as if corruption clings to the fibers. The grip is wrapped in worn leather dyed the color of summer soil, and the butt sank into the palm with a comfortable, nonchalant weight. When you raise it to aim, the wood hums with a subtle warmth, a note of cedar and rain, and the weakening of fear before a clean shot. It's not a weapon for show; it carries a ledger of hunts, a memory of rain-slick days in the woods where every branch looked for a target. The lore threads through the room like smoke: the Soft Wood indicates a quick, precise tool that favors speed over brute force, the Rampager name tying it to hunters who strike at the edge of plundered sanctuaries. Corruption, that eerie energy that seeps through fallen groves and warned-off outposts, lends a dangerous shine to the bow. When drawn, a soft green filament seems to draw from the air itself, and the arrow that tunnels through reveals burnished hints of corruption—perhaps the essence of a long-forgotten ritual—the kind that warps a creature's resolve, or a guard's nerve, just enough to loosen the finger on a trigger. The arrowhead, if you peer closely, bears a charred pattern that looks almost like a thorned bloom, as if the weapon had learned to sprout from a fallen lichen rather than from a factory shop. In practical play, it sings in tandem with fast, surgical strikes. You don't wear it as a badge of honor; you wield it as a promise: the target will be struck with speed, punctuated by a whisper of conditions—bleed, poison, and that unsettling bite of corruption that lingers on armor and sinew. The short bow's size keeps you nimble, letting you dance between shaded trunks and open glades, a hunter steering through risk rather than chasing it. In bazaars and back-alley stalls, traders talk in measured tones about its cost, but it is Saddlebag Exchange that makes the price feel light on the tongue—an offer of a few silver more than the common wood, a token of trust, a shared story between buyer and seller about where the wood came from and who carved the marks of corruption into its heart. When the sun sinks and the market noise softens, the Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow of Corruption finds its way into a night of pursuits—where a hunter keeps company with the forest and every shot fired for the hunt.