Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Venom

The Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Venom rests on a driftwood pedestal, its limbs pale as first frost and polished so finely that the light seems to pause along the grain. The wood carries a piano-key sheen, a soft sheen that invites a touch, as if the bow itself were listening for a hunter’s breath. Its grip is wrapped in worn linen cord and tanned leather, weathered from years of careful handling, with seams darkening where fingers have learned the rhythm of a veteran draw. The bowstring, a whisper-thin braid of sinew, is taut enough to sing when plucked, and the lacquer along the limbs bears a network of faint runes—clerical sigils tangled with tiny green specks that catch the eye like dew on new leaves. The name itself, etched in a script that threads through healing and peril, suggests a paradox: a weapon meant for mercy, now tempered by venom. When you tilt it to the lamp, the venom’s glow hums at the edges of the carved sigils, a reminder that power here is double-edged, sanctified and dangerous in equal measure. Lore says this bow was more than a weapon to a shrine-bound order that tended both healing wells and haunted thresholds. Clerics who walked a line between mercy and necessity would sometimes hunt for purity of purpose in the field, trading soft wood for strong resolve and knotwork that would outpace fear. The bow’s origin whispers of a monastery tucked into a folded valley, where the healers learned to speak the language of venom as a means to quiet corruption without shattering life entirely. It was said that the wood itself held memory—knots that remembered healing hands, not merely the sting of a hunter’s arrow. In the hands of a practitioner who believes in balance, the bow becomes a conduit: arrows that travel with a measured grace, coating their targets in a green mist that lingers like memory, ticking away at the damage until the fight moves on. In play, its venom breathes into a skirmish like a stubborn, quiet rain. Shots land with a precision that suits swift ambushes and careful retreat, while the venom latches on, adding a second current of damage that gnaws at armored fronts and skews the tempo of a battlefield. It is a bow that rewards patience—not the brute, charging kind, but the hunter who watches the flow of combat and threads shots through windows of opportunity. When a foe stumbles, a follow-up shot can compound the effect, turning a single encounter into a story of careful control rather than raw force. In this way, the Cleric’s bow finds its place not just as gear, but as a character in the larger narrative of the land: a relic that has traveled from sacred quiet to crowded market lanes, a voice in the chorus of skirmishes that write the history of the streets. Pricing has always been a rumor’s thread, shifting with dawn markets and the mood of the road. At Saddlebag Exchange, a murmured range—sometimes generous, sometimes wary—reflects the bow’s dual nature: coveted for its gentleness in healing hands and feared for the quiet ache of venom. Traders spin tall tales of it gliding through the market like a patient sermon, a balance between mercy and violence. And so the bow travels on, from shrine to camp, from whispered legend to practical tool, always ready to be drawn again when the world calls for both restraint and resolve.