Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow

Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow rests on a carved rack, its pale sapwood gleaming with a satin sheen and a living grain that seems to hum when the sun catches it. The limbs are slender but sturdy, curved with a quiet confidence, and the faintest rasp of the wood speaks of careful shaping by patient hands. The grip is wrapped in worn leather, smooth to the touch, and the string bears the telltale patina of many draws—frayed in spots where the fingers have pressed most often. Tiny runes, burned and barely raised, trace a line along the upper limb, a whisper of the Rampagers' lore: swift, feral hunters who trusted light, flexible wood to carry a sudden, precise strike. The Soft Wood itself is a quiet miracle of choice; it bends just enough to forgive a jerky draw and returns with a hunter's snap that keeps the eye honest. In the field, this bow feels like a partner, not a weapon. Its short reach makes it perfectly at home in tangled undergrowth, around ruined arches, or a cliff path where a longer bow would snag on vines. A marksman can coax rapid-fire with one hand on the grip, then settle into a careful, prolonged aim as the world slows to a whisper. The Rampager's Short Bow rewards timing: a quick release, a breath held, and another arrow finding its mark before the shadow behind you swallows the light. It is not the loudest instrument in the forest chorus, but it is the steadier, more intimate friend—the kind you learn to anticipate through years of stalking, sweat, and stories told by campfires. Merchants know its value beyond its wood and craft. Carriers, rangers, and young scouts stockpile a few of these for the volume of small skirmishes that dot frontier days—the kind where a fast, precise shot turns a risk into a retreat or a rescue. The rampage of a hunt ends with the quiet, ordinary payment: a neat stack of silver coins, a meal, and perhaps a memory that outlives the bow. In conversations along the road, the Saddlebag Exchange is where such whispers gather—an open stall where traders trade tales as much as goods. You might hear a veteran recount how a Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow once carried him through a night siege, then watch as a market buyer glances at the bow's grain and nods, picturing it standing in a shadowed corner of a tent. Placed back in its rack after a day’s march, the bow seems to breathe with the promise of dawn. Its story, like the wood itself, runs long and shallow at first, then suddenly deep, binding a craft to a life lived on the edge of pursuit, where every crack of branch and sigh of wind becomes a plan for the next shot. Some say its true strength lies not in arrow weight but in patience, a quiet tutor that respects distance, timing, and the story carried by the hunter who wields it.