Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow

Rampager's Soft Wood Short Bow rests in my palm, the wood warm and pale as morning ash, its curves smooth as a river-worn stone. The limbs are slender but resilient, grain spiraling in tight, secret lines, a satin sheen caught where sunlight filters through the trees. A hunter’s wrapping of leather coils around the grip, dark and worn, giving it a familiar bite when you close your fingers. The string sings with a crisp, cold note when you pluck it, and the notch at the tip looks like a quiet entrance to a hillside path, as if the bow itself were inviting the next traveler to walk its edge. Carved along the belly are faint runes—the Rampager’s insignia, a sigil of wind and stealth—tense in the wood as if the bow is listening for the breath of the forest. A strip of dried fern tied near the grip whispers of ancient hunts, of watchers who disappeared into mist and returned with the rhythm of the hunt still beating under their skin. This is not merely a weapon; it feels like a memory pressed into timber. The soft wood, grown slow and patient, holds a promise of speed without the weight of a crossbow or the reach of a longbow. You can sense the lore woven into its fibers—the way a rampager once moved through underbrush at the edge of a glade, darting from shadow to shadow, drawing the bow with a practiced ease that made even the birds take note. In the stories told around campfires, such a bow was gifted to scouts who learned to listen to the forest’s pulse, to bend with the wind rather than break it. It is said the wood owes its resilience to a runner’s breath shared between tree and traveler, a pact bound in sap and patience. In play, its marriage of light weight and rapid draw makes it a whisper on the battlefield rather than a shout. The Rampager’s Soft Wood Short Bow thrives in skirmishes where you need to dart between pillars of shade, land quick shots to open a foe’s guard, and slide away before a counterstrike lands. It rewards precision and tempo—the kind of rhythm where a headshot is followed by a well-timed repositioning, your quarry never quite sure where your next breath will come from. Pair it with quick-cycling shots that stack vulnerability or conditions and you paint a small, cunning tragedy on the map: a hunter unbound by brute force, winning by patience, by inches of advantage rather than power alone. The road to owning such a piece threads through the markets that trace the caravans’ routes. I traded a quiet evening’s haul and a few coins at the Saddlebag Exchange, where vendors barter stories as earnestly as they barter steel. The bow’s price, like the wind that moves through the trees, rose and fell with the night’s hunts and the day’s regrets; yet I walked away with a sense that the wood chose me as much as I chose it, a mutual nod between buyer and relic. It isn’t just a tool for puncturing mail or stringing a quick victory—it's a fragment of a larger story, a marker of a world where craft, memory, and a careful shot can tilt the balance of a single moment.