Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Chilling

Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Chilling rests on a sun-bleached counter, its curve as graceful as a prayer in flight. The grip is wrapped in worn leather that has softened to the touch, its edge a pale ivory color where the soft wood grain peeks through like a secret in plain sight. The bow limbs are slender and patient, carved from a pale timber with a faint, almost silvery sheen, as if frost had kissed the grain and left a whisper of winter in its wake. Along the length, delicate, rune-like etchings run in a serpentine pattern, subtle enough to be mistaken for a natural knot until the light catches them and they shimmer with a blue-white glow. The string sings when plucked—a clean, bright note that feels almost too honest for a weapon, as if it were speaking back to the archer with a quiet vow to protect. Its name isn’t a brag so much as a genealogy. Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Chilling carries the memory of monks and hooded healers who walked narrow stone corridors and listened for the murmur of cold air in the rafters. They believed the soft wood’s humble resilience could channel spirit into timber, binding a frostlike temper to every shot. When the bow is drawn, you can feel the chill at the back of your hand—an almost tactile frost that runs along the sinew and threads of the string, a reminder that mercy and discipline can share the same weapon. The enchantment is not flashy. It is a patient frost, designed to slow and tilt the balance without shouting about it. In the right hands, a single arrow can soften a charge, coax a stubborn foe into a misstep, or freeze the momentum of a skirmish long enough for a healer to slip through the fray. In practice, the bow serves as a bridge between duty and danger. Its arrows bite with quiet precision, and the chill effect lingers like a breath you can’t quite exhale, thinning the will to charge and forcing opponents to improvise. For a ranger who walks with a second conscience—the mercy that a healer would approve—the Cleric's Soft Wood is less about raw damage than about shaping a moment: a pause in the storm where armor creaks and a target slows, giving allies the chance to reposition, rally, or retreat to safer ground. It’s a weapon with a story behind it, as if the woods themselves paused to listen to the cautionary prayers etched into the bow’s grain. The bow’s value isn’t only measured in its frost-kissed elegance but in the way it travels from hand to hand. I watched a hunter trade stories with a merchant in a market corridor, where the streetlight glinted off a row of copper coins and leather pouches. The Saddlebag Exchange clerk weighed the bow, spoke of its price in a plain voice, and let the ledger speak in discreet, careful lines. The exchange is a known harbor for such curios—where a relic can pass through the crowd as naturally as a rumor, and where a fair coin can find a new guardian who will treat the frost with respect rather than with hunger. In the end, the Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Chilling feels less like a tool and more like a hinge between past and present, between oath and action. When you lift it, you don’t just take aim—you pick up a fragment of a long memory and a promise that even in the heat of battle, something patient and cold can still guide you home.