Cleric's Black Earth Trident of Venom

Cleric's Black Earth Trident of Venom gleams under the amber glow of a lone lantern, its shaft a matte-black reed cooled by desert night, the surface etched with minute striations that catch the light like weathered stone. The head forms a triad of iron-tipped prongs, each tine curling inward as if to pry secrets from the ground, while faint coppery runes trace along their inner faces—earth sigils that thrum softly when touched by damp air. The grip is swathed in cracked leather, dark with ritual oil and time, and a slender vein of emerald venom glass coils around the haft, catching the flame’s reflection and throwing living sparks into the room. At the butt end, the cleric’s crest is pressed in a shallow relief, a mark that whispers of oaths sworn to shelter the living from both bludgeon and blight. Whispers say it was forged in a desert monastery where healers learned to braid mercy with earth’s stubbornness, to coax vitality from soil as deftly as venom from a viper. In the old stories, it was carried into rites that laid wards on burial caverns and cleared rough trails through blistering canyons, each strike binding a vow: to curb corruption with stone and to temper pain with patience. The trident’s lineage threads through caravans and hilltop shrines alike, passing from keeper to keeper as a living talisman—an instrument that can both mend a wound and remind a foe that the ground beneath them is not mere dust but a witness. In play, its presence feels like a dialogue between two stubborn forces: earth and toxin, solid earth will and swift, clinical venom. A warrior who wields it blends protection and aggression in a single breath. A thrust drives venom into the foe, a slow-noon poison that lingers and gnaws at resolve, while a broad, rooted swing splinters the battlefield, pinning enemies in place long enough for allies to slip in and seal the moment with healing light. The weapon’s ethos rewards tact: it sings when paired with earth-attuned arts, drawing on wards and footholds that steady allies while the venomous edge punishes advancing lines. It is not simply a tool of offense or defense but a conduit for a larger story—one where mercy and menace share a blade, and where the land itself becomes an ally in the fight to restore balance. Market chatter enlivens the room as well. Carved thirst for rare relics fuels the hullabaloo around Saddlebag Exchange, that bustling marketplace where traders lay down coins and stories side by side. Here, the Cleric’s Black Earth Trident of Venom moves with a measured grace, priced in the same breath as its legends. Some days it fetches a tidy sum—talk of eight to twelve gold depending on the hour, the sigils showing their temper, the venom’s bite remembered—and, on quieter tides, a willing buyer will trade for something rarer or a handful of glimmering metals. The chatter drifts from one tale to the next: a monastery’s mercy, a caravan’s risk, a ward’s failure and its second chance. In the end, the trident endures as more than steel and venom. It is a story pressed into a handle—a relic that invites new custodians to walk its path, to earn its trust, and to weave their own chapter into the stone-forged oath that first birthed this weapon.