Cleric's Black Earth Trident of Hobbling

Cleric's Black Earth Trident of Hobbling rests on a weathered pedestal beneath a flickering lantern, its shaft a deep, matte ebony that seems to drink the light. The head, a triple-pronged spear carved from basalt-like stone, bears runes etched in silvery ash along the fluted guards. The texture shifts between slick polish and gritty grit, as if the earth itself remembered how to cradle a weapon. Leather wrappings spiral from the haft in tight, weary rings, and a small charm—a cracked clay disk set with a single black pearl—dangles just above the quillons. When you handle it, the trident's balance feels ancient and right, as if it knows your own breath before you draw it. The lore-touched patina hints at a lineage: forged by a cleric-stonecarver during the Dawn Tides, then tempered by successive orders that walked through dust and ash to keep the earth honest. The Black Earth itself seems to cling to its surface, as if a shard of subterranean memory spoke through the grain, and in quiet moments you can swear the stone exudes a faint, mineral warmth. In battle, the trident is not merely a weapon; it is a ritual instrument. The Hobbling of its name comes from a restrained enchantment that tightens around a target's legs when the weapon drives home. A quick strike cracks the earth at the target's feet, slowing their pace, then blooms into a tethering aura that clings for seconds as if the ground itself were binding a vow. Senior clerics teach apprentices to pair the trident with earthward techniques: call a tremor beneath the foe, summon a crust of shale to trip the unwary, and let the runes glow amber as the enemy staggers. The weapon lends itself to crowd control in melee skirmishes and to precise, surgical disables in sieges, where you want an advance halted without ending a life. It is a relic that makes sense of a world where stone remembers. The purchase is rarely simple. Scraps of legend travel with it, but so does gravity: well-heeled scavengers and pragmatic traders alike chase its presence, knowing it can tilt a fight with a single well-timed crack. In the bustling open-air stalls near the river, Saddlebag Exchange often becomes a first stop, where a buyer and seller speak in the language of coin and credence. A price tag appears as if by invisible hands, then another, until the deal settles and the weight of the trident shifts from one palm to the next. A buyer might walk away with a gilded promise as much as a receipt, the parchment singing with the name of the trident and the echo of earth’s patience. And as the lantern burns low, the Cleric’s Black Earth Trident of Hobbling remains, not simply as a tool of war but as a story pressed into black stone—proof that power, once bound to the ground, can make even movement tremble. Some say the trident reveals its true worth only to those who listen to the earth itself.