Strong Axe

Strong Axe rests on a weathered market table, its head broad and iron-black, the edge honed to a thin, merciless line that gleams with a blue-white knife-sharp sheen. The texture tells a story: shallow pitting like constellations of minor battles fought in the forge, a patina where oil and rain have left their mark, and a faint hammer-wale pattern along the blade that hints at a hand-worked origin. The haft is ash, darkened by years of use, wrapped in aged leather that yields slightly under your grip, with a brass ferrule at the base etched with a tiny sigil—an unspoken promise from a long-remembered guild of woodwardens. A notch near the butt holds a memory: a small carving of a hawk mid-swoop, the emblem the smiths used to mark tools that could “see” through brush and shadow. It is not merely a weapon; it is a tool that asks to be held and trusted, a companion to long days felling timber, carting gear through rain-slick trails, and standing fast when the world seems set against you. In the lore of this blade, the Strong Axe has wandered with caravans and forest-dwellers alike, a relic of the ember-tinged era when ax and oath went hand in hand. Some say Mara, a woodwright who roamed with protection squads as much as with chisels, tempered the iron during a truce between river clans and the forest wardens. Others tell of a vow sworn at a woodland shrine, that the axe would only truly wake when its bearer kept faith with the land—never wasting wood, never striking in anger, always offering a path home through the trees. Those stories have softened its bite in the hands of modern wielders, but the edge still carries the memory of those storms and decisions. But memory is not all this tool has given. In practical terms, the Strong Axe is a reliable balance of heft and control, a one-handed option in many builds that nevertheless carries enough weight to, with a well-timed swing, crack a shield or split a bramble line that blocks a hunter’s path. It is equally at home in the camp—chopping kindling, shaping stake-poles for a shelter, or fashioning a makeshift ram for a ruined gate—as it is in a skirmish where wood and metal share the same purpose: to clear a path and to endure. And in the markets of the world, it finds a welcome price at Saddlebag Exchange, where a tag on a sample read Common Strong Axe, priced around 2 silver and 30 copper. The vendor’s eyes tell you a story, too: a line of customers behind you, a crate of other tools, the next bargain just beyond the fold of canvas. To hold it is to hear the world’s wood-swept breath—the tree’s slow note beneath the metal’s steady hum—and to step into a larger narrative where every swing, every notch carved into the grip, becomes another page in the blade’s continuing saga. Even when the road twists away, the Strong Axe keeps its promise.