Zap

Zap is a palm-sized brass contraption, its surface scarred with micro-scratches that catch lamplight in a slow shimmer. The body bears faint sigils along a seam from cap to base, and a glass hemisphere sits in its heart, within which a jagged blue thread of energy flickers like a captured lightning bug. A copper coil wraps around the exterior, tight as a watch spring, and a small switch glints at the top, good for nights of tinkering. If you cradle Zap in your palm, you feel a quiet tremor travel up your bones—no magic, just the anticipation of a spark about to happen. Lorekeepers tell of a storm-weary guild that claimed Zap as a failed lantern prototype, rescued from a damp attic in the old harbor district, and somehow the story stuck: this device is both relic and tool, a pocket of weather you can hold in your hand. On the field, Zap slips into a belt pouch and becomes a companion to anyone who faces metal-beaked golems or wind-walking marauders. When activated, it exhales a quick bite of electricity—a crackle that leaps from target to target, momentarily staggering foes, piercing shields, and threading a line of light across a group. It’s not a bomb and it’s not a cure; it’s a precise nuisance, designed to interrupt a sprinting engineer, to buy a moment for a healer, or to finish a weakened foe with a bright, smoky pop. For engineers who barter parts and soldiers who chase rumors, Zap is a reminder that control in battle can come from the smallest spark. Because Zap is a curious mix of commodity and collectible, it tugged its way into market chatter and caravan gossip alike. In Divinity’s Reach’s Saddlebag Exchange you can watch crates tilt in the dim light as traders bargain over a price tag that shimmers between three and five gold, depending on patina, glass clarity, and how recently the device was recharged. Some buyers seek the lore as much as the function, insisting the blue thread in the glass holds a memory of a thunderstorm that never truly passed. Others want a reliable tool to both fence off goblin raiders and dazzle a crowd with a quick flash of color and sound. Zap becomes more than an object; it’s a thread in the wider fabric of memory and danger, a reminder that even a pocket-sized thing can alter the course of a night. It travels with caravans, earns its keep in skirmishes, and endures in the hands of storytellers who swear the spark sometimes answers when spoken to—whether by a tinkerer, a traveler, or a careful buyer at the Saddlebag Exchange. People trade not only for function but for the stories that come with it—the night a caravan froze on a bridge and Zap lit the dark to let a wounded rider slip away, the legend growing with every recharged coil. In the saddle-light glow of the Exchange, such tales keep moving, as surely as electricity through a fine copper thread. Its glow travels on, long after the price is paid.