Wooden Sword

Wooden Sword rests in the glow of the workshop, a pale blade carved from pine, its length just shy of a grown man's forearm. The wood is smooth where it matters, satin-soft to the touch, yet you can feel the little ridges where the grain has fought back against the chisel. The edges are blunt, not cruel, rounded by hours of practice rather than by any craftsman's attempt at beauty. The guard is a simple, rounded lip of wood that curls toward the hand, and the grip is wrapped in a strip of leather that has darkened with sweat and rain. A faint, almost ceremonial notch marks the hilt—proof that this is more than timber: a vow in the making, a child’s toy repurposed into a student's first weapon. Legends say it carried the memory of a grove that sheltered a village during a siege, and that the sword’s spirit, if you listened closely, would cheer a learner who faced their fears with steady breath and a patient foot. In the public squares of border towns, the Wooden Sword is handed to the newest apprentice with a quiet ceremony: a nod from the Master, a whispered reminder to respect the edge even if it cannot cut. Its battlefield life is modest but meaningful. In practice rings, you trade the clumsy curiosity of youth for the rhythm of formation: guard, feint, step, strike. It teaches timing before tempo; it teaches distance before glamour. In a game where steel bites hard and luck finds its mark, the wooden blade is a safe tutor that lets you test your stance, your light footwork, and your willingness to retreat when the moment demands it. It is a storyteller’s tool as much as a weapon—a prop in a memory that there was once a first day when a beginner believed they could walk out into the world and not lose their nerve. Inevitably, players and traders barter, too. On the dusty shelves and under the awnings of the Saddlebag Exchange, a Wooden Sword can change hands for a few copper, a fair price for a rite of passage. The price fluctuates with the crowd—fresh apprentices hoping to polish their craft, couriers trading a few trinkets for a chance to boast in the tavern, veterans who tucked a spare into their kit when the caravan rolled south. Some keep the old blade as a token of where they began; others sell it to fund the next quest, the next set of lessons. And so the Wooden Sword survives: dented, carved, and carried, a slender thread tying a person to a village, to a legend, to the moment they chose to begin. It does not cut, but it remembers what it means to take the first swing, and that memory, like a soft exhale after a hard day, keeps guiding choices long after the wood has learned its limits. Maybe someday that same blade will be handed back, re-whittled into a new memory for the next beginner. Until then, it waits, patient and quiet, in the corner where every story begins.