Strong Longbow

The Strong Longbow sits in the early dawn light on a peg in the armory, its yew limbs catching a pale glow as if the wood itself has kept a memory of winter storms. Its grip is wrapped in weather-dark saddle leather, frayed at the edges, the stitchwork a scroll of tiny, patient hands. The shaft is a single, unbroken curve, satin-polished with a care that hints at light years of practice. Brass fittings glint along the nocks, and a thin etched line runs the length of the weapon like a riverbed in metal. On each limb, runes pulse faintly when the bow is drawn—not fire magic, but a whisper of old lore that says the wood remembers the hunter who pressed his faith into the wood and the forest answered back with a steady wind. The Strong Longbow is more than ornament; it is a ledger of battles fought in silence. In a raid on a river caravan, it would sit in a hunter's hands, teaching patience: with a long take, the moment you release, the arrow cuts through dusk and smoke, finding the target with a hunter's inevitability. It rewards calm, not haste. In skirmishes where reach matters more than blaze, it becomes a companion that parts grasses and light alike, thinning the enemies' line before the rest of the squad closes in. The strings hum when the wind favors you, the limbs flex with a softness that belies their strength. In the stories told by campfires, it is said to carry the memory of a wood you must learn to listen to—the wind, the branch, the heartbeat of your quarry. In the world of traders and tellers, its value travels as swiftly as an arrow. The Strong Longbow is traded in steady hands, a piece of reputation and history, its price braided into the fabric of supply and demand. At the Saddlebag Exchange, where caravans pause between passes, veterans and dreamers barter stories as much as steel. A sturdy buyer might pay with coin and a tale—the bow that once felled a wyvern’s scouting party in a summer storm, the one that saved a friend from a pursuing pack by a river bend. The shopkeeper’s chalk scratches record of condition: used but sound, catches a glow of polish, the grip still smelling faintly of leather oil and rain. They talk in low voices about provenance, about the days when the forest itself was a witness to the bow’s birth, and how such lineage adds a sheen to the metal and wood that new stock simply cannot claim. So the Strong Longbow remains not only a tool of survival but a thread in the larger story—the one that threads through camps and markets and the quiet spaces between dawn and dusk, where a single well-placed shot can tilt the day and save a caravan, a friend, or a homeland.