Berserker's Longbow

Berserker's Longbow is tall and merciless, its ash limbs dark with years of use and bruise, lacquered in a deep crimson that seems to drink light. The grip is wrapped in rough-tanned leather, worn smooth from hands that have seen too much weather and too many fights, and along the limbs run sigils—cruel, elegant glyphs that whisper of ferocity when the wind is right. The bowstring, a tight whisper of sinew, sings softly when drawn, like a string tuning itself to the heartbeat of a campfire. It looks as if the wood remembers every arrow it has loosed, every target it has watched fall, and it wears its history with a stubborn pride, as if the weapon itself were parsing the stories of the land to decide which ones deserve another shot. Locally whispered lore ties the longbow to a figure whose name is spoken with a respectful, almost wary hush—the Berserker, a hunter who never yielded to fear and who tempered rage into precise, deadly action. Some say the bow was carved from the last ash that bent to the Berserker’s will, reheated in a forge rumored to glow with embers stolen from a battlefield’s dawn. Others swear it carries the echo of a war cry carved into the wood itself, a reminder that power without restraint is only ruin. Whether truth or tale, the bow carries that tension in its look and feel: a weapon meant to overwhelm in a single, decisive moment, yet patient enough to wait for the perfect seam in a line of skirmishes. In the world where choices matter as much as blades, the Berserker's Longbow is a weapon of projection and precision. Its stats—Power, Precision, and Ferocity—bestow the hunter with raw, charging force, a sharpened eye for critical moments, and the amplified impact that follows a well-timed strike. It rewards betweens: the careful draw that buys space while the party threads through a choke point; the calm breath before flinging a volley that breaks a shield wall; the snap of a follow-up shot that turns a would-be retreat into a rout. It’s not just about raw damage; it’s about tempo—knowing when to threaten from the treeline and when to switch angles, forcing a debtor to the mercy of the bow’s patient, inexorable cadence. In the hands of a ranger who reads the map of a battlefield like a song, it becomes a narrative device—an instrument that shapes the arc of every encounter. I watched it change hands at Saddlebag Exchange, a weathered stall tucked along a muddy market lane where traders trade stories as freely as coins. The tag swayed between a shy copper and a confident silver, the merchant’s eyes glinting with the knowledge that this bow would live many lives through new hands. The price—never fixed, always in motion with the winds of demand—felt like a conversation rather than a sale: a negotiation that honored the bow’s lineage and the hunter who would soon learn to read the world through its string. It wasn’t merely market math; it was a transfer of purpose, a promise that the Berserker’s Longbow would keep marching, arrow after arrow, through the next chapter of the story.