Malign Steam Trident

Malign Steam Trident gleams with hammered brass and soot-dark steel, its head a three-pronged snarl of metal that catches the light and hisses faintly as it cools. The three prongs curve inward at brutal angles, like blades forged for a metal sea. The shaft is a stubborn collage of lacquered wood, copper tubing, and a braided leather grip that has soaked up years of rain and rumors. Along the haft run narrow runes—cobalt glimmers tracing silent signs—that give the weapon a cold, almost sentient look. The butt is wrapped with a strip of chain, a reminder of decks and dockyards and the hands that learned to hold fear as tightly as a weapon. Tiny vents dot its surface, and when the trident moves it exhales a steady sigh of steam that fogs the air and cools into a pale mist. Lore whispers it was born in a ruined steamworks, forged by a drowned engineer who bound the machine’s breath to a weapon’s will—an old relic that survived flood and ash and now longs for a patient new master. In hands, the Malign Steam Trident feels like a conversation with metal itself. It wants to fight in lantern-lit corridors and along crowded quays, pulling fog across a battlefield and seeping heat into pockets of resistance. Its strikes echo like a drought-breaking gust, not merely bludgeons but weather: a crackle of pressure, a cloud that sears and temporarily blinds. When the wielder knows the trick, the weapon sings with steam and heat, chaining into torrents of water and flame that can drive back a boarding party or crush a mutinous row inside a ruined warehouse. Its true charm is how it binds a story to the blade—each clash writing a line in a larger tale about salvage, secrets, and the old world’s broken machines. The trident doesn’t merely cut; it reconfigures the scene, turning a narrow hallway into a sluice gate that favors the patient and the bold alike. Price and path to ownership drift through markets with the scent of oil and rain. At Saddlebag Exchange, a stall stacked with crates of copper scrap, stamped maps, and glass bottles that glint with strange liquids, the trident sits on a rough-hewn board, a glimmer of danger and promise. The merchant’s fingers move with practiced nonchalance as he names a price of 12 gold pieces, touching the edge of the tag as if to remind the buyer that silver and copper are only part of the story. He nods toward a bundle of rare oils and a faded map of a submerged dockyard—an invitation to barter and bargain—to tempt a traveler who carries more than coins. It isn’t simply a transaction; it’s a ceremony of exchange, a small hinge on which larger tides swing, where power moves through cities by means of cogs, cords, and the hands that pass them along. Carried through markets and back alleys, the Malign Steam Trident becomes more than a weapon. It’s a thread that slips through the seams of a living world, tying together laborers in steamy factories, smugglers on rain-slick streets, and veterans who still hear the hiss of pressure valves when they sleep. A blade that remembers the old forge and asks its new owner to write the next chapter of its story.