Carrion Steam Mace

Carrion Steam Mace rests in my hand like a relic that never forgot the click of a dying engine, its head a ring of iron threaded with bone-white veinwork, steam curling from vents set along the socket as if a creature is exhaling through a rusted throat. The surface is a patchwork of darkened steel and patina, the edges a little hungry for air, catching light in dull, patient glints. The grip is wrapped in cracked leather that remembers rain and marching feet, the weight settling into your palm with a promise and a threat. When you tilt it just right, a hiss answers your breath, and the mace seems to pulse with a cold, fossil heartbeat—like it stores the sighs of a hundred nameless cadavers and borrows their strength for a single swing. The texture tells its own story: rough patches where the metal has split and then healed, a grainy patina that smells faintly of oil and old smoke, and the little seams where steam escapes in almost conspiratorial puffs. The head looks almost engineered, yet the carved bone-like inlays keep whispering of someone who cherished the old rites—the kind of craft that fuses bone, brass, and a furnace’s stubborn heat until a weapon becomes more than metal. Lore murmurs that it was forged in a harbor workshop long shadowed by steam-bleached towers, a marriage of necromantic intent and engineering whim. They say it was tempered by a wraith’s sigh and cooled with brine, so it can rattle a battlefield with more than just force: it can rattle memory itself, stirring echoes that make the living wary and the dead curious. In play, it isn’t just a hammer to crack armor or shatter shield—it's a conduit. Wielders say the mace channels a carrion wind, a brief gust of corruption that weakens the living and sharpens the will of those who already walk between life and what comes after. It rewards patience as much as aggression: a charge that lands a heavier strike might unleash a small tempest of steam and rot that drifts over enemies, sowing fatigue and fear, while also weaving a subtle lifeline back to the wielder through a hidden drain of vitality. For a necromancer or a battlemage who toes the line between flesh and flame, the mace is not merely a tool of punishment but a narrative engine—pulling the dead’s memories into the present and letting the living feel the weight of what they fight. I’ve carried it along roads that smell of salt and coal, listening to the clink of chain and the whistle of wind through broken plazas. It’s easy to imagine the stories it would tell if it could speak—about the orders that whispered over anvils, about caravans that traded in secrets as freely as goods. And then there’s the market’s heartbeat—the Saddlebag Exchange, a tent city where traders pass stories as easily as coins. There, the mace earns glances and offers. A stallkeeper once named a rough price in silver and gold, something around two gold, perhaps more if the buyer spoke a language of bone and steam. I left the value clear on the market’s chalk, knowing some legends are meant to be traded, some kept, and some worn by those who walk between dawn and dusk, listening to the hiss and the memory in a Carrion Steam Mace.