Carrion Steam Trident

The Carrion Steam Trident gleams with a coal-black shaft, its three prongs forged from bone and iron that catch the lamplight like frost on a weapon’s edge. The grip is wrapped in stiff, salt-weathered leather, every thread showing years of marches and a few brutal, close-quarters blows. Brass steam-pipes run along the shaft in a meticulous lattice, tiny valves puckering at intervals, as if the trunk of a stubborn tree had learned to exhale when it is jostled. A faint, sickly-green glow threads along runes carved into the bone-slice guard, and the whole thing hums with a low, purring heat that never quite betrays where the steam is coming from. It feels alive in the hand, a relic that has learned to breathe between battles. Lore whispers that it was born in the drowned engine yards, where carrion markets and shipwrights traded scraps for sparks; a weapon meant to cede rot and steam in equal measure, a relic of the old wars between decay and invention. I found it tucked beneath a tarp on a rain-slicked quay, the kind of scene that makes a passerby pause and listen to the sound of coins clinking in a pocket and the hiss of a valve releasing a sigh of pressure. The vendor spoke softly, like a man who had seen a storm and learned to speak to it. He spoke of its lineage—the way the trident’s prongs seem to drink the air when the weapon is swung, tearing through enemy front-lines with the cold bite of bone and the hot kiss of steam. Its balance is deceptive: heavy enough to crush with a forward thrust, light enough to flick through a cloud of enemies, and the hissing after-sizzle of the steam-charged strike follows like a ghost. In battle, its glow grows more vibrant as the runes awaken, turning the air a pale, sick-green, a warning to those who would crowd you. In the world between skirmishes and salvaged victories, the Carrion Steam Trident feels like a hinge between two long-running stories. One is the soldier’s tale—the bruised knuckles, the careful steps, the way a team learns to move as one when a weapon hums in the hand. The other is the scavenger’s fable, of markets and murmurs, where old gears are pressed into service and new legends are etched into brass. People speak softly about its uses: a frontline spear that can punch through armor, a weapon that leaves behind a short, eerie mist of steam that unsettles stubborn opponents, a tool that can carve a path through tight corridors and crowded plazas alike. There are times when you don’t need a grand plan—you need a piece of history that also keeps the blood warm. Prices drift through the market like rumor, and I heard a trader mention Saddlebag Exchange as the ledger where prices are traded and traded again, where a standard Carrion Steam Trident can be found for a few gold, with etched or engraved variants commanding higher sums. It’s not simply a tool; it’s a story you can strap to your belt, a memory that hums whenever someone longs to remind an opponent that decay and steam, once bound, can still march forward. By night’s end, the trident sits in the shadows of a stall, its glow dimming as the port quiets—and I walk away knowing that some artifacts belong to more than one life, the kind that keep their own hours and their own consequences.