Carrion Steamcaller

Carrion Steamcaller sits on a faded velvet pad, its frame a spine of bone bound with copper tubing, a glass core glowing with a pale, feverish light. The texture runs from smooth ivory-white to rough, bone-porous patches where sigils have rusted over. Small gears click softly in its interior when you tilt it, and ash-gray soot clings to the brass like winter dust. The artifact carries its own whisper of lore: forged by a circle that bargained with carrion-hunters to bind steam to the dead, so the silent could move iron and minds in a city that never slept. To hold it is to feel a pulse in the air, a steam-tug at your fingertips. In use, it acts as more than ornament: it channels heat and breath into necromantic crafts, letting you wrap your minions in a shroud of vapor that sharpens their curses and steadies them in a fight. The gauge within the core slowly fills as you draw life into the living, and when you release it the air erupts in a resonant pulse that unsettles foes and emboldens allies. It doesn’t simply deal damage; it reshapes the battlefield, turning struggle into a workshop where bone and brass answer a single call. In a ruined bazaar at dusk, you can almost hear the steam singing as you tilt the device, watching a skeleton sentinel breathe anew, its joints creaking with repaired purpose, its eyes glimmering with a steam-lit resolve. Markets in caravan towns bend around curiosities like this, and the Saddlebag Exchange is where many such bargains end up. Traders speak in hushed tones about the Steamcaller, trading stories as surely as coins. The price floats with rumor and scarcity, rising when a fresh batch of carrion relics arrives and dipping when demand slackens. I watched a curious buyer lay down a handful of gold coins and lift the Steamcaller with a careful nod, the broker tallying the sale in chalk on a greasy ledger while a porter shuffled crates, a child tugging at a sleeve and asking for a tale of its power. The Exchange keeps a ledger that travels with the caravans, a quiet reminder that relics of sorrow are part of a living market, traded as much in memory and fear as in metal and mint. Beyond the metal and money, the Carrion Steamcaller is a thread in a larger story: a city’s stubborn resilience stitched with steam and bone. It began as a ritual tool, then found new purpose as protection and power when plague fog rolled in and towers cried for aid. It’s easy to forget that such items were never merely tools; they carried promises, passed hand to hand in satchels and saddle bags as travelers moved between ruined temples and bustling markets. The glow from its core lingers long after you’ve set it down, a memory of a hand that learned to coax life from steam and bone, a reminder that creation and decay can share the same spark. That memory hums in the pockets of anyone who has carried a Carrion Steamcaller, a reminder that power and tenderness can share a single old breath.