Malign Steam Mace of Agony

Malign Steam Mace of Agony glints with a sickly iridescent glow, its head a brutal tangle of blackened steel and riveted wedges that look as if they were hammered from the leftovers of a trapped engine. The surface hisses faintly whenever the air shifts, as though the metal itself is breathing with steam that never quite escapes. A cluster of copper sigils crawls along the haft, glowing a dim ember-red when the mace draws near a source of torment or power, and the grip is wrapped in worn leather that's salted with oil, the kind that leaves a grimy fingerprint on every clasp and knuckle. A length of corroded chain dangles from the pommel, a stubborn reminder of cages broken and bargains struck in shadows. In the right light the mace seems to steam with its own nostalgia—an artifact that carries a whisper of old metalwork turned mercenary for hire. Lore threads coil around it like steam from a tepid kettle. Some say it was forged by a disgraced furnace-mage who bound his own sighs of agony into the steel, a weapon designed to siphon the resolve from those who faced it. Others insist the artifact was seduced by a captive spirit of industry, a torment-bound engine that learned to crave the sizzle of a battlefield more than the hum of a workshop. The malice in its name isn’t just a threat but a story, a warning that power here rarely remains pure. When it moves in a camp’s flickering torchlight, you might hear the soft rasp of metal scraping against itself—like a throat clearing before a confession—and the steam seems to carry a fragment of someone’s lingering ache across the campfire’s glow. In actual play, the Malign Steam Mace of Agony feels like a hinge between brutality and cunning. It is a one-handed weapon that punishes armored foes with a rain of scorched, crackling pressure when it lands a heavy hit, releasing a plume of steam that latches onto enemies, intensifying existing conditions and laying down the groundwork for follow-up bursts. Its signature effect isn’t just raw power; it channels the agony it embodies, granting the wielder short-lived relief by weaving life through the battlefield in subtle, hard-to-parse ways. You’ll notice enemies staggering as the steam fogs their senses, while allies gain a moment to reposition, read the terrain, or trap a foe in a doorway with a well-placed pulse of steam pressure. It’s a weapon that asks for rhythm—the timing of a wrenching, deep-edged blow followed by a measured retreat behind a shield or a wall of mist. Market chatter around such a relic isn’t melodrama but math and memory. At Saddlebag Exchange, a trader will speak of its price in a voice that mixes reverence with pragmatism, as if negotiating with a stubborn relic rather than a customer. If the rider’s ledger is generous, you’ll hear of a price leaning into the higher end of silver and gold, a reflection of its rarity and the lore bound to its steel. If time has cooled the market’s fever, a hard bargain might land the mace for a leaner sum, perhaps tempered by a trade of oddments and a telling tale. Either way, the exchange leaves you with a sense that some objects don’t merely sit in a chest; they walk out into the world, carrying rumors, pain, and the stubborn echo of a machine that learned to beguile the living.