Carrion Steamcaller of the Geomancer

The Carrion Steamcaller of the Geomancer rests on a rough-burnished palm-sized stand, its surface a burned bronze patina that catches the light like old iron cooled in a spring rain. Its shell is a paradox of textures: cold, almost bone-smooth areas braided with coarse, oil-dark leather, and riveted plates that feel warm to the touch when the device is in use. A tiny skull cap—perhaps carved from the jawbone of some long-dead scavenger—crowns the device, its eye sockets set with dull chips of glass that glow faintly when the vents hiss. Tubes coil along the sides, stitched binders creaking when the thing breathes, and a ring of copper sigils circles the circumference, as if the earth itself had traced a map across its skin. When the Steamcaller exhales, steam spills in a pale, almost emerald fog, carrying a scent of rain-soaked soil and iron, curling through the air like a ghost of the hillside after a storm. Lore ties the item to a lineage of geomancers who learned to listen to the ground’s decayed heartbeats—the slow, patient tapping of stone, the carrion-bringers who pass through the tunnels that run beneath the world’s bones. They spoke of binding death and earth to coax the land to reveal its moods, of muttered oaths spoken in a language of tremors. The Steamcaller is said to be a reliquary of that bargain, a device that does not merely channel power but negotiates with the living memory of the ground. Its presence on a battlefield is less about the flash of a blade and more about listening to the soil’s tense quiet, letting steam and rot breathe through the air as if the world itself were exhaling after a hard day’s work. In practice, the item becomes a pivot around which strategy turns. It summons a drifting cloud that unsettles foes by muddying their footing, then releases a controlled blast of carrion-infused steam that dampens attacks and reveals hidden vulnerabilities in stone and ore alike. Warriors speak of its aura as a slow-growing thorn in the enemy’s defense, while healers note how the same vapor seems to cradle wounded allies, coaxing their bodies back toward cohesion through the earth’s stubborn patience. It is a tool that rewards patience and placement, turning contested ground into a living map where each step shifts the terrain’s mood. Those who carry it learn to read the battlefield’s faint tremors—the small signals that say the ground is about to give, or to rise, and to plan accordingly. The item’s scarcity makes market chatter a constant murmur among caravan merchants and prospectors alike, a rumor carried in the leather-bound ledgers of shops and stalls. In the Saddlebag Exchange, a single Carrion Steamcaller of the Geomancer becomes a conversation piece as much as a purchase: a gleaming argument about value, history, and the land’s stubborn will. Prices swing with the tides of expeditions and the discovery of new cavern networks, yet those who know the exchange’s rhythm understand that few things in this world are as portable as memory—and as heavy as a story that steams beneath the skin of the earth. And so the Steamcaller remains more than a piece of gear; it is a hinge—the moment when stone remembers, steam remembers, and a traveler remembers to listen. In that quiet listening, the world reorders itself, if only for a breath, and the Geomancer’s path feels suddenly, unexpectedly within reach.