Carrion Glyphic Longbow

The Carrion Glyphic Longbow rests in the lamplight the way a treaty rests on a negotiator’s desk—calm, deliberate, and a little dangerous to touch. Its limbs are carved from dark ash, slender and flexible, the grain running like a map of shadowed rivers. Along the tapering riser, pale glyphs circle the wood in a patient, almost ritual rhythm, etched with a skilled hand and filled with a faint, cold glow that seems to rise and fall with the wearer’s breath. The grip is wrapped in worn leather, threads of resin darkening the surface where hands have learned the instrument’s mood, and the string—a taut thread of sinew—comments on the air when you nock an arrow, whispering of pulled distance and the quiet arc of a shot. Inlays of bone at the ends catch the light, giving the bow a skeletal elegance that feels part relic, part vow. Lore, for those who listen, threads through the weapon the way a campfire threads through a night watch. The glyphs speak of carrion birds, scavengers that move in the margins of life, guiding the hunter who respects what remains after the hunt. Some say the longbow was tempered in the shadow of a necromancer’s banner, tempered not to command the dead, but to acknowledge them—their presence a constant reminder that every arrow leaves a trace, that the world is a ledger of both loss and cunning. When you lift it, you feel the history loosen its hinges for a moment, as if the bow is listening as much as you are and deciding whether you deserve its quiet, precise mercy. In the field, the Carrion Glyphic Longbow becomes a partner in a larger story. Its arrows cut cleanly through the heat of skirmishes and the fog of ambushes, rewarding patient aim with a measured, almost surgical, precision. There’s a cadence to its shots—the way a well-tired bow gives back a little of the hunter’s own steadiness, the way the glyphs seem to echo a vow to strike true rather than flashy. It’s the kind of weapon that suits a ranger who understands that every encounter is a doorway: you choose when to press, when to wait, when to let the glyphs glow softly and remind the world that the hunter’s keep is not bloodlust, but balance. Market days bring a different kind of conversation to this bow, a conversation about value stitched into the world’s cloth. I watched a trader move it along the row of stalls, the Carrion Glyphic Longbow cradled like a rare book, its glyphs catching the lanterns and returning a cooler, older light. The seller whispered of demand, of how a weapon with such stories tends to fetch a price that moves with the rhythm of travelers and tides. Saddlebag Exchange, that busy hub where wares and whispers trade places, offered a steady chorus of murmured offers and hopeful bargaining—an ecosystem where rarity and function meet memory and fate. A buyer’s hand hovered, then closed with a careful nod, knowing this bow would not merely be carried; it would be carried forward, into quiet woods and crowded streets alike, carrying the weight of its glyphs and the promise of a precise, inevitable reply to the world’s rough questions.