Carrion Verdant Short Bow of Corruption

The Carrion Verdant Short Bow of Corruption sits across the palm like a leaf pressed between damp pages, its limbs a dark, almost obsidian green that catches the light with a hesitant glow. The wood bears the grain of vines forever twisting upward, as if it were grown from a corpse’s own memory rather than carved from timber. Fine misty resin traces the edges where the sap hardened, giving the whole thing a slick, damp feel as if it’s still weeping from some long vigil. On the grip a sigil—an upturned crow perched upon a sprouting sprig—is etched in a pale, ash-gray metal, half-hidden by leather wrapping that’s worn smooth by hands that learned to trust a weapon they could not fully trust themselves. When you pick it up, the bow seems to hum with a green, living cold; a whisper of rot and renewal that clings to the fingers like a remembered breath. Lore says the weapon was tempered in a place where growth and decay share a single heartbeat, forged by a hunter who learned to trade life’s haste for nature’s patient rot. The verdant hue is not merely pigment but a ward, a reminder that power here comes with a price: every arrow released leaves a soft afterglow of corruption, as if the forest itself could not help but answer the shot with a wary sigh. The Carrion Verdant Bow is said to remember every target it has ever touched, the wounds it has opened, and the quiet, murky corners where life’s vigor pools before slipping away. Traders speak of it in hushed tones, as if the bow carries a curse that’s better kept behind glass—and perhaps it is, for the moment you look away, a shadow seems to loosen from the wood and drift toward the next fight. In the field this is a weapon with a story you can feel in your shoulder. It rewards swift, precise shots and quick repositioning, never asking for a crowd to share the moment of truth. Its arrows carry more than force; they carry a creeping aura that corrodes a foe’s defenses and latches onto their mettle, layering Poison and Bleed as it travels. Against disciplined ranks, it lets a marksman pace through engagements, squeezing value from each moment of stillness and every flick of the wrist. It isn’t the blunt hammer of brute damage, but the sly, patient thing that unsettles careful plans and makes space for a necromantic ally’s more subtle ambitions. In the right hands, it binds a skirmish into a narrative—one where every shot is a line in a longer, darker paragraph. Market whispers add texture to the tale. In the hustle of the caravan routes that thread between settlements, the Carrion Verdant Bow is a coveted piece, trading hands with a careful smile for a mix of gold and rare crafting mats. At Saddlebag Exchange, a corridor of wagons and crisscrossed ledger pages, the bow’s value is assessed not only by its power but by the lore it carries—the promise that your next enemy will feel the forest’s patient rot at your back. The price, as with any precious relic, moves with the wind and the hunter’s hand, but it remains a coveted prize for those who hear the forest’s muttered vow in every draw of the string. And so the bow waits, patient as moss, ready to write the next chapter in a world where life and decay share a single breath.