Carrion Verdant Warhorn of Water

The Carrion Verdant Warhorn of Water gleams with a greenish, almost sickly patina, its brass skin mottled by time and rain. The mouthpiece, carved from pale bone, bears the salt-worn patina of countless winds, while the body is etched with silvered rivulets that resemble river branches after a flood. When you cradle it, the surface feels damp as if a mist still clings to it, and a soft, watery sigh rides the air, hinting at the things it has called and refused to forget. The horn’s name hints at two truths: carrion for those who survive on scavenged feasts, verdant for the life that grows from decay, and water, the perpetual pulse of a river that never stops moving. In its lore, artisans say it was forged at a crossroads where marsh and city meet, where river spirits are appeased by song more than sacrifice. They tell of a hunter who gathered the bone of a drowned sentinel, tempered it with resin from the verdant canopy, and kissed it with brine from the coast until the horn remembered every rainstorm it ever heard. When pressed, the runes along the bell glow faintly, a map of waterways and whispers, guiding those who wield it to the places where alliances are born and bargains are struck. For those who live on the margins of bustle and tide—the small bands of scavengers, traders, and tide-bound couriers who keep the world moving—the horn is more than ornament. Its voice cuts through chatter and doubt as if a wave slides over a rocky shore. In practice, it becomes a catalyst for momentum: a call that sweeps over allies to mend wounds, lift spirits, and sharpen reflexes, while a measured note can lay a cleansing tide over the field, washing away lingering afflictions and laying enemies open to the next move. It is a tool of governance as much as warfare—permission granted to press forward, a signal to hold the line, a chorus that binds a team into a single, swift motion. Prices drift with tide and rumor, and it is not uncommon for a horn to vanish for a season only to reappear in the hands of a new collector. The Saddlebag Exchange, that bustling harbor of traders and talkers, is where such stories surface in the open: a leather-wrapped ledger, a parchment with the last recorded price, and the quiet exchange of a couple of gold coins for a thing that seems to hum with rain. A buyer might offer a bargain to swap a few rare barrels and a memory of a storm for this horn, while a purist would pay in relics and oaths. So the Carrion Verdant Warhorn of Water remains, in the hands of those who listen, a compass and a call to action. It is a relic of reverence and a tool of motion, a keepsake that makes every march feel less solitary and more inevitable, like a river finding the right course after a flood. That is its gift—not merely to be heard, but to be followed.