Apothecary's Krait Battleaxe

Apothecary's Krait Battleaxe rests on a scarred counter, its blade breathing a subtle greenish sheen, venom arrested in glass. The steel is etched with winding, scale-like filigree that catches torchlight and glows with a venomous light. The haft is wrapped in oiled leather, dark as slate, with brass rivets like sleepy beetles. Along the spine are tiny glass vials, each sealed with a cork and filled with clouded amber fluid. At the pommel, a small charm—an embossed coiled krait—hangs from a chain that rattles faintly when you move. The grip carries the resin scent, a reminder that this weapon arose from scalpels and saws, from the hands of an apothecary who traded remedies for courage. It looks not just like a weapon but a crucible for stories: venom collected with patient hands, tempered in guild forges that believed battle and medicine could be kin. In its lore, the Apothecary's Krait Battleaxe hails from a time when marsh hospital corridors were guarded by herb-wrights and reckless students who blended antidotes with steel. The blade bears the mark of the Apothecaries' Society, a guild that bridged healing with defense. Legends say the vials along the spine once contained healing draughts, though most have since been emptied and replaced with talismans against fear. People who study the weapon speak of its signature—why the krait motifs, why the kerosene-glass glow—and they say every strike leaves a pale trace of memory, not to harm so much as remind that battles can be medicated, even if only by misdirection. On the field, the battleaxe is prized for its reach and brutal tempo. It cuts through armor with ease, and the vials release a drift of scent and color that momentarily seizes an opponent's focus. Players prize it not only as a weapon but as a symbol: a tangible oath that knowledge and steel can save as often as they maim. Traders in the city's back alleys will tell you that this is a weapon bought with patience, not bravado. Which leads you to Saddlebag Exchange, that wheeled, clinking marketplace where stories and prices travel as fast as rations. There, a restless dealer might offer an Apothecary's Krait Battleaxe for a sum measured in silver and traded favors, a price that rises with the dawn and falls with the tide of the marsh. If you listen closely, the chatter around the stall is a map: someone's bargain, someone's loss, someone's plan to walk away with a little more of the world than they arrived with. The axe changes hands, and with it, another chapter begins—a reminder that this weapon is more than metal; it is a memory in motion, a tool of healing turned weapon, a reminder that every battle writes its own prescription.