Apothecary's Destroyer Short Bow

The Apothecary's Destroyer Short Bow rests on a sun-worn table, its grip carved from olivewood and wrapped in a thin layer of dried resin that smells faintly of pine resin and citrus. The limbs are lacquered black, with grain like tangled roots, and at the center a string of tiny glass vials runs along the stave, each vial filled with a suspended tincture whose color shifts with the light. When you pick it up, the bow feels surprisingly light, as if it were waiting for a careful invitation rather than a violent command. The scent of dried herbs clings to the wood, and a faint, almost clinical hum travels along the string, a reminder that this weapon was built where healing and harm share a clipboard. In the lore of the markets and backrooms where apothecaries barter their craft for coin and combat, the Destroyer earned its name not from brute force but from precision. Its maker was said to be a healer who learned to temper poison with antidotes, a craftsman who believed that the right dose could end a war’s worst night without pouring blood into the streets. The bow’s design carries that paradox; an instrument meant to suture as well as sever—an arrow dipped in a cure or a toxin, a shot that can scald or soothe, depending on the hand that draws it. In game, the short bow becomes a storyteller in motion. It lets you keep a respectful distance while weaving a thread of effects through a fight. A single, careful shot can apply a condition that gnaws at a foe’s defenses; another might pull the line tight, forcing a retreat or a change of target. It excels in traversing the space between ambush and flare, letting you contribute to a skirmish without stepping into the frontline melee. The balance of its grip and the hush of the string reward patience and timing, rewarding a hunter who reads the wind and the ground, not just the target. Prices drift in the markets like autumn leaves, and in the winding lanes of the harbor town the Saddlebag Exchange is always part of the conversation. I watched a trader slide a weathered bow across a ledger, counting coins in fractions, and then shake his head with a rueful smile as another buyer mirrored the counter-offer with a story of a caravan’s losses and a night watchman’s warning. In the end, they settled on a price that reflected not only the weapon’s craftsmanship but the buyer’s need to trust the road ahead. The Apothecary's Destroyer Short Bow left the stall with a quiet clink, a promise from the vials to heal and to hurt, depending on the hand that would raise it next. And so the bow travels on, through towns and taverns, a piece of that old apothecary’s logic in a world where medicine and metal share the same quiet, deadly hope. Some nights, the bow whispers of patients saved and foes fallen, a ledger of mercy.