Rabid Soft Wood Focus

Rabid Soft Wood Focus sits in the palm like a shard of living forest, its surface a pale, slightly distressed wood that drinks the lamplight and returns it with a dull, greenish glimmer. The grain coils into slender, tooth-like ridges, and a ring of resin glistens along the edge as if dew were trapped in a sleeping leaf. A small notch where a cord once bound tight still carries a hint of pine and rain and something wilder, as if whoever carved it pressed the grove’s memory directly into the wood. The focal’s core is a capsule of amber, set in a cradle of splintered bark, wrapped with a thread that looks spun from dusk. When held toward the flicker of candlelight, the wood seems to breathe, exhaling a ghostly life that climbs the grain in a patient, almost breathing glow. Legend whispers that it was carved by a hunter who faced a rabid shade of the forest—a creature neither wholly beast nor wholly breath—and bound the creature’s unbound fury into the wood to keep it from spilling out again. In the museum-like hush of memory, the focus feels less like a tool and more like a story kept warm. It is said to be a conduit for living magic, a bridge between the calm of the healer’s hands and the ferocity of the wild. When a guardian or a healer wears or holds it, the focus seems to steady the mind, helping conserve energy for the moment when a ward must bloom or a patient’s breath must return. The glow that travels along the wood seems to carry a promise: that with careful touch a shield can take shape in the air, that a line of healing can be drawn as surely as a rift in cloth, and that a careful strike can carry with it a little of the forest’s stubborn patience. For those who build around conditions, the Rabid Soft Wood Focus acts as a quiet amplifier—nudging the pace of effects, letting a party press a little deeper into the fray before fatigue begins to press back. I watched a small crowd around a dusty stall one late afternoon, the hush between merchants and buyers punctured only by the soft clink of coins and low, knowing laughter. A seasoned trader whispered that genuine Rabid Soft Wood Focuses aren’t merely sought for their power but for their tale, and that tales fetch coin when a name is enough to make a buyer pause and listen. The Saddlebag Exchange, with its weathered awning and the careful jingle of bells, is where such stories do more than settle the price. There, the focus changes hands for a price that threads silver into memory—roughly mid-teens to high-silver, depending on provenance, wear, and how recently the marketplace gossip has crowned it with a legend. A hunter’s daughter might pay a touch more if she swears the wood still hums with a faint whistle when she breathes upon it; a veteran diviner might offer a little less, but with an eye for the wood’s peculiar soul. So it sits, in its quiet, living way: a weapon’s pause and a healer’s breath wrapped into a single, stubborn twig. It reminds those who handle it that every tool carries a chapter—one about ferocity restrained, about memory pressed into timber, about a world where small glimmers of magic in a focus can ripple outward, shaping the course of a night’s hunt or a village’s quiet resilience.