Rabid Soft Wood Torch

Rabid Soft Wood Torch sits in the palm of a calloused hand, its shaft pale as honey and softly curved from years of use. The wood's grain runs in a hollow wake, and along the length are shallow bite marks—like a small chorus of teeth that refused to forget the forest's old hunger. The head holds a tight nest of resin and a brass wick, and when you strike it, the flame blooms with a stubborn orange glow that makes the surrounding shadows seem to hesitate. The texture is warm to the touch, smooth where the carpenter's rasp left its mark, but with tiny ridges under the fingertips where sap seeped in and dried into a subtle crust. It smells faintly of pine and resin, with a sharp bite of mineral tang from the brass cap, as if the torch has spent years passed between one camp and the next. There is a lore to this particular torch: not a mere tool, but a memory of hands that learned to read the forest by light. Local storytellers whisper that the Rabid Soft Wood came from a grove protected by a feral guardian, a beast that nibbled the trees into sentinels. The workers who shaped the torch preserved that alchemy, coaxing a flame that does not hurry, a flame that stays when others gutter. In the camp's firelight, you can almost hear the howling wind that followed the tree's last witness. In practice, the torch serves more than mood. Its light cuts through damp air and cavern dust, revealing treacherous roots, hidden caverns, and the telltale scorch of recent passage. For scouts and caravan guards alike, it is a portable beacon that travels deeper than the map’s edge, a friend when the night thickens and the path grows uncertain. The flame’s warmth is enough to steady a trembling hand or steady a rider’s nerves as the convoy threads between thorned brush and sluggish marsh. And because its wood is so resilient, the Rabid Soft Wood Torch tends to burn a touch longer than other torches, satisfying that weary traveler who knows a night’s full of miles can hinge on a single spark. Travelers move from camp to camp, trading tales and wares, and that is where Saddlebag Exchange becomes part of the story. A stall tucked behind a dented caravan cart will often display a row of torches—rabid and regular alike—priced not only in copper but in favors, stories, and promises of safe passage. The price on the tag might look modest, a few coins for a reliable light, but the true value lies in the torch’s lore-laden glow, the sense that you’re carrying a fragment of a contested forest into a world that moves on without looking back. If the road requires a light that remembers where it came from, the Rabid Soft Wood Torch answers the call with a stubborn glow and a history that travels with every stride. Its smoke circles the mind like a sigil of persistence.