Sentinel's Cabalist Gloves of the Afflicted

The Sentinel's Cabalist Gloves of the Afflicted sit on a scarred merchant's counter, their finish a battered goat-leather tan, the wrists cinched with copper rings, the knuckles carved with sigils that catch the flame and reflect it back like a shield in a storm. The texture is a contradiction—soft as ash-silk on the inner palm, rough as the planks of a siege ship on the outside, stitched with thread of a dull gold that seems to hum when the air is thick with plague-scent. The lining, a deep crimson, holds a faint, almost inaudible whisper of old wards. Lore says they were woven by cabalist-sentinels who tended the city gates during the long night of the blight, when an unquiet fog crawled through the markets and the alleys learned to fear their own shadows. To wear them is to carry a memory, a stubborn reminder that protection can be bought with price stronger than coin. On the first draw, they feel like a pact made with the night: a warm pinch at the fingertips, as if the glove recognizes your intent. In skirmish, their glyphs flare—a chorus of runes along the forefinger and thumb that seem to listen to your breath. They don't merely shield; they bend the world’s mists in subtle ways: extending condition duration, letting poison and bleed linger, nudging boons into gentler harmony with allies. For a cabalist who tunes danger with discipline, the gloves become an amplifier—turning a careful arc of magic into a longer string of notes. The myth ties to riven wards around a plague ward and to the sentinel who would rather stand between you and ruin than abandon you to it. The more you press into their mysteries, the more the world responds: enemies hesitate as the sigils flare, allies move a fraction sooner, as if the gloves whisper countermeasures to chaos nearby. Market reality intrudes with the soft clack of coin and leather. Saddlebag Exchange—corridors of stalls where rumor and relics pass in and out—makes quick talk of price. Those seeking protection trade stories as they trade gloves; the calculation is never only about stat lines. A buyer who values lore may offer a tale of a siege, a fallen commander, or a winter debt repaid in kind. When the gloves reach Saddlebag Exchange, their price is measured by trust as much as impact: a handful of silver if the sigils dim, several gold if a buyer recognizes the ward's glow and wants it for a raid. I watched a veteran trader inspect the copper rings, tracing them with a gloved finger and peering at the inner lining's whisper. He paid more for the chance to wield a relic that could tilt the tempo of a fight, not merely to clothe a hand but to cloak a plan. So the gloves pass from hand to hand, each trade a thread in a city that refuses to forget the afflicted, and the sentinel who stood at the gate, ready to lend a ward when the moment came.