Tateos's Cleric Insignia

Tateos's Cleric Insignia sits in the palm of my gloved hand, a circular disc of brushed brass whose surface seems hammered by patient months and the steady hands of healers long gone. The rim is smooth from years of contact, a whisper of wear that makes it feel like a memory you could wear. In the center, a pale blue enamel scene catches the light: a stylized healing staff crossing a robed figure, wreathed by a crescent of quiet runes, as if the night itself has pressed its sign into metal. The back is etched with a slender correspondence of Tateos’s name, a tiny loop for a chain or leather cord, and a place where a parchment note might have rested, as if the insignia once carried a message from temple to caravan. The thing wears its lore with a patient dignity, as though it has witnessed long journeys and the quiet mercy of a dozen dawns. I’ve held it beneath a sunlit canopy and watched how the enamel seems to glow with the memory of prayers spoken in crowded halls, how the hammering pattern of the brass gives a rhythm to the finger-tlicked grip. There are stories, too, of Tateos—the healer who traveled among refugees during a time of fracture, who taught a quiet mercy that could steady a crowd of frightened faces with a single, sure gesture. Some say the insignia was born of that mercy, pressed into metal for those who would walk through smoke and fear with a steady debt to their fellow man. When worn by a cleric or investigator of mercy, it is said to carry a calm reminder to choose healing first, to listen before you strike, to trade blows for a cure when the world has learned its thirst. In daylight, the insignia is more than an object; it is a promise tucked into a chain. In the game-world sense, it echoes a duty: a modest boon to those who walk the line between care and courage. Wear it, and your healing arts feel steadier, your prayers a touch more focused, and your ability to cleanse lingering wounds steadier in the heat of battle. It won’t turn a skirmish by itself, but it nudges the tide, a small beacon that improves the rhythm of mercy—faster upticks in healing power when the party needs it, a slight reduction in the fatigue that follows long vigils, and a faint aura that marks you as someone who will stand with the wounded as long as there is breath to spare. It is, in other words, a token both of authority and of humility. The road to a buyer’s hands winds through the bustle of the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders shuffle leather pouches and signatures blur in the lamplight. A merchant with a sun-worn hat and a voice like gravel leans in to tell me the current price—roughly three gold coins in the soft dusk of a busy market day—though he confesses that value rises and falls with rumor and season. The insignia changes hands as if to remind us that mercy is portable, that a cared-for world can be made again one exchange at a time. By night’s end, the emblem glows faintly in its new bearer’s chest—a small, enduring flame of a tale that began with Tateos and travels still, through pockets, through prayers, through the quiet courage to heal first.