Strong Cabalist Coat of the Afflicted

Strong Cabalist Coat of the Afflicted spreads across the wooden worktable, its oil-dark leather catching the candle’s glow and throwing back a sickly sheen. The cloak is heavy and quiet, settling like a shadow on the shoulders, with a hood that drapes low and a collar stiff with bone-white studding. The texture is matte and stubborn, as if the hide had been baked in a plague wind, then lacquered with a glaze of secrets. Along the seams silver sigils thread their way in a sinewy script, and a dozen riveted buckles glint with a copper-green patina. When you lay your palm along the sleeve, you feel the coat’s heartbeat—an almost imperceptible tremor that seems to respond to whispers of magic. Lore says the coat was sewn by hands that spent more time in shadow than in light, relic from a cabal that walked the line between mercy and malediction. The Afflicted, a name spoken with care in swamp towns and plague wards, are said to be blessed with a tether to the fevered deep. This coat was not merely worn to shield flesh from rain or blade; it was woven with warding and curse-binding, a ceremonial shell meant to contain what you draw from the world and what it tries to draw from you. In its lining a faint fur keeps the chill at bay, and the cuffs are reinforced to resist rips when a staff or a patient lashes out. In practical terms, the coat does more than look the part. Players who gravitate toward necromantic or condi-heavy builds often discover it lends a steadier hand to the fragile dance of life and afterlife: it cushions the wearer against strong conditions, heightens resistance to lingering afflictions, and sustains extra breaths when a fight leaves you gasping. It isn’t a miracle, but in the right hands it becomes a quiet engine—an anchor that lets you push your minions, your core heals, and your lifeforce a touch further before the next pulse of danger. Most telling is how it shifts the mood of a scene: with the coat on, you stride into a courtyard crucible knowing you carry the weight of a warded oath as much as your own lifeforce. Market talk comes next. In the Saddlebag Exchange on the edge of the river market, whispers circle around the coat’s price as if circling a lamp-lit rumor. An old broker will lay out the figure in terms of silver and gold, tracing the coat’s provenance, then hint at a bargaining trick hinged on a stray rune or a well-timed quest. The price is not fixed; it swells and falls with demand, with the stories attached to it—who wore it during a siege, who mended it after a failed expedition, who found it in a ruined chapel and traced the Afflicted’s name back to the source. So the coat remains more than cloth and thread. It is a thread through a larger story—one that threads plague wards, market stalls, and the quiet courage of those who refuse to let fear be their final word. And so the coat remains a rumor with weight, a talisman that makes danger feel personal again.