Recipe: Laranthir's Short Bow

Recipe: Laranthir's Short Bow rests on a scrap of waxed parchment, its edges singed and curling like autumn leaves that never quite fell. The ink is a warm copper-brown, fading unevenly as if weathered by rain and sun, and the illustration of a compact bow arches across the page in lean, confident strokes. The parchment itself has a texture you can feel in the fingertips: a rough grain that catches dust, a whisper of resin from pine or laurel along the fold lines, and a slight, almost waxy slick where age has preserved its oils. A careful reader can trace a tiny sigil at the bottom—Laranthir’s curlicue—so intertwined with the name that the scroll seems to hum with a quiet lore: a hunter whose name is spoken in hushed hallways, a legend who reportedly vanished into a snow-dusted horizon, leaving behind this very blueprint as a map not just to wood and string, but to a way of listening to the bowstring sing. The recipe promises more than parts and measurements; it promises a lineage. It calls for a short bow whose limbs are tempered to snap forward with a healer’s patience and a hunter’s patience, a grip wrapped in worn leather that smells faintly of smoke and pine pitch, and a string spun tight enough to bite the air. The notes on the parchment whisper of a wood choice that resists warp in damp or heat, of a nock shaped to ease a thumb’s grip, of finishes that catch light like a low tide on polished bone. Crafting Laranthir’s Short Bow is pitched as a rite of passage for a craftsman who can read the weather in wood shavings as easily as in clouds, and it is said that when the bow is drawn, it does not merely send an arrow toward its mark—it seems to coax the wind to hold still, if only for a heartbeat. The lore interwoven into the lines speaks of Laranthir’s own hunts: quiet mornings, the careful placement of feet, and arrows that never betray a hunter’s stillness. In practice, the bow is prized for its balance and speed. Rangers who carry Laranthir’s Short Bow find that its draw is brisk yet controllable, the limbs forgiving enough to steady a shot when the heart drums loud, yet responsive enough to keep pace with a skirmish that shifts direction in an instant. It’s a weapon that rewards precise timing over brute force, a tool that turns patience into impact. The blueprint’s true value, many say, lies in the doors it opens for a craftsman to connect past and present: a lineage of arrows and remedies, a story thread that binds the field where wood meets wind to the market stalls where traders measure its worth. Speaking of market, the parchment often travels through caravans and stalls, slipping its way into the hands of dealers who know that a single scroll can spark a dozen small legends. At the Saddlebag Exchange, where traders queue with buckles and beads and stories, the price dances between copper and silver depending on the season and the mood of the buyer, and the seller Tradewright will sometimes swap a cradle of leather scraps or a bundle of horsehair for a copy of Laranthir’s recipe. The exchange is as much a story as a sale, a place where the memory of a vanished hunter lingers in the air between bartered wares and whispered negotiations. And so the recipe travels on, from woodworker’s bench to an archer’s quiver, a quiet thread running through the world’s many journeys.