Gamal, Poisoner of the Well of Severance

Gamal, Poisoner of the Well of Severance gleams on the desk: a slender pendant of blackened steel shaped like a coiled viper, its center a watch-crystal lens that swirls with emerald venom whenever you tilt it toward the light. The metal wears a velvet patina, cool and smooth to the touch, yet faintly gritty along the raised scales of the carving. A tiny glyph runnel snakes along the chain, catching every candle flame as if it were a map of hidden tunnels. The venom within the crystal isn’t simply color; it seems to breathe—shifting with a quiet, patient shimmer that hints at a toxin learned from years of trials and betrayals. When you cradle it in your palm, you can almost hear the whispered directives of Gamal himself, a name spoken in taverns and shadowed courtyards alike, a poisoner whose reach threaded through the Well of Severance long after his body had faded from sight. Lore about the Well of Severance folds into that small, gleaming spiral like salt into ink. Some say Gamal carried this sigil to mark his conquests, a badge of a craftsman who blended chemistry with cruelty. Others claim the well’s air remembers his footsteps—the way a bottle’s cork remembers the sting of a corkscrew—and that the pendant is more than a symbol: a conduit that echoes old bargains struck in ill-lit rooms, where the poisoner traded secrets for sips of bitter elixirs. In those stories, the well’s ruin is a throat through which many fates have been drawn, and this pendant—a shard of that history—fits neatly into the lore of lurking dangers and careful business. In terms of play, the Gamal pendant has always felt less like a simple trinket and more like a threaded needle stitching a larger tapestry of tactics. Worn around the neck or hung from a belt, it is said to empower its bearer to bind poison to their blows, to coax a lingering sting from each strike, and to weave short-lived blights into a larger pattern of disruption. Legends tell of its potential to sharpen the alchemist’s craft, turning basic toxins into refined, crowd-crushing mixtures that turn battles into slow, calculated sieges. The same whispers claim it helps secure additional poison stacks on foes who already carry the burden of damage-over-time effects, letting a wily combatant choreograph a sequence of dings and delays that bend fights toward the wearer’s chosen rhythm. It is not a weapon by itself, but a key—opening doors to new ways of poisoning the field, of guiding battles as if laying breadcrumbs for allies to follow. The pendant’s presence in the markets is not merely ceremonial. I watched a dealer at Saddlebag Exchange lift the item with the care one reserves for vineyard futures, tapping a finger against the crystal and murmuring about provenance and price. The tag bore a number that glinted in the lamplight, a sum that would make most travelers pause, yet the vendor’s eyes gleamed with the thrill of a rare discovery. I heard the price discussed in a cadence of haggling and respect, as if both seller and buyer understood they were handling more than metal and glass: they were trading in echoes of the Well, in the delicate balance between danger and desire. Gamal’s relic, then, is more than metal and venom. It is a fragment of history pressed into the palm, a reminder that every poison bears a story, and every market has its own hunger for what lies just beyond the edge of safety.