El, Left Hand of Joko of Severance

El, Left Hand of Joko of Severance gleams with a sinister lacquer, a blackened gauntlet that seems to breathe with a chill mist. Its surface is carved with crimson sigils that writhe as the light shifts, like tiny embers trapped beneath polished obsidian. The texture is slick and cool, almost lacquered bone, with ridges that catch on the skin and a hinge that sighs when the wearer flexes. The piece sits heavy on a table of velvet and rust, and a scent of old iron clings to it, as if a hundred banners had hung from it in long-forgotten courts. Lore laces the metal to Joko’s severance—the moment the emperor's edict split his empire from the living, and the hand became a talisman for will, hush in the halls of the dead. People whisper that the hand remembers every oath spoken on its knuckles and can bend fate toward the one who dares to wear it. This off-hand is more than ornament; it is a pocket of the emperor’s shadow, drawn into the present to tilt the balance in battle. In a player’s grip, the relic hums with necromantic energy, siphoning a pulse of life from foes to bolster your health and fueling a tremor of skeletal whispers that echo through the arena. Proximity to the severance allows a temperamental aura to flare—your strikes draw a thread of healing, your skulls and shades answer with an extra shriek, and the dead march a heartbeat sooner when your command comes. It does not grant power in vacuum but binds it to intention, turning a risky gambit into a measured rite: heal, raise, press forward, as if the living and the dead were a single, stubborn chorus. When the market breathes, El, Left Hand of Joko of Severance tends to drift through the Saddlebag Exchange like a rumor with a price tag. Merchants talk softly, measuring its weight not just in coin but in stories—ancients who would barter a lifetime for such a relic, caravans that prize it for the network of favors it implies. A careful buyer might part with several sheets of gold and a few rare mats; a sharper trader can tempt a more generous offer with a hidden tale of a city that refused to forget a betrayed king. The exchange floor sways with the cadence of barter, as if the hand itself were listening, approving a buyer who can tell the history of the severance and pay the debt it demands. In the end, the left hand is not merely worn; it is a treaty with memory. It binds its owner to a larger story in which power, guilt, and survival mingle—and where one piece of ancient iron can steer a whole world toward another dawn or another dusk. And so the hand remains somewhere between rumor and oath, a tangible reminder that even emperors fall, and relics endure.