Plaguedoctor's Exalted Gloves

Plaguedoctor's Exalted Gloves curl along the wrist like pale parchment turned to skin, ivory leather stitched with midnight thread, the knuckles crowned with tiny brass pins that catch the lamplight as if stars had been hammered into waking nerves. The texture is cool and springy, with a faint medicinal scent—cured resin and dried herbs—that lingers whenever you flex your fingers. A slender seam climbs the forearm where a sigil—three linked rings bound by a thin line— is etched in silvery ink, barely legible unless you tilt your wrist to catch the glow. Lore says they were forged for the healers who walked the shadowed lanes of plague-struck settlements, gloves worn while coaxing life from virulent vials, the padding and leather made to resist taint while the wearer kept a steady, almost ceremonial pace. In the field, their value isn't merely in how they look but in what they enable. When dawn-colors lift over a ruined town, a bearer of these gloves moves with practiced calm, handling delicate phials and fragile poultices without drawing the weight of disease into their own skin. They feel like a bridge between science and superstition: a tool that invites meticulous care, and in return grants a measure of safety to the hands that administer relief. Players who seek to keep their party alive in the smoke of a skirmish turn to them for steadiness—tapping into a lineage of warding, where every stitch and buckle is a pledge to hold back the worst until the cure can do its work. The gloves are prized in builds that blend healing, condition management, and frontline presence, because they don’t just buff a stat; they signal a philosophy—that mercy can be measured in careful touch and disciplined restraint. The market tells a parallel story. A rumor thread winds through Saddlebag Exchange about these gloves, not as showpieces but as working gear—something you can wear in the thick of a siege and still feel presentable when you return to the candlelit quiet of your camp. Traders haggle about rarity, provenance, and the patience of the original wearer, with gloved hands gesturing as if counting days rather than coins. A ledger near the counter bears a neat line of entries: demand rising in the wake of festival hunts, scarcity in the wake of new discoveries. For a collector with a cautious eye, the price is part story and part risk; for a healer, it’s a small investment in a future where one rescue might hinge on a single, unbroken grip. Later that night, in the harbor town's wind-carved alleys, I watched a field medic tuck the gloves into a folded sleeve, as if tucking away a quiet oath. When the bell rang and torches flared, the gloves glinted once, then settled into their owner's hands, and the air thickened with the scent of resin and resolve. If relics have voices, these spoke in a patient, stubborn language: care can outlast plague, and a careful hand can turn the tide. For the patient.