Carrion Seer Coat of the Afflicted

Carrion Seer Coat of the Afflicted rests on the back of a chair like a weathered banner, its fabric a dusk-red velvet threaded with soot and ash. The coat’s surface bears a stubborn, moth-gone texture, soft in the folds yet stubborn at the seams, as if every thread carries a memory of frost and fever. A high collar stiff with age clamps around the throat, while the sleeves gather sigils—bone-white runes that shimmer faintly when a lamp catches them, like frost on a window—and the hem bears jagged bites from years of patrol and flight. The hood sits nigh invisible until pulled up, revealing a lining clad with sigils of quiet judgment and mercy. It smells of resin, dried lavender, and the pale sting of old smoke, a scent that clings to the wearer and never quite leaves the room. In the right light, the cloth seems to breathe, as if the coat itself is listening to the world’s sorrows and deciding which to carry. Lore gives the coat its weight. It’s said to have been stitched by a caravan seer who walked the plague wards and ruined crypts alike, trading whispers with the afflicted for glimpses of a path through disease and despair. The wearer becomes, briefly, a conduit for those voices—the kind of garment that asks questions and grants patience. Leathered patches along the shoulders hint at past battles, while the sigils along the cuffs curl like fingers around the wrist, inviting restraint rather than rashness. It is not a garment of glory, but of burden and balance; a cloak that turns a healer’s gaze toward what remains after the battle, not merely what ends it. In gameplay terms, the coat feels like a pact with consequence. Equipping it shifts the rhythm of a fight, nudging the tempo toward longer-lived conditions and steadier lifeforces at the edges of combat. It suits those who lean into condition damage and insidious control—poison, bleed, torment—while offering a subtle breath of resilience to allies through sustained aura and lifedrain mechanics. The wearer taps into an occult resonance that rewards patience: less reckless sprinting, more measured steps, more time for an ally to stand up again after a brutal skirmish. It’s the kind of piece that doesn’t shout in the middle of a duel but hums at the margins, turning whispers into leverage when the team needs it most. Stories from the market lanes weave the coat into the world’s larger fabric. Sellers speak of it as a relic that often finds a second breath on a road-weary traveler, a companion to caravans crossing plague-barricaded towns, or a quiet nod to those who tend the wounded in shadowy wards. On a sun-bleached desk in a busy bazaar, a ledger lists it between other rare coats and relics, and the trade winds carry a familiar line about pricing. Saddlebag Exchange becomes the thread through this tale: the item’s value swings with sigil enchantments and the tide of demand, commonly hovering in a wide, gold-filled range that reflects its rarity and the risk of its whispers. A buyer will pay a premium for a coat that has seen a warded camp and lived to tell the tale; a curator might bargain for a gentler wear that keeps its stories intact. Either way, the coat remains a narrative in fabric—an artifact of suffering turned into strategy, a reminder that power in this world is always tempered by memory.