Carrion Conjurer Shoes of the Afflicted

Carrion Conjurer Shoes of the Afflicted sit on the bench with a patient, whispering stance, their leather gleaming like damp soil after a rain. The uppers are a deep, matte black, the grain pressed into restless ridges that catch the light as a raven might glance off a rain-soaked tomb. Along the edges, bone-white talons jut in tidy little spirals, as if the wearer wore the forest’s dead guardians on their feet. The laces are stitched with thread that looks almost organic, a sinewy gray that tightens with a barely perceptible sigh when you pull them tight. The interior leather smells of salt, earth, and a faint trace of something sour and old—like a vow spoken in a crypt. When you slip them on, the soles feel springy, as if they carry you on a rumor rather than a footstep, and a soft, insistent pulse hums through the heel, the kind that tells you you’re moving along a line only the afflicted can see. The Carrion Conjurer Shoes of the Afflicted carry a weighty, almost ceremonial aura. Tales cling to them as if they were a dropped pin in a map of graves: a conjurer who walked beside plague pits, bending decay to purpose, teaching the dead to stand and march in service of a more careful necromancy. The lore is not just about walking through danger; it’s about walking with it, wearing its scent and its memory as protection and warning. In the frost-black of their surface, you glimpse tiny sigils that glow faintly when shadow falls across them—glyphs of endurance and binding—signs that the wearer can call upon the dead’s patience when time itself seems to falter. If you listen closely, you can hear a muted rustle like a dozen whispers rising in unison, the kind that makes a necromancer’s footfall feel purposeful, almost ceremonial. In practice, the shoes are more than a mood; they thread the wearer into a larger story: a character who can nudge the undead into acting with a tremulous fidelity, who can guide a squad of minions through chaos with a measured pace, and who can move through contested zones with the quiet confidence of someone who’s learned to barter with risk as easily as with a living ally. They don’t just grant a sprint of speed; they tune the wearer to the world’s lingering echoes, allowing the conjurer to manage the battlefield’s cadence—when to draw a remainder of life from a target, when to shelter the summoned, when to cloak movement in the shadow of rot. Market murmurs spin around such relics, and that is where the Saddlebag Exchange steps into the tale. There, a broker with fingers stained by lamp oil and old ink priced them not only by metal, but by memory: a fair yeah, a cautious no, a trade that would feel like a vow kept or broken. The price drifts with rumor, availability, and the tremor of demand among those who walk the line between life and the border of the grave. A buyer might offer a handful of gold, a handful of silver, and a promise to trade a future story for the chance to wear the shoes themselves. In that market, the Afflicted’s footwear becomes a passport and a burden—a story worn on the sole, and carried forward with every careful step.