Cleric's Ogre Short Bow rests on a weathered pedestal, its ashwood limbs curved with a hunter’s grace and bound in brass fittings that catch the light like old coins. The grip is wrapped in dark, tanned ogre-hide, scarred by countless skirmishes and polished until the texture feels like skin under the palm. The bowstring, a pale sinew taut with discipline, sings faintly when it’s drawn, almost like a whispered prayer. Along the riser runes are etched in a careful, almost ceremonial script, a reminder that this weapon once bridged the austere calm of a cloister with the raw, roaring certainty of the frontier. A small ore-silver crest—an encircled sigil blending a cleric’s lamp with an ogre’s horn—rests near the upper limb, as if the weapon itself wears a quiet, ancient badge of compromise. Lore says it was born from a unlikely alliance: a caravan of priests who sought to temper the brute force of ogres with discipline and patience. They carved the bow from ashwood salvaged from sacred groves and bound it with bronze to resist the ogre’s raw strength, then tempered the string with prayers whispered into the wind. The Cleric’s Ogre Short Bow carries those prayers in its grain, a reminder that power can be steadied by restraint. In the stories kept alive by traders and tavern talk alike, it’s said the bow’s first wielder learned to channel a series of rapid shots into a calm, almost meditative rhythm—one that could stymie a charge before it began, and then turn that moment into a chorus of precise, disciplined arcs. In practice, the weapon favors the quick and the nimble. Its very name hints at speed—short in draw, swift in release—so a ranged combatant who moves with the lightness of a hunter will find it sing. It’s not a brute’s instrument for crushing armor with heavy blows; it’s a scalpel dressed as a tool of mercy, slicing through the fog of battle with rapid-fire accuracy and a steady hand. The bow’s aura is not only in its wood and brass; it’s in the user who chooses to blend patience with pressure—the ranger who steps between shadows, the skirmisher who outflanks a melee line, the cleric-warrior who keeps one eye on the front while the other reads the map of a room’s dangers. It’s said to carry a blessing of resolve, a subtle bonus to focus when the air grows tense and the ground hums with sudden danger. Prices drift through markets as stories do, and it’s at the bustling Saddlebag Exchange that the cleric’s bow becomes a tangible rumor made metal and wood. I watched a clerk weigh the bow with careful hands, weighing its history as much as its heft, before sliding a price across the counter—the sort of figure that makes a careful buyer consider loss and gain in the same breath. The exchange offered a fair trace of gold and silver, a quiet testament to the bow’s rarity and its weight in a world where a well-timed shot can rewrite a night’s tale. Trade, barter, and memory intertwine there, and the Cleric’s Ogre Short Bow moves from legend to daily use as if the world itself steadies its breath to hear its next rapid tail of arrows.