Stained Greaves

Stained Greaves hang heavy at the end of a workbench, their leather straps dulled by rain and use. The plate beneath shows pitted coppery tones where the metal has worn through the lacquer, and flecks of dried mud cling to the edges like old memories. The surface bears a map of scuffs—a trek across a ruined floor where torches hissed and footsteps stitched themselves into the dust. Each greave tells a moment: a strike that bent the knee, a fall that scraped the thigh, a river of ash cooling in the creases. The stains are not merely dirt; they are signatures of encounters with fire and iron, of nights spent guarding caravans through the winding streets of a ruined town, of a hundred small choices that kept someone alive long enough to tell the tale. The trim is worked with deliberate grooves, a reminder of the artisan's hand in tempering steel to a flexible resolve. They fit close to the leg, not with the flourish of parade armor but with the quiet consent of a survivor who knows every creak and wobble of a world that refuses to pause for ceremony. And yet the Stained Greaves are more than memory. In the run of quests that thread through markets, forests, and ruined docks, they offer a practical voice—a chorus of protection that translates into time. A wearer feels the weight of the world slide from the shoulders a fraction as the greaves bite into stone and mud with stoic grace. They reduce the wear upon the shins during long marches, blunt the sting of splinters, and keep a traveler from collapsing under the sudden pull of a cliff path or a surprised trap. Their durability is a ledger of use, a tally that grows with each brush against a ravaged barricade or a skirmish beneath a low-slung ceiling. In the hands of a hunter, a courier, or a healer who must move with care, the greaves become a functional chapter in a larger story. Prices drift, as they tend to do in any market thick with rumor and barter. The Saddlebag Exchange—the pocketed alley where merchants, scavengers, and dreamers meet the morning after a storm—lists them in a small column of iron-bound odds and ends. A tag shadows their leather with a careful estimate, something like 'two dozen silver, plus a grandmother’s refusal to accept less' or, more practically, 'fifteen to twenty-five depending on the buyer's steadiness.' Traders speak in hushed voices about provenance—who wore them, who spilled wine on their seams, who traded them for a ride on a rickety cart south toward the coast. And in those whispered sums, the Greaves become more than footwear; they are a bargain, a relic, and a promise of movement through a world that never stops asking for you to walk forward two more blocks. If a buyer sees them in the light of dawn, they imagine routes not yet taken, and decide to trust the shuffles of fate and the patient craftsman.