Woundbinder

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Description

One of the most powerful wands an artisan can make, a woundbinder greatly enhances the healing power of a magician. While some carry them primarily for personal healing, they are far more common in the hands of dedicated magical healers. Some healers refer to one of these items and either a Robe of Blood and Bone (or more rarely a Healer's Harness or Trollsweave Vest) as being the warhealer's regalia and greatly covet them.

Rules

• Form: Wand.
• Effect: Four times per day you may cast the heal spell without spending any mana.
• Materials: Crafting a woundbinder requires twenty ingots of weltsilver, fourteen measures of iridescent gloaming, ten measures of ambergelt and eight measures of beggar's lye. It takes one month to make one of these items.

Out on the field, two armies squared off. Resplendent in blue and gold, the Free Company of the Crossed Keys stood to attention, their crossbows pointed at the ground. Two hundred yards away, the barbarian horde of Gattag Bloodletter, who styled herself Queen of the Wastes. Not because her land was a waste, but as a threat to those she sought to conquer.

And unseen by human or orcish eyes, the Brand and best Thorns of the Striding of the Midsummer Eve, climbing the orcs’ rear palisade with ladders and thick blankets to cover the spikes.

Brand Kim landed first, rolling to break his fall, and crept for the shadows. The others followed seconds later, only one making any more noise than the hard breath of landing.

The orcs had no discipline, and all their guards’ eyes were on the field below. They cheered furiously, too, which made it all the easier to sneak up on them. The fight was short and vicious, the Thorns cutting the gate-guards down in seconds and dragging them back inside the walls. There were only half a dozen, to Kim’s immense disappointment. He’d wanted much more of a fight than that.

He got it, moments later, when his Thorns started dropping around him. Queen Gattag herself strode out of her command tent with her bodyguard, their bows humming from their first arrows and his Thorns on the ground and bleeding. He knew he could take them in a fight. Any Changeling knows he can take any other in a fight. But there were five of them, and now only one of him.

Forward thinking is an admirable trait in a Changeling; it defends against most of their inherent character flaws all at once. While his Thorns lay bleeding and moaning, Kim cut the ropes that held the gates open with a little hacking of the axe, trapping himself and his Striding inside with the Queen, leaving the finely-dressed gentlemen and ladies of the League outside to get on with their battle and leave him to his. And then he drew his wand and began casting.

He cast loudly and obviously, giving the orc all the chance she wanted to interfere. And he met her eye while he did it. As if by unspoken agreement, she waited, perhaps not believing that he could muster the strength to cast so much magic at once and still have anything left for the fight. He met her eye, and she gave him all the time he needed to beat her.

Confident of success, he tossed the Woundbinder to one side – if he lived, he could always pick it up again later – and readied his rod and his sword for combat. And four fine Changeling Thorns stood with him, all of them holding the gaze of an orc champion.