Boneweaver

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Description

These powerful adjuncts to a magician's healing arts are most often made of bone. They repair arms and legs that have been crippled by cleaving strikes or pierced with arrows. They are especially popular with Imperial Orc shaman, who can bring the legion warriors back to full fighting strength quickly while conserving their personal mana for emergency healing or offensive spells. In all nations, they are a common tool of stretcher-bearers, allowing them to get warriors walking again and able to head to the chirurgeons unassisted. This has won the rods the name Cripple's Delight. Being rods, they also serve as a convenient method of self-defence for such healers.

Finding bones long enough to form the core of these rods can be problematic as the best results are achieved with single bones without any fractures or cracks. Horse leg bones were once used, but since their extinction, the long bones of oxen are the most common materials in many lands. In Varushka, the bones of bears and boar are used due to their size and association with the virtue of Courage, to inspire the injured to overcome hardship and claim victory. Careful application of amberbelt can provide additional length, encasing the bone like a fly in amber. In some examples, tiny fractures appear in the bone every time they are used, taking on the injuries they cure, eventually causing them to shatter at the end of their lifespan.

Rules

• Form: Wand.
• Effect: Three times per day when you cast the restore limb spell you can do so without spending any mana.
• Materials: Crafting a boneweaver requires nine measures of amberbelt, eight measures of iridescent gloaming and seven measures of weltsilver. It takes one month to make one of these items.

The human's blood was drizzling out from between Durn's fingers, staining his white wrist-wrap a carmine red. He felt his grip slither and slip from the flowing red fluid, and grunted as he tightened his grasp around Tancred's upper arm.

Everything below the Dawnish soldier's elbow was a ragged mess, but his shoulder wasn't looking much better either. Tancred's face had paled and Durn could tell he'd gone into some sort of shock, the human mind's way of trying to deal with the intense agony he must be suffering.

That and his Abyss-damned jokes. It was an old ritual between the two friends.

“W-What do you call it when an orc tries to sing?”

“Attempted murder,” Durn grunted. He reached to his side where the wand was tied, working to extricate it from the knots there. “What do you call a band of humans running away?”

“I... I don't know.” Tancred spasmed and coughed, wincing as he did so, and the shaman frowned at the fresh spatter of blood running between his fingers.

“An army.” He had the wand free now.

“Hah! G-good one. What do orcs call their enemies?” A beat. “Dinner.”

Durn raised an eyebrow as he held the wand aloft. “How do you tell if a human is a great warrior?”

Tancred frowned through the haze of pain. “No idea.”

“Me neither, I've never met one.” That got his friend laughing. Durn quickly muttered the incantation then tapped the wand to the human's wrecked limb.

“That... that's a good one, I th-agh Ways-damnit that hurts aargh!” Tancred clenched his jaw as the bones of his arm reset with a crack, flesh and tendon knitted back together and nerves flared with fresh agony.

And then the spell was done and the nobleman was sitting up, flexing his repaired limb with a slight look of wonder on his face. The flesh still bore wounds, but the magic had done enough to give Tancred back the use of his sword-hand.

“Now get back up and into that fight,” Durn ordered him. “We've a battle yet to win, and I don't think those things care whether it's orc or human flesh they're eating at the end of the day.”