Slightly Smooth Scales

Slightly Smooth Scales glimmer with the quiet patience of a rain-washed river, each plate a whisper of dusk, a mosaic of olive and slate, edges worn soft by tides that never quite stop. When you tilt them, a subtle waxy sheen catches the light, like a coin slipping from a child’s palm. They are not dragon-hide, not entirely; they carry a memory of scale and current, a memory that murmurs a story you can almost hear if you rest your ear close enough to their polished surface. In the workshop shadows, the scales feel almost alive—faintly tremulous as if the river itself breathes through the fibers of their sheen. The rumor is that they belong to the river guardians, a lineage of serpent-spirits who slept beneath stone until the world learned to listen again. The scales shed rain and rumor alike, their slickness a sign they weather more than weather: they weather time. For a craftsman or caravan guard, that balance of resilience and pliancy is a rare gift, and so they pass between hands with a reverent quiet, as if trading a memory more than a material. As a piece of gameplay in the broader life of the road, Slightly Smooth Scales offer more than stiffness or shine. They are prized for being light yet sturdy, forgiving to shape when a designer’s hand wants to bend a piece of armor into new forms, or to carve a boot that will carry a rider through slick forest floors without betraying the wearer’s balance. When a smith threads them into vambraces, the scales take on a whisper of enchantment—a minor ward here, a cool touch of frost there, a hint of warmth at the curve of a palm—without becoming rigid or brittle. They hold polish like a vow, catching dawn in a way that makes even the most hurried traveler pause to admire the gleam. I learned to look for them not just in the forge but in the markets where the road ends briefly and commerce resumes again. In the dim glow of lamps, a merchant named Veno told me the scales behave differently depending on their recent life: a river’s fast current leaves a sharper edge to the sheen, while a slow, meandering current grants a softer, deeper luster. The true test, he said, is the market’s own breath—the way the scales catch a buyer’s eye and then settle into a shared decision. That shared decision often happens at Saddlebag Exchange, where the street’s chatter compresses into a single rhythm of barter. A bundle of fifty Slightly Smooth Scales can fetch a handful of silver, perhaps more if a buyer asks for extra care—polished by a guild hand, dried with cedar, or paired with a leather warp that makes a saddle sing. It’s a scene of steady, patient trade: merchants weighing memory and value, crafters weighing potential, travelers weighing the next trail. And through it all, the Slightly Smooth Scales carry on—a quiet thread in a larger story about weather, craft, and the small, stubborn beauty of things that endure.