Legend Lore - Armor with Red Gem

In a land of high towers and colder truths, there once reigned a man called King Maerlon the Grey, whose crown was heavy not from gold, but from the weight of time. Though his hair yet gleamed like silvered snow and his voice thundered still in the great hall, fear had made its home behind his eyes.

For Maerlon feared death.

Not the death of battle nor of realm—those he had mastered—but the quiet one that comes in sleep, that no sword may strike and no wall may keep. He brooded on it as others drank wine or sang of love. While his court aged around him, he chased whispers and winds.

He summoned alchemists who boiled quicksilver in golden pots, priests who chanted ancient rites till their tongues bled, and his most trusted companion, the royal wizard Aelric, who turned the stars like gears in a clock to measure fate itself.

But always the end waited.

So the king looked outward, dispatching his strongest knights to scour the known world—and the forgotten one beyond it. They returned with relics: a chalice that never emptied, a dagger that healed its wielder, bones said to belong to gods. None sufficed.

Then came the tale: of a great phoenix seen soaring above the western coast, wings alight with dawn, its cry echoing like memory through the sky. Immortal. Eternal. Untouched by time.

“Bring it to me,” Maerlon commanded.

The hunt was long and cruel. Many knights perished. Whole groves were scorched to ash. Mages bled themselves casting spells to bind what ought never be bound. But in the end, the phoenix was captured—a creature of flame and sorrow, caged in golden iron and brought before the throne.

Maerlon stood, aged and trembling, his eyes alight with hunger. “Take its power,” he whispered to Aelric. “Steal eternity.”

And Aelric, bound by oath and long worn by the king’s obsession, obeyed. For thirteen years, he worked without rest. At last, he fashioned a gem: a ruby no mine had birthed, pulsing with the phoenix’s very soul. The bird itself, now cold and gray, sang no more.

Triumphant, the king rose to receive his prize.

And tripped.

The stone floor cracked his skull like a fallen chalice. Death, ever patient, needed no ceremony.

Aelric knelt by the lifeless body and wept—for Maerlon, for himself, and for the noble creature whose gift had been perverted. That night, the phoenix's hollow eyes turned to ash and scattered on the wind.

The gem, too terrible to destroy, was hidden far from crown and castle.

Yet magic has its own tides. Centuries passed, and the ruby was found again, its flame no longer fierce but protective—warding its bearer from harm, though never from fate. It was set into a suit of enchanted armor, worn by many through wars and legends. Each told tales of a fire that shielded them, of warmth in the coldest battles.

None knew the truth—that inside the stone, a phoenix still dreamed of open skies and a world where its gift had not been caged. It's immortality still within its wielder's grasp.