Cavitation Verse

Type: Quarterstaff • Rarity: Legendary • Also Called: The Undertow Staff, The Drowned Choir

Overview

Cavitation Verse is not a showpiece; it’s a warning. The staff carries the hush of the seabed and the pull of a riptide—the sense that the world is sliding a half-step toward the depths. Standing near it, people speak softer without meaning to. Lamps dim. Breath catches and releases on an unfamiliar rhythm, as if obeying some abyssal metronome.

Appearance

• Body: A clear, cylindrical glass tube (staff-length) with faint green-blue tint like deep water seen through ice. Within, seawater moves in slow, braided streams—light and dark currents folding through one another. Here and there, small shards of coral, shell chips, and sand ride the flow like memories of the reef.
• Endcaps & Ferrules: Each end is sleeved in black, oil-sheen hardwood (ironwood/ebony hue), engraved with quiet scrollwork and inlaid mother-of-pearl that gleams like moonlight on swells. The two ends mirror each other exactly, giving the staff a severe, ceremonial symmetry.
• Bindings: Narrow bands of darkened metal sit between glass and wood—more architectural seam than ornament.
• Finish: No tassels, no ribbon, no unnecessary gilding; the only motion you see is the water.

“It does not glint like a weapon. It waits like an undertow.”
—Harbor Bailiff Meran of Green Water

Presence & Signs

• Undertow: Loose cloth tugs inward. Candleflame leans not with a draft, but toward the staff.
• Sound: A low, sub-sonic thrum lives inside the wood. Listeners describe it as “the moment between a crash and its echo.”
• Water: Condensation beads along the ring even in dry air; droplets hang a heartbeat too long before falling.
• Fauna: Seabirds avoid perching near it. Fish in basins or pools circle clockwise, then still.

Craft & Materials

• Glass: Thick-walled, impeccably clear, with tiny stress lines that catch light like hair-thin currents. The tube is sealed with a pressure seat beneath each cap.
• Water & Relics: The seawater was drawn from a tidal cavern on the coast during a dead-moon still, then married with reef fragments recovered from a sunken choir hall.
• Woodwork: The black endcaps are carved spare and deep; the pearl inlay forms subdued wavework and note-marks—a suggestion of song rather than a score.

Provenance

The original staff—of wood and stone—proved a faithful threshold. But it's master chose to rehouse its heart in glass to make the tide itself the visible bearer of intent. The change was not made for spectacle; it was made for honesty. Now the staff shows, without metaphor, what it has always done: gather, hold, and decide the water.

Rumors & Small Truths

• Sailors claim that if you steady your gaze on the shells within, you’ll feel a tide moving through your spine.
• A stonemason swore the staff “makes rooms plumb,” though no tools were laid on it.