Its story
An old, cracked wooden bat, its grain split in several places and its handle polished smooth by countless hands. Barbed metal wire coils around the barrel, yet its points never dull or bend. Brown-red stains blot the wood like medals. A dark, blood-like liquid slowly beads along the wire and drips from the bat's tip, evaporating before it can mark the ground. Despite its ruinous condition, it twitches toward the nearest promise of violence.
Lore
Soldiers say the bat does not remember its victims, only the sound of a fight beginning. Some cultures regard it as a curse that follows war; others leave offerings of wine and iron at battlefields, hoping it will choose a tyrant rather than a child. Its blood-like seepage is said to be the battlefield's memory, not the blood of any single creature.
History
The bat first appeared in the aftermath of the Ashen Field massacre, resting upright in the hand of a nameless survivor surrounded by a thousand fallen soldiers. It passed from champion to butcher to rebel, reappearing in wars whenever its previous wielder died. One bearer tried to bury it beneath a peace treaty; the bat was found the next morning leaning against the treaty's bloodied table.
