The Best Defense

The vindictive contestants of the Crucible gave birth to this brutal buckler design. A barbed steel spike projects from its center, designed to punch through plate, chain, and skin. No amount of scouring will cleanse the bloodstains from its base. The buckler's presence inspires fearful cringes from combatants and sympathetic winces from gentler audience members, evoking uninvited tales of seemingly lost battles turned by a timely shield bash to the gut, groin, or eye.

Though none seem to know who first crafted this buckler, Kazuwari denizens attest that dozens have worn it into the pit over the years of fighting. Your inheritance of it suggest that its previous bearers have learned the cruel, final lesson of the Crucible: even those bearing the best arms inevitably pay the pit its due.