The shop is easy to miss and impossible to forget.
Aftermath Armaments sits wedged between two louder businesses in Lygos, its narrow frontage cluttered with old shields, dented helms, and weapons that look used rather than decorative. The windows are crowded, not curated. Nothing is polished to shine—everything bears the quiet dignity of survival.
Behind the counter stands Cyrus Spanglefork, a gnome with oil-stained fingers, magnifying lenses perched on his forehead, and a smile that flickers between genial and reverent depending on what you’re holding. He wears a patched leather apron layered over travel-worn clothes, and he smells faintly of old steel, dust, and ink.
Cyrus loves stories, but not the heroic kind. He prefers the end of stories.
Ask him where he gets his stock and he’ll tell you proudly, leaning in as if sharing a conspiracy:
“My family’s big. No—bigger than that.”
The Spangleforks possess a sprawling, labyrinthine family tree stretching across Faerûn. Cousins, uncles, nieces, and twice-removed kin travel constantly, arriving after battles, raids, sieges, monster attacks, and disasters. They don’t fight. They don’t loot the living. They document, recover, catalog, and preserve what remains when the shouting stops. Weapons pulled from mud. Armor stripped from ruined keeps. Relics forgotten under collapsed walls.
Cyrus is the hub where it all eventually arrives.
He can identify most unusual weapons at a glance, and the truly strange ones after an hour with his tools, notes, and muttered genealogical references. He knows which cultures forged what, which enchantments linger long after their makers died, and which items should absolutely not be swung indoors. His prices are fair—but his buying prices are famously generous. If you bring him something rare, ancient, or exotic, he pays top coin without haggling, because he knows exactly what it’s worth and what it cost to recover.
He treats every item with respect. A cracked shield might get more care than a jeweled sword, if its dents tell a better story.
In a city full of flashier merchants, Aftermath Armaments is a quiet treasure trove—an archive disguised as a shop. Adventurers who stumble upon it tend to come back. Veterans linger longer than they mean to. And Cyrus remembers everyone who walks through his door, even if he has to check which branch of the family retrieved the blade they’re carrying.
After all, someone has to mind the aftermath.