Volatile Gauntlet of Kenre
Wondrous item, very rare (requires attunement by a spellcaster)
This gauntlet has 4 charges, which recharge at dawn. When the wearer casts a spell of 1st level or higher, they can use their reaction and expend one charge to activate the gauntlet and absorb magic from the surrounding area to heal 2d4.
However, absorbing magic from the surrounding area leaves the area unstable and the wearer must make a DC 13 constitution saving throw or roll on the wild magic table.
Awakened
Once this gauntlet is awakened, the user begins feel urges and hear quiet whispers telling them to absorb the magical magical essence of strong magical effects around them.
As an action, the wearer can expend 3 charges to cast dispel magic at a range of touch. If successful, the magical essence is drained into the gauntlet, and the wearer gains 1d4 health for each (level of spell successfully dispelled/2) rounded up. For example, successfully dispelling a 5th level spell would allow the wearer to gain 3d4 health.
Exalted
The urges to absorb magic become stronger, but the wearer now also feels the urge to absorb the life force from others.
The gauntlet now has 5 charges total. The wearer can now make a Vampiric Touch melee spell attack at will, draining the magical essence of another creature. This does not require concentration.
The wearer can expend a number of charges to increase the level of a single Vampiric Touch melee spell attack by 1 per charge spent (maximum of 3).
VARIANT:
Volatile Gauntlet of Kenre
Wondrous item, rare
This gauntlet has 3 charges, which recharge at dawn. When the wearer casts a spell of 1st level or higher, they can expend one charge and their reaction to activate the gauntlet and absorb magic from the surrounding area to heal 2d4.
However, absorbing magic from the surrounding area leaves the area unstable and the wearer must roll on the wild magic table.
I feel the magic flowing into my veins!
Background and lore
Kenre was a great artificer, and one of the original warforged of house D'Cannith. Kenre was created as a warforged prototype, before house D'Cannith had perfected a way to keep living constructs running without external sources of energy, and as such, Kenre had to stay near potential power sources out of fear of shutting down permanently. With his inability to venture far from home, Kenre ended up as an Artificer's assistant, and without the need to eat or sleep, he spent all of his time either helping his artificer master, or reading of a variety of magics. With Kenre's help, house D'Cannith developed a way for newly created Warforged to be able to sustain their own life forces, and be independent. However, this new method could not be applied to already created Warforged such as Kenre.
Kenre became extremely jealous of his newly created brethren. He wanted to leave and travel to study more magics in person instead of just reading about them in books. He began obsessively spending all his time attempting to work out a new method to create an easily renewable source of energy for himself. After years of reading and prototyping, he finally realized a different approach. Instead of attempting to create energy, he could steal energy from the resources around him. Stealing energy from the world around him worked, but it was unstable, causing magical effects he couldn't predict. Though stealing energy from magical anomalies seemed to both cure the anomaly and give himself a stable source of magical essence. But there just wasn't enough magical effects just sitting around waiting to be absorbed on a daily basis to sustain his life force. Finally, Kenre realized there was one more way to get stable source of essence; living creatures. He found draining the life force of others to be stable, and there was always a plethora of living creatures around.
With his new discovery, Kenre integrated this ability into his hands and set off from house D'Cannith to study the world. At first, sightings of Kenre coincided simply with a decrease in wildlife, but as time went on, strange magical effects could be heard and seen coming from surrounding wilderness, and people began to disappear as well. The next day, villagers would go to investigate the source of the commotion always to find a number of bodies, looking almost like skeletons as if completely drained, and what looked like some sort of used weapons testing field. It makes you wonder how much energy a weapon of this magnitude could need.....
It's been a long time since anyone has seen the likes of Kenre. Some guess he attempted to drain something much stronger than himself of life, others say he's laying low in a highly populated city where one or two people going missing occasionally won't really be noticed. Some even think he may have just wandered somewhere with not enough living creatures around, and failed to find a source of energy in time before he shut down. Maybe someday, somebody will find his body or his devices and find a way to revive him with some more energy.
Art Credit
The Gauntlet, by AtTheSpeedOfFetus
Soul Draining, by Jack Stefan
