The Painted Shield

The shield gives the usual benefit to your Armor Class. It has 3 charges and regains all of them at dawn. When you are hit by an attack, you can use your reaction to expend 1 charge and add 4 to your AC against that attack, which may turn the hit into a miss. You must be holding the shield, and you must see the blow come.

While you are attuned to it, you can name aloud, without a check, the arms of any of the twenty-two grounds by setting your hand flat on the face for a minute. You learn the arms and nothing else: no name, no house, no year.

The uppermost arms are always the arms of somebody who is not alive. A ground is laid for the next bearer before the next bearer is known, and it is laid whether the shield changes hands or not.

While you are attuned, no likeness of you is a true likeness. A drawing, a painting, a wax impression, or a magically produced image of your face shows instead the arms uppermost on the shield. Creatures that know you still know you by sight; officers who work from a likeness do not, and the offices of this city will not enter you in a register from one.

The grounds can be lifted. A restorer who lifts one uncovers the face beneath it, and the face is a face and not a coat of arms, and it is recognised.