At first glance the maiden's hands appear to be a delicately embroidered pair of white, silk gloves. However, upon closer inspection they reveal the fingertips of each glove are actually the mummified fingertips of a humanoid hand, the dead, inch-long nails still intact.
The maiden's hands are powerful tools for any would-be seductress or assassin. As soon as the user places both gloves upon their hands, they are transformed into a beautiful female as though by the Alter Self spell and as dictated by the type of fingertips attached to the gloves. Most maiden's hands have been crafted to change the wearer into a human female (50%), however, several have been known to transform their user into elven (30%), half-elven (10%), halfling (5%) or dwarven (5%) forms. The maiden's hands also undergo a change when their power is active, the mummified fingertips grow soft and life-like, and a pattern of roses, surrounded by sinister thorny vines appear, painted across each nail.
The gloves do not function for creatures of an inappropriate size (such as a human wearing a pair of maiden's hands that would transform the wearer into a halfling female). The power of the maiden's hands lasts for as long as both gloves remain on the user's hands.
The greatest weakness of the maiden's hands is that they can only transform the wearer into one form. Each time the gloves are used the wearer is changed into the same female form, that of the woman whose fingers were cut off to make the item.
Prerequisite: Craft Wondrous Item, Alter Self
Aura: Faint Transmutation
Caster Level: 5th
Market Price: 1,200gp
Cost to Create:
Base Cost: 600gp
XP Cost: 48
AC: 11
Hit Points: 0
Hardness: 0
Break DC: 15
Weight: 6 ounces
Based on an entry in Dragon Magazine #300 October 2002