Apothecary's Draconic Gauntlets

The Apothecary's Draconic Gauntlets catch the late market light, their scales a lacquered mosaic of ember and emerald that shifts with every flick of the wrist. The back of each glove is a tight lattice of braided copper threads woven into dragon-scale plates, so thin you can barely see the seam, yet sturdy enough to feel like a shield when you palm a vial and press it through the air. The leather underneath is a deep brown, worn smooth by years of careful work, and the edges glow faintly where sigils are etched—tiny runes that pulse with a soft, herbal hum whenever tinctures travel along the channels tucked into the lining. The cuffs taper to a snug fit, and a narrow groove along the forearm seems almost designed to cradle momentary pockets for small flasks. When you slide them on, the texture changes: the scales catch on fabric in a way that feels deliberate, as if the gloves are coaxing your fingers to remember the art of precise touch. Lore threads them to the old houses of apothecaries who traveled with warbands and caravans, the kind who never trusted a battlefield’s first aid to chance. These gauntlets were forged where dragon-blood alchemists once worked to tame the wild potency of breath and bloom alike, turning volatile elixirs into steady, wearable craft. It’s said that the dragon-sense embedded in the metal helps the wearer sense the subtle shifts of tinctures—when a remedy is too old, when a draft has soured, or when a field-wung antidote is ready to pour without spilling. In practice, that means a healer can brush a tincture across a wound and feel the right moment to seal it with a stabilizing glaze, all without losing breath or balance. For those who fight and heal in the same breath—field medics, caravan guards who double as herb-sellers—the gauntlets become part of a larger ritual: the craft’s body moving with war’s rhythm, the medicine’s heart beating in time. On the ground, those who carry the gauntlets know their value beyond look and lore. They do more than protect the hands; they put alchemy into action, allowing the wearer to draw and apply elixirs with uncanny speed, to channel a healing salve along a partner’s shoulder without fumbling, to grip a vial so its contents don’t spill as you pivot through a skirmish. They’re not just gear but a statement that the healer’s craft can ride the edge of combat and come out whole on the other side. Pricing stories drift through the stalls as easily as smoke from a brazier. At Saddlebag Exchange, the gauntlets are a known rumor and a steady trade—priced in gold depending on condition, sigil brightness, and the number of uses left in their hidden channels. A careful buyer will haggle over faint glows and resolve, trading rumors of a master apothecary who once wore them to fashion a cure for a plague that walked through a border town. It’s a dance of value and virtue—how much a wearer earns from these scales is a story that depends not just on metal, but on mercy, timing, and the courage to reach out a gloved hand and heal what battle has broken.