Brazier of Holy Flame

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement by a cleric)

This brazier is designed after the original brazier of holy flame, which held the first righteous fire conjured by the devout. While holding the brazier or wearing it on your person (such as on a belt), you can use an action to speak one of its three command words. While holding the brazier, it counts as a holy symbol for you.

The first command word lights or extinguishes the brazier. The lit brazier produces bright light in a 15-foot radius and dim light for an additional 15 feet. While touching the lit brazier, you can use an action to expand or reduce its radius of bright and dim light by 5 feet each, to a maximum of 30 feet each or a minimum of 10 feet each.

The brazier's second command word casts the sacred flame spell from it, using your character's level and spell save DC. If you normally add your Wisdom modifier to the damage of the spell when you cast it, you do so as well when casting it in this way. This version of the spell uses d12s for its damage dice, instead of d8s, and the target of the spell makes the saving throw with disadvantage if it's within the brazier's bright light. An undead target that fails the saving throw against the spell is immediately engulfed in a conflagration of harmless, holy flame. The holy flame remains until the end of your next turn or until the target takes any other damage. For the duration, the target is turned (as if by Turn Undead).

The brazier's third command word casts the magic circle spell from it, using your spell save DC. This version of the spell can only repel undead creatures, and affects any area within the brazier's bright light (instead of the spell's normal area); the affected area moves with the brazier, remaining centered on it. Speaking this command word while the brazier is extinguished automatically lights it. An undead that's forced into the spell's area—such as by moving the brazier or by expanding the range of its bright light—can move normally throughout the affected area until it leaves the area again. Extinguishing the brazier ends the spell early. This property of the brazier can't be used again until the next dawn.

Father Cole sat before the fire, its glow casting his scars in a kindly light. The novices before him hung on his every word—tales of faith and grace in an age of death—even as the story trailed to its conclusion.

"And the circle knew the power they had wrought, the truest flame of purity, was too much for even their restraint to bear. Each took but one ember, separating across the land until each, in turn, found a place to rest. Our founder was among these, and for her the image of that first flame never dimmed, and in building this monastery she forged for her coal a brazier, a mirror in miniature of that great blaze."

One rumpled novice gazing into the fire raised a hand, barely restraining his curiosity until the elder nodded at him.

"If it's just part of the original, why did Sister Dawn say it still protects us from monsters?"

Cole smiled, "So you do listen to adults other than me! To answer, it is not all creatures that need fear, but foremost the undead. The brazier bears both the image of the first flame and its true nature. For undead, it is anathema: they are the image of a thing, but what inhabits the body is false, a pretender to the life it once held. And it is this truth that burns they cannot endure."