Lost, totally disoriented, you've found your way—almost as if drawn—to a towering stone with weathered edges that appear to have been carved by hand at some distant point in the past. You feel compelled to touch it in much the same way suns feel compelled to touch black holes. The rock is striated with what appear to be more-or-less horizontal veins of gold, silver, and ruby. You feel dwarfed by it. Resist as you will, you finally press your palms to the stone. Your touch seems to have awoken something, and you hear a voice that slurs at first as if waking from a deep sleep. "Can it be? It is. 'Tis thee! After all these long years of waiting for thee, thou'st finally come. The prophesied King [or Queen] of [a long dead kingdom you've heard of]." A face appears in your mind—a blurred face you can't quite make out. "I shall be thy seneschal until thou findest someone more worthy of the position. I have some little power to offer thee—power entrusted to me long ago for thee and thee alone. Shall I give it to thee now?"
How could you refuse? You accept, feeling the power of personality flow into you. Your Charisma score raises by 4 to a maximum of 22. If you are classless in session zero, you become either a sorcerer or a warlock that fits the theme of the campaign. If you are a bard or paladin, you become more charismatic or take a level in sorcerer or warlock (when you level up, not simply because). Any class could take this feat, but only one person in a party. The downside is this: you feel your eyes burn away—a hideous disfigurement to be sure—though you can still see. You also gain a terrible flaw: you cannot stand it when someone tells you no, no matter how good the reason. Whether you can resist this or change it is up to your DM.
The best part is this could be a malicious trick, a genuine fulfillment of prophecy, or anything else you can come up with. The point is to instill a character with the desire to become the ruler of the lost kingdom, whatever that means to you.
(Repurposed from the Dark Gifts of Zantras the Kingmaker and Savnok the Inscrutable in the Curse of Strahd campaign. It just seems like a cool part of a character's backstory that could facilitate cool additions to any campaign, or something you could just throw in along the way.)
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