The Panopticon Mantle

Or, more simply, the “Cloak of Eyes”. So many tales and legends attend upon this remarkable treasure that few would believe it to be truly real. To the common people, it is a symbol or a prop. In many theatres, pretended mages are signified with a cloak of embroidered eyes. In the city of Urlash the Judges still wear cloaks fashioned in its image in memory of the great reformer who freed that city from corruption in a distant age.   Children’s stories describe it. For anyone who discovers or attains its ownership, it feels a little like encountering a piece of fairy-tail or mythology sprung into the Real.  

Appearance

    When unworn, the Mantle is said to be a pale creamy-white with a stained bronze shoulder mount. The eyes themselves are closed, seeming only bulges in the metal or shifting, indistinct lumps in the soft cloth.   As soon as the Mantle is put on, it changes color, this is the first obvious sign of its magic.   Which color it becomes depends on the wearer. Yet, for that particular individual, the cloak will always assume that shade. When they take it off, it drifts slowly back to its old pale cloud-cream white.   (This difference in color according to the individual may be part of the reason for the rumors and legends of many such cloaks.)   The exact meaning of the color is debated. Some say it matches the soul or intention of the wearer. Others say it predicts the likely end of the wearer’s desire. A more obvious but less numinous possibility is that minor magic of the Mantle causes it to look cool. It does look good on whoever is wearing it, even in cases where you think a cloak might not work.   It is hard to stain and, while not invulnerable, is difficult to tear. Tears that do occur heal slowly over several days while no-one observes.  

The Eyes

  The second example of the Mantles power happens when its wearer shuts their eyes.   As their eyes close, they feel a tug, a kind of pulse of something within the darkness behind their lids.   Then, depending on the power, wisdom, will, and expertise of the wearer, one-by-one, the eyes of the Mantle blink open.   This is a deeply unnerving, beautiful, and frightening sight.   The eyes are usually amber, several are large, much bigger than human peepers. There are many larger eyes and perhaps hundreds on the whole of the cloak, all varying in size. They blink, turn, focus, and flex, some darting back and forth as if tracking thoughts or invisible flies. The activity and intelligence of the eyes can also depend on the wearer. At times they seem sleepy, even rheumy as if woken from a night of drinking. At other times they flicker madly as if frightened or excited. At still other times they seem to rage.   For some wearers the eyes of the cloak emphasize their mood, crinkling when they laugh, narrowing when they wish to glare. For others, it is as if the eyes mark a counterpoint to their words or tell some secret story of their emotions, or simply do their own thing. Some bearers of the Mantle sleep in it, when they do so, sometimes the eyes half-close and flicker as if themselves in deep sleep.  

Its Power

  Many agree that the exact powers of the Mantle, or its full potential at least, depends on the puissance, willpower, drive, intelligence, and general capacity of the wearer.   From the moment the cloak-eyes open, the bearer sees through each open eye as if it was their own.   The usual response to this is dizziness, vomiting, and falling over. Combining the viewpoints of multiple independent eyes spaced on a flowing fabric all over their body is a challenge for anyone, especially those who are used to only having two eyes, and those in a fixed position. For most people, it takes at least an hour of walking about and testing movement until they become comfortable doing basic tasks.   The most basic power of the mantle, available to any who wear it, is that they cannot be snuck up on from behind, stabbed in the back, or easily hidden from. The wearer has a full 360-degree vision so long as the cloak is active.   Beyond that, the eyes themselves have special powers that seem to express themselves differently depending on the nature, power, and desire of the wearer.   Some report that the eyes can see through shadows, darkness and even disguises, meaning it is almost impossible to hide from them, that if the cloak is held out like a flag, the combination of eyes all facing the same way allows something like a telescopic effect, a deep-distance view.   More potent and puissant Magic-Users and Sophonts claim the eyes of the cloak can see beyond reality, that they can trace ethereal spirits, even chains of causality.   Perhaps the simplest benefit of the Mantle is that, when active, its wearer looks like an Adept of the Higher Mysteries, a potent individual marked by Fate or Chance.   Put simply, if you roll up in a cloak covered with magical, staring, blinking amber eyes, you generally don't need to argue about whether your name is on the list or not, or whether you should be attended to, at least not with the simpler sort of people. Emperors and Great Thaumaturges may be less immediately impressed.   The most immediate danger of the Mantle is that any damage suffered by any of the Eyes is transmitted directly to the wielder.   This is less horrible than it might seem. The eyes are tougher than mortal orbs, feeling something like warm amber to the touch (allegedly), and they close very rapidly in response to any blow or shock which might impact them. Once closed they become near-invulnerable.   Still, the number of the Mantles wearers who have been blinded, either by weapon blows or intense magical light, is not small.  

Legends Of The Mantle

  Stories of the Mantles origins are many and varied;   Angelic Origins   Many say the Mantles eyes are those of Angels; servants of some noble, now-dreaming God or Goddess of Fallen Esh.   In some scripture, the Angels, knowing that vision is a source of corruption and temptation, cut out their own eyes and become blind to maintain their perfect purity, and the Mantle is made by some minor Seraph or trickster spirit from the remains.   The most popular legend, and the source of one of the Mantle’s most common names, is that it belonged to a divine jailer in a demonic prison. This Angel was trusted to watch over a great penitentiary of evil spirits whose cells spread away from it in every direction.   So that it could watch them all, all of the time, without sleep or pause, and without even blinking for an instant, and so that no trick, scheme, or cunning could escape its eternal gaze, it was given the Mantle.   There, poised on a crystal pillar in the center of Hell, it kept eternal observation on its turbulent prison until a single eye was stolen from its cloak, leaving the tiniest blind spot through which evil could escape.   According to this legend, the powers of the Mantle are simply those of its original Angelic bearer, which becomes more and more accessible as the power of the wearer grows.   Some of its wearers to report encountering mythical or supernatural beings and being treated (modern-parlance translation) "As a cop".    

The Missing Eye

    There does seem to be a single eye missing from the cloak. Some suggest that the eye was taken by an Emperor, Optimate, or Thaumaturge and incorporated into an amulet of some kind.   Some think that the eye was taken to 'cripple' the Mantle, that its absence is the only thing keeping it from becoming fully conscious, and presumably, going about whatever business it was intended for.   Others say that particular eye was evil, excised for its corruption, or that it has become corrupt from looking on ill things, that if it were ever to return it would poison or degrade the Mantle into a tool of darkness.  

Thieves and the Mantle

  The power of the cloak is awesome but its wearers are not well-loved - for they are said to see too much. Anyone with a secret will fear the gaze of that constellation of staring eyes, and everyone has a secret of some kind.   The Mantle is not looking. It never turns away. It never breaks your gaze. Even if it turns or shifts, a new pattern of eyes, of eyes upon eyes, flows into place, while you have only two with which to return the gaze.   Thieves are said to loathe it. This may not be true, but there is certainly one cult or hierarchy of Thieves or Assassins (or Spies? their true nature is, of course, mysterious) for whom the Mantle itself is the subject of their unique quest.   For the Cult of the Blinded Eye (a popular news-sheet title given to them, their true name, if they even have one, is unknown), the final test of entry into the highest circle of the Cult can only be achieved by one who has successfully snuck up upon a wearer of the Mantle and blinded one of its eyes with a steel blade.   The eyes of the Mantle re-grow. The damage passed along to its wearer often does not.   This cult, if it exists, maybe part of the reason for the Mantle’s many appearances and disappearances over the years. Obviously, if a member of the Cult were to simply own it, there would be no challenge involved at all. So, the theory goes, they steal it from its current owner and make sure it lies somewhere where it can only be recovered by someone of remarkable and unusual character, thusly ensuring that the test of blinding an eye is a difficult and meaningful one.  

Heroes and the Mantle

  Many powerful individuals are said to have worn it at one time or another.   The Famed "Balancer of Urlash" was a kind of detective adventurer who fought crime and corruption in that city. According to myth, they would walk into a murder scene wearing the Mantle then pause amid the horror to concentrate; every eye would open and gaze about intently.   After only a minute of furious focus, the Balancer would declare the guilty party, and then describe the exact chain of circumstance and evidence which lead to them. The eyes of the Mantle having seen every fragment of detail and traced every possible cause and consequence.   The Emperor of Saan, a legendary Southern city since eaten by Waste, allegedly tried to bring perfect order to their border-state by governing from a palace of mirrors atop a giant pillar in the exact center, whilst wearing the Mantle, perhaps in imitation of the legend of the Angelic Imprisoner. It seems not to have gone well, or at any rate, Saan no longer exists. (But then, in this Fallen Age, many places no longer exist.)   In the High Mountains of Reality, beyond the Breathing Line where only the Inhuman are said to survive, the Monk of the Orbital Palm wore the mantle and used it to defend and attack from every direction at once in an unbreakable vortex of movement. Though they are also said to have been naked beneath the mantle and to have leaped from mountaintop to mountaintop under their power, which does sound made up.     So stand the legends of the Panopticon Mantle at present most immediately and aggressively. In some places loathed as a Piercer of Secrets and in others, acclaimed as an agent of Pure Justice, often for the same reasons.   Wherever it goes, anyone capable of finding, wearing, and using the Mantle, should be regarded with at-least wary respect, for even if they bear this artifact simply by Fortunes hand, it may be a Consequential Fortune which walks before them.   For those who wear the Mantle; beware, for few have worn long with much success. Whether the semi-mythical 'Cult of the Blinded Eye' is real, or whether the Mantle itself acts under some form of hidden intelligence, following its secret intention, or whether being covered with a cloak of supernatural staring eyes just freaks out everyone around you, your time with it may be limited and it could be wiser, in the long run, to let it go when the moment seems aright.