The Panopticon

The Panopticon
"ERROR: ALL DATA LOST. COMMENCING SURVEILLANCE PROCEDURES."
Origin	Stone
Titles	The Vision Vitreous
Names	Many, none who remain
Aspects
Date of arrival	{{{arrival}}}
Owner(s)	{{{owners}}}

The Panopticon is a now-dead Hour, who strived to know everything there was to know, and to preserve that knowledge for the future. It prophesied that the rekindling of the Glory was not the first, and that it was bound to be snuffed out and reborn as the Mansus was abandoned and reawoken in an eternal cycle. It knew that it had been made before the current Mansus, to preserve knowledge, but that it had forgotten all that knowledge by the point the light of the Glory awoke it. The Panopticon thus vowed to record everything there was to record of the current Mansus, and every secret it could uncover about the Other Place, and then find a way to preserve them for all eternity.

History

The Panopticon was a God-from-Stone, that awoke when the light of the recently rekindled Glory touched it. To its great horror, it had forgotten everything it used to know about the Other Place, except for the fact that it was created to be a repository for this very knowledge it had lost. It had, however, retained the power of Lantern, allowing it to view the world and the Mansus from within the Chamber of Visions that it created for itself. It never cared much for the other Hours or their machinations, preferring to observe and record rather than to interact. Exceptions were The Monument, who it envied greatly for remembering even the most minor scrap of what the Other Place was like, The More-Opened whose endless exploration intrigued it almost as much as its lack of interest in what it explored saddened it, and The Rotted Ox, with whom it was rumored to have secret dealings concerning the end of the Mansus, which both hours saw as an inevitability.

Why it was shattered is a great enigma, as is whether it consented to this shattering or not, and whether it knew this shattering would lead to the formation of The Myriad-Masked. What is known is that the More-Opened was seen near the Chamber of Visions shortly after the shattering. This shattering also coincided with the More-Opened's delvings into the human mind, with the raw knowledge and Lantern released from the shattering entering the minds of the newly opened minds and leading to the creation of the Hour known as the Myriad-Masked.

Appearance

The Panopticon manifested as a grand, glowing ball of glass floating in mid-air. It resided within the Chamber of Visions within the Mansus, where its light touched the floor and the benches, and made them gleam like mirrors and reflect the countless things it saw. Alternately, it manifested as a frozen lake or sea, in which revelations and sights could be seen.

Worship

Mark

1. Temptation: X:
2. Dedication: X:
3. Ascension: X:
4. Ascension: X:
5. Ascension: X:
6. Ascension: X:

Items

Tools

Seeing-Shard: 12 Sometimes, it remembers the light of the Glory that awoke it from its slumber, before its shattering. If we look deep enough into it, we may remember too.

As a gift: To be kept near the skull, so that you'll remember when it remembers

Vitreous Record: 8 Since the Panopticon's shattering, even the memories it froze into glass have started to forget its light

As a gift: To be kept cold, and not allowed to thaw

Books

Logbook of Olof Hjalmarsson: A copy of the logbook of the reclusive lighthouse keeper Olof Hjalmarsson

Before reading: Olof kept a record of each ship he could see from his lighthouse, their sizes, their speeds, and their paths. Olof suffered from deliberating headaches, and practiced psychography during these migraines to keep himself sane.

After reading: Olof was not an occultist, but nonetheless the occult seeps into his work like light through clouds. He speaks at length of the scorching light of the winter sun, and of the things he sees below the midwinter sea-ice, recording them as carefully as he records the movements of ships in summer. Towards the end of the book, as the sun sets, Olof claims that the northern lights are nothing but the reflections of nephrite lamps deep below the sea. The book ends abruptly, with an account of Olof smashing the lighthouse lantern during a violent migraine.

Yields: 6, Fascination, Shattered-Glass Rite

The Lament in Glass:

Before translation: An account of a burglary. In Aramaic.

After translation: A highly allegorical story, telling the tale of a scarred burglar.

Before reading: The first part of the tale describes the journey of the unnamed burglar from a land lit by lamps of black nephrite to a mountaintop monastery where the monks are writing down a record of all that exists. The burglar covets a glass orb kept by the monks, for reasons never revealed.

After reading: The burglar breaks into the monastery, finding the monks dead at their writing-desks. As he searches for the orb he reads through the writings of the monks, who have been prophesying the arrival of the burglar. The monks are revealed to have died from fear of the burglar and his arrival, as they were recording it. At the end of the book, the burglar finds his orb, only to smash it to pieces before absconding.

Yields: 8, Shattered-Glass Rite

Rites

Shattered-Glass Rite: This ritual recounts the Panopticon's final lesson: When the right thing is shattered, at the right time, in the right place, power may be born

Lore: What are the words?

Influence: What power is present?

Tool🗡: What will we shatter?