All-Seeing Eye
The All-Seeing Eye is an intelligence organization within the Realm, answerable directly to the Scarlet Empress. It has long been one of the most mysterious and feared of the Empress’ tools, engaged in spying on internal factions both suspected of disloyalty and known for their devotion in order to be sure that none seek to disrupt Her rule or Her Realm, as well as engaging in sabotage and assassination to serve Her ends.
The exact numbers, prevalence, and operations of the Eye are unknown, but the mere possibility of its presence has often been enough to deter rebellion. The bulk of its funds come from discretionary accounts filled from the Imperial Treasury by direct order of the Empress, without the paperwork normally seen in the Thousand Scales to trace where jade and scrip are allocated. Even within the Eye, there are none who know the full extent and membership, the organization formed as a web of individual cells, agents, and handlers who maintain contact only with a small number of Eye agents above or below themselves in the hierarchy.
The symbol of the All-Seeing Eye is a black, open eye. This symbol evokes terror across Creation, particularly in the Realm, for it is known that when the Eye has decided someone must die then they place their sigil amongst the targets possessions. Even forewarned, there is nothing the target can do but wait, for their death is always inevitable.
This is, as many aspects of the Eye’s reputation, a complete lie. For true targets of assassination, there is no warning, only death. Rather, the eye sigil is delivered to those targeted for recruitment. If they share that the symbol has appeared with anyone else, they have failed the test of secrecy, and the Eye kills them. If they keep silent despite their apparently fatal fate, then they are brought into the ranks. This keeps the Eye’s recruitment method secret, and also gives true traitors false confidence: they expect that their crimes will be marked as discovered by appearance of the sigil, and so assume they work undetected when it has not appeared.
The All-Seeing Eye has a long history, having grown out of an informal network of informants in service to the Empress when she first claimed her title, supplemented by the absorption of the intelligence arms of several daimyo and Shogunate gens. Perhaps the greatest addition to the Eye, not officially admitted but known to the upper ranks of the Great Houses, was the Eye’s usurpation of the House Iselsei intelligence network when that House was dissolved, perhaps the most potent espionage and assassination organ the Realm had known at the time and including large numbers of Exalted agents. This was a voluntary takeover, the Iselsei seeking to save themselves from reprisals by the other Great Houses and the Empress in the aftermath of their failed coup.
The All-Seeing Eye is not merely a domestic intelligence organization, engaging in foreign espionage as well, to keep the Scarlet Empress informed of activities in the Threshold. Its mandate is not limited to Creation, though the reach of the Terrestrial Exalted has always been limited when it comes to the realms beyond… still, the Eye had means to report on political tides in Yu-Shan through a smattering of divine agents, a constant thorn in the side of the Bronze Faction Sidereal Exalted in negotiations with the Scarlet Throne.
With immense resources and knowledge of local situations across Creation, members of the All-Seeing Eye served a vital role in the ranks of the Wyld Hunt, transforming the general information of Immaculate astrology into specific battle plans to take down individual Anathema or other threats, particularly those which had begun to sway local populations.
In the present, chaotic time, the All-Seeing Eye has fallen far from its former glory. The Scarlet Empress was the only being in Creation who understood its full extent and could coordinate its disparate cells, without her lines of communication broke down and funding ceased to flow. The Imperial Treasury under Bal Keraz used its control of the major accounts to exert control over Eye operations, with some success. At the same time, the Great Houses, the ministries of the Thousand Scales, the Immaculate Order, and other organizations within and outside the Realm, realizing the Empress was no longer in place to protect and coordinate her agents, moved against the Eye’s spies and those merely suspected of such, in a wave of assassinations and seizures which saw massive deaths and numerous cells co-opted into other intelligence services while others were left fragmented and isolated. House Iselsi’s elders, retaining some knowledge of their own operations, were particularly capable of bringing Eye cells back under their firm control.
Today, the All-Seeing Eye is no longer a single organization, but the surviving fragments, serving various agendas and powers, some loyalist, some self-interested, some eager for vengeance. The myth of the Eye persists, however, amongst the general populace and the lower rungs of the Dynasty, where its presence and its suspected agents are viewed with fear and hatred. And, though not capable of the systematic action it could once manage, the Eye’s membership still includes the most practiced and capable spies in Creation, whose secret caches and boltholes were assembled with the funds deemed fitting by the Empress Herself… it may have fallen far, but the Eye is far from dead.
