⚔️ NightMantle

by B. Morris Allen

Pro: unmatched tool for dark-cloaking and umbral manipulation
Con: availability issues
Bottom line: The greatest darkside tool since night itself

[I’m voice-blogging this review, so I apologize for any typos. There's been a bit of noise in my area lately.]

Some of you may remember before I was a reviewer for The Darkage, I had a short career as a supervillain. Well, a villain, anyway; low profile, but effective. They had to call three heroes and the National Guard to put me away.  Anyway, the point is this—under my release agreement, I’m not allowed to mention my alter ego by name, but I was definitely engaged in very shady doings. So when Goneso Electronics sent us their new NightMantle Machine to review, I convinced my editor Dorina Rau to let me run it through its paces.

Goneso has had a tough run recently. Their online firmware update for the venerable WallSolve Ray was a fiasco. The much-hyped SuperSolve Capacity, rather than adding a special setting for dynasteel bank vaults, turned the ray into no more than a colored light show. I’ve heard of one heist that had to be abandoned mid-theft—they’d forgotten to turn off auto-updates, and the ray failure left them with no way into a simple lead/concrete cellar. Months of work down the drain! Goneso’s claim that federal jamming was to blame convinced no one, and when the WallSolve brand manager’s head finally rolled (down Front St), it was far too late.

Goneso had even worse luck with their innovative SpiderGloves. Thanks to careless assembly overseas, the adhesive spray mix was inconsistent. Several SuperFly wanna-bes found out in the worst possible way; three villains died in mid-town alone! Longtime readers know my position on outsourcing, so let me just say this: Manufacturers, if you can’t afford domestic labor, you might as well do good!

After the surprising but welcome ousting of Goneso CEO Fuchsia BloodBlade in April (and the grisly discovery of her body in May, June, and July), new company leader Aristide Malpense vowed to bring the brand back to its salad days—underlining the point by serving press conference attendees a salad of hundred dollar bills with a spicy mustard vinaigrette.

The NightMantle Machine is an impressive step in the right direction. I’d even go so far as to say it marks the start of a new era in villainy.

NightMantle is the product of years of secret research and development. Fairness would require we allot some credit for the work to the late Ms. BloodBlade, but who am I kidding? Darkage readers don’t care about fairness, and neither do I. There have long been rumors of a secret skunkworks within Goneso, but those were scotched when the Skunk herself was caught by that goody-goody AlphaDog during a daring kidnap attempt. All the best puns have been taken, so let me just say this—AlphaDog stinks.

So what is NightMantle, exactly? I’m tempted to say ‘It’s the greatest’ and just go home, but I know Darkage readers want more. NightMantle is perhaps the single greatest commercially available tool of evil the world has ever seen. Admittedly, my days as ShadeHead (oops) may bias me a bit. But the fact is, with a NightMantle Machine, you can do anything.

How does it work? Our review agreement with Goneso prevents me from going into technical details, but NightMantle is exactly what it sounds like—it can project a mantle of night (see how that works?). So far, so standard. But the beauty of it is its clever combination of scope and size. Our review copy, which Goneso claimed is the only working prototype, is a carbon-fiber rod about six inches long and one inch thick—making it easy to carry around—and weighs about a kilo. During my own testing, I anchored the rod horizontally across my chest, just below the clavicle. As it happens, my old ShadeHead uniform had a clip there for holding inkbombs, and the NightMantle fit perfectly. For the fashionistas among you, that also makes it a great spot to clip your cape. I never had one, but I just put in an order to Heinvill Quality Coverings. Only the best for yours truly, and I charged it to The Darkage to boot.

Here’s the great thing about NightMantle—you can use it as a personal cloaking device, but you can also use it to cover an entire city in an eternal shroud of night. Eternal here meaning about 17 hours on a full battery. The NightMantle can be run while recharging, so in theory, you can keep the shroud running indefinitely. Sounds like fun, am I right? A little too fun; remember that ‘eclipse’ of midtown Wednesday afternoon? Shame on you! If you can believe a government explanation, you shouldn’t be reading Darkage. That was me, testing out the Mantle. Hearing those heroes bouncing around blind was the most fun I’ve had in years.

The first thing Goneso CEO Malpense did (after dispensing with Ms. Bloodblade) was to hire Alphia Mktaru from Apple, and the results are terrific. The user interface couldn’t be simpler. Each end of the rod is a control knob that turns and telescopes in and out. The left controls range and amplitude—the strength of the cloaking effect, from a slight murk to full on midnight in the abyss. Let me tell you, it’s really dark—the Mantle works by suppressing photons—zapping them into another dimension, so night vision goggles won’t do squat against this, and neither will floodlights. Pulling the knob in and out controls range, from a minimum of a few centimeters to a maximum of, oh sorry, that’s secret. The right end of the control shapes the cloak. This can be trickier, but with a little practice, you can get anything from an all-encompassing orb of gloom to a pencil-thin ray of darkness.

The price of the NightMantle hasn't been announced yet. Goneso planned to issue the device in three different SKUs—an entry level light shade version with a plastic cover and a range of four meters (trust me, even your local neighbourhood bully wouldn’t want this), a ‘Senior Villain’ version with a black aluminum rod and a full-dark range of a hundred meters, and the Ultra-Villain version that I tested. They planned for availability in time for the holiday rush.

There’s only one little problem. By the time this post runs, you’ll have heard about an accident at the Goneso facility. Sad, but true. I think you’ll find that Malpense and all the research staff were killed in a tragic lab explosion. You may also hear it wiped out all the NightMantle documentation. Just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read.

Of course, you won’t be reading much of anything will you? Not with all the photons missing. I may have to make my demands in the usual way—big letters of dark fire outside the city, manifesto to the Heroes’ Guild, maybe an op-ed or two. I’ll work it out. In any case,

ShadeHead is back!

P.S. Dorina, this will be my last review for The Darkage. Sorry for the short notice. And yes, it was me that kept stealing your salad from the breakroom.