Standard patrol armour, as issued to the City Watch and Section 18’s own Agents alike, is built for a shift that might run twelve hours and end in a dead sprint across three rooftops – not a pitched battle. It shows: lighter than it looks, articulated at every joint that needs to bend in a hurry, and cut close enough to the body that it doesn’t announce itself under a coat.

FILE NOTES

The outer layer is Coraman-weave – a fabric interlaced with threads of powdered Coraman crystal, bound in treated silk and woven dense enough to resist a blade’s edge without giving up flexibility. Inset steel plates cover the vital organs without weighing down the shoulders, and the whole rig layers over a gambeson-padded lining built for breathability over a long shift rather than sustained battlefield punishment.

Beyond the obvious cut-resistance, the crystal thread does something a little stranger: it mutes the sound of movement, binds minor wounds shut faster than they’d otherwise close, and pushes back, however faintly, against hostile magic aimed at the wearer – a lattice effect the Guild’s own archivists attribute to the crystal’s natural resonance with lawful order rather than anything deliberately enchanted in. The standard-issue utility belt carries the rest of a patrol’s kit – manacles, smoke crystals, keys, lock picks – and the helmet’s smoke-glass visor is rated against everything from debris to a mage’s glare.

STATUS: Standard issue, favouring speed and endurance over raw protection. Not intended for sustained battlefield use – best worn, as the Armoury’s own notes put it, in company with other Agents and the Ward, not alone against whatever Chuza’s underside has to offer.