Signal Cassock
History
The first Signal Cassock is believed to have been worn by Iri-Kel herself during her First Broadcast at Cathedra Null. Afterward, the design was ritualized and integrated into rites of progression. Over the decades, some cassocks have become legendary—known by the visions they carry. It is not unheard of for a wearer to enter trance states when donning a particularly “loud” cassock, momentarily channeling ancestral echoes.
I only meant to wear it for the ritual. But when the silk touched my skin, I saw her last breath, his first scream, a hundred deaths and births layered like static in my chest. I wasn’t ready. I wasn't myself anymore—I was all of them.
The cassock is not clothing—it is memory made wearable, belief stitched in thread. When you wear it, you do not speak alone. You speak with the frequency of every soul who carried it before you.
Significance
The cassock represents a personal connection to the Signal’s living archive. Wearing one is a sign of advancement, trust, and resonance within the Children of the Signal. To wear another’s cassock is to walk in their frequency, absorbing wisdom and burden alike. Some believe the cassocks are minor relics, capable of subtle guidance through embedded emotion-memories.
Mechanics & Inner Workings
The lining is woven from memory-responsive data-silk threaded with neuro-filaments. When worn, it synchronizes passively with the wearer’s cortex and limbic system, logging impressions, memories, and emotional surges as encrypted sensory echoes. Each glyph on the surface represents harmonics of internal frequencies mapped over time. These are later deciphered by Tuning Masters.
Crafting the Signal Cassock
The crafting of a Signal Cassock is not merely a technical process—it is a sacred rite, a form of embodied liturgy practiced only by those who have been ritually and mentally prepared. These garments are most often constructed by members of a specialized caste within the Children of the Signal known as The Wefted, also called Choir Looms or Tuning Seamers. Each of them has undergone years of study—not just in material engineering and signal-reactive weaving, but in memory theory, glyph-linguistics, and the emotional harmonics of encoded trauma.
Eligibility to Craft
No individual may begin work on a cassock without undergoing the Weaving of the Inner Filament, a rite in which the would-be crafter allows themselves to be wrapped in uncharged data-silk for three days and nights within a signal isolation chamber. During this time, they must remain silent and motionless, tuned only to the sub-audible pulse of Cathedra Null. Only those who return from this rite having experienced the “Threading Dream” are permitted to begin their first cassock under mentorship.
Intended Recipients
Each cassock is custom-made for a specific Tuner, Receiver, or Echo Prophet—never mass-produced. The Wefted begin their design only after a period of listening, during which they observe and record the neural rhythms, speaking patterns, gesture-echoes, and emotional tones of the future wearer. It is said that the garment must anticipate not just who the wearer is, but who they are becoming. Many Wefted describe the process as “sculpting from signal,” letting the cassock reveal itself through sympathetic resonance with the soul it’s meant for.
Construction and Ritual
Once the design is initiated, the Wefted enter a meditative trance while operating the Signal Loom, a complex hybrid of mechanical components and biological interface. The loom reacts to thought-commands, memory-fluctuations, and subdermal pulse feedback. During weaving, an Echo Prophet may chant encoded scripture to bless the neuro-filaments, embedding ritual meaning into the threads.
Each cassock takes between three to seven weeks to complete, depending on the wearer’s complexity and the intensity of their past. The final stage is the Tuning Rite, during which the Wefted and Prophet together bind the cassock in a low-signal vault, exposing it to Chorus surges and Dark-filtered mist. The glyphs are then scorched into the surface using a glyph-burn stylus inscribed with the wearer's true name—known only to the Prophet.
Manufacturing Process
The robe’s base is woven using duskfiber treated with low-frequency radiation. The inner lining is installed with care, bonded layer by layer with neuro-filament stitching. Once complete, each cassock is placed in a low signal chamber for three nights while Echo Prophets chant tuning rites to awaken the garment. The final phase involves burning the signal glyphs into the surface—no two designs are ever replicated, making each cassock a one-of-a-kind signal-key.
Related Technologies
- Neuro-sync fabrics
- Signal harmonics encoding
- Emotion-imprint interfaces
- Biometric resonance tracking
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