The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal is a daedric artifact that once belonged to Nocturnal. It takes the form of a dark leather cowl, which obscures the face of the wearer. Nocturnal is revered as a god by thieves across Tamriel. Her reputation as the Mistress of Shadows has sometimes led thieves to attempt to steal an item from her to prove their greatness.
The cowl is known to have left her possession. It appears to have been stolen by a thief named Emer Dareloth, the first guildmaster of the Thieves Guild, although a curse bestowed upon the cowl by Nocturnal meant that the name of cowl’s owner is lost to mortal memory: “Whosoever wears it shall be lost in the shadows. His true nature shall be unknown to all who meet him. His identity shall be struck from all records and histories. Memory will hide in the shadows, refusing to record the name of the owner to any who meet him. He shall be known by the cowl and only by the cowl.” This curse was broken when history was rewritten through the use of an Elder Scroll.
The cowl is inscribed with the phrase “Shadow hide [y]ou” written in the Daedric Alphabet, though the letter Yahkem (Y) is omitted from the inscription. After having been stolen by Emer Dareloth, the cursed cowl was handed down from one guildmaster to the next in the Cyrodiil branch of the Thieves Guild. This forced the guildmasters to work under the persona of the Gray Fox. Thought to be a myth by most members of the public, the identity of the Gray Fox came about over the course of three hundred years, as the guildmasters lost their individual identities and became known only as the bearer of the Cowl. The curse was broken in 3E 433, when Count Corvus Umbranox, the contemporary Gray Fox, organized the theft of an Elder Scroll from the Imperial Library in the Imperial Palace. Umbranox used the Scroll to rewrite history and remove Nocturnal’s curse.
The Cowl is a simple enchanted leather cowl. When wearing the Cowl, the character becomes the Gray Fox. They will not be associated with anything the Gray Fox does, even if they were to remove the cowl in front of someone. The Gray Fox is a master thief, and characters who use the Cowl truly become the Fox. This could mean an entirely new character sheet, or simply bonuses to existing skills, depending on how the GM wants to handle it.