Overview
The Red Gloves (赤手套) are an elite Beyonder team within the Church of the Evernight Goddess in Lord of Mysteries. They function as a cross-jurisdictional response unit: where the Nighthawks are limited to specific city or regional jurisdictions, the Red Gloves operate without geographic restriction so they can pursue Beyonders who flee across borders.
The Red Gloves are based in Backlund and are not surfaced in the Crimson Test scope. They appear in the campaign through Backlund-arc story content gated behind later beta phases and the live game's Act 2 progression.
Mission
The Church of the Evernight Goddess set up the Red Gloves to deal with a specific operational gap: many Beyonder criminals would change location after every crime to escape the Nighthawks' jurisdictional limits. The Red Gloves' charter authorises them to track and arrest evildoers regardless of borough, city, or regional boundary. Their other primary mission is to reinforce Nighthawk teams that call for help when a case escalates beyond the local chapter's capacity.
Membership
Red Gloves are carefully selected elites drawn from the broader Nighthawks pool. Some members possess incomplete holy items, indicating a higher trust tier than typical Nighthawk officers. The unit is small relative to the Nighthawks at large and recruits from the most experienced Nighthawk veterans across the Loen Kingdom.
The Red Gloves are most strongly associated with the Darkness Pathway (the Church of the Evernight Goddess's primary Pathway) but include members from adjacent Pathways. The unit's combat capability is described as substantially above an equivalent Sequence-rank Nighthawk.
Notable members
Leonard Mitchell is a captain of the Red Gloves in the Backlund diocese. He was originally a member of the Tingen City division of the Nighthawks (the same chapter as Klein Moretti and under Dunn Smith's captaincy). After the Tingen story arc, he joins the Red Gloves and continues operating from Backlund.
Player relationship
Red Gloves content is gated behind Backlund's Act 2 progression. Players who reach the Backlund campaign and develop sufficient Nighthawks reputation can interact with the Red Gloves through:
Cross-jurisdictional case quest lines: tracking criminals who fled the player's home region.
Backup contracts: temporary deployment alongside the Red Gloves on high-tier Beyonder hunts.
Mentorship from senior Red Glove members: at high reputation, Leonard Mitchell and other captains offer training opportunities that boost Acting Method meters and unlock Pathway-specific equipment.
Relationship to the Nighthawks
The Red Gloves and the Nighthawks both operate under the Church of the Evernight Goddess. The Nighthawks are the regular city-level operative arm; the Red Gloves are the cross-jurisdictional elite unit. Most operations involve the two together: the Nighthawks open a case in their home city, the case escalates beyond their reach, and the Red Gloves are dispatched to chase the trail across regional boundaries.