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Panoptos is a character featured in the novel Darksiders: The Abomination Vault. He is a devoted servant of the Charred Council, and the progenitor and/or first of the Watchers. He looks much like the ordinary Watchers, but with up to nine eyes, which move around his face, appear, and disappear, with no set pattern governing the changes. Panoptos is an arrogant and cowardly creature who usually tries to behave himself when in the presence of the Charred Council but is far less so when not. Panoptos is often condescending and insulting towards the Horsemen, namely Death. His favorite manner of speech is to pronounce words through irritating giggling. He is very proud of his rank as the Council's "favored" agent and does not take kindly when being insulted because of it. He proposes to the Charred Council, some time before his last meeting with Death in the novel, that the Watchers should have power over the Riders, to ensure their obedience.

In their final meeting at the end of the novel, Death blames him for arranging the hiring of Raciel's demon mercenaries to locate the Abomination Vault. (Raciel, a Lost Angel, is the main reason why the antagonist Hadrimon is searching for the Abominations in the novel.) Death accuses Panoptos of planning to use the race to find the Vault as cover to acquire the Grand Abominations and create an army of Watchers armed with them, in the hopes that he and his "children" will no longer be enslaved by the Charred Council.

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His name is a phonetic spelling of the Greek word πάνοπτος, which literally translated means "seen by all". However, given his position as origin of the Watchers, it was most likely intended to be interpreted as "all-seeing"; this is the usual interpretation of English "panopticon", from the same root, which originates in English as a conceptual prison in which inmates are kept in line by being seen at all times, which is analogous to Panoptos's proposal to the Charred Council regarding the Riders.

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