Tarnkappe- Germanic ArtifactArtifact
Domains
Description
Invisible and twelve times as strong: whoever wears the Tarnkappe becomes both. Siegfried used it to win Brunhild for Gunther by performing the bridal contests unseen, then to subdue her on the wedding night. The trophies he took from that night destroyed him.
Mythology & Lore
The Dwarf's Cloak
Siegfried took the Tarnkappe from the dwarf Alberich during his conquest of the Nibelung treasure. The Nibelungenlied never describes it clearly, whether cloak or cap, but its powers are constant: whoever wears it vanishes from sight and gains the strength of twelve men.
The Deception of Brunhild
When King Gunther traveled to Iceland to woo the warrior-queen Brunhild, who required suitors to defeat her in contests of strength, Siegfried accompanied him wearing the Tarnkappe. Invisible, Siegfried performed the feats, throwing the spear and hurling the boulder, while Gunther merely went through the motions. Brunhild, believing she had been defeated by Gunther, agreed to marry him.
The deception continued on the wedding night. Brunhild's supernatural strength let her overpower Gunther. She bound him and hung him from a nail on the wall. Siegfried returned in the Tarnkappe to wrestle her into submission, taking her ring and girdle as trophies before slipping away and letting Gunther take his place.
Those trophies proved fatal. When Kriemhild later produced the ring and girdle to humiliate Brunhild, proving that Siegfried, not Gunther, had conquered her, the alliance between the courts shattered. Hagen murdered Siegfried to avenge Brunhild's honor, and the vengeance that followed consumed the Burgundian court.