It’s inevitable, I think, that Kryptasts are to some extent an illusion of a panopticon. Someone starts whispering “Kryptast” and people shut up. No one knows who they are, but if they’re watching, a slip of the tongue could cost you everything. Make someone disappear every now and then to keep the legend alive, and then let the people police themselves.
My take, based on what little knowledge we currently have, is that the Kryptasts likely draw from the educated nobility for recruits, and to spitball ideas, I’d suggest that they have these recruits “abruptly vanish” and “disappear in the middle of the night.”
The historical antecedent for the Kryptasts is clearly the Spartan Krypteia, where young Spartan men roamed the countryside, killing helots and brutally suppressing the possibility of rebellion, that perpetual fear the Spartan elite had. The Kryptasts had a similar origin in pre-Conquest Karagond.
And I conceived of the Kryptasts as having evolved from an old tradition of Krypteia in some bits of Karagon. When Karagon began its Theurgy-fuelled conquests, there was a sense that these poleis could no longer afford their annual hunt (all blood needed for military use), so they were encouraged to go to the colonies and hunt curfew-breakers and other troublemakers instead. Over time, this evolved into a specialist role rather than a rite of passage.
I’d suspect the heart of this hasn’t changed: among the young, educated elite, the Mystikon finds those who are perhaps clever, skilled, and willing to get their hands dirty – people like themselves, I would argue, perpetuated through the generations – and shapes them into spies. The Thaumatarchy is built on seeing helots as fuel and as slave labor. If that foundational myth collapses, their whole way of life collapses. And considering the historical anti-helot role of the Krypteia, I’m doubtful that Kryptasts look to recruit from the helotry. Consider how the Tagmatarch reacts, for instance, to being given a helot name during your Accounting:
“And you expect me to believe that you’re an Angel-swiving Kryptast, ${girl}? Not the helot scum you smell like?”
Kryptasts are feared because they’re an Other, so utterly mysterious. People don’t just openly declare themselves as Kryptasts; that defeats the point of being spies. But Kryptasts are still people, and I think the vanished noble hypothesis neatly explains how they can be both so other and active. There’s “no explanation and no appeal” for their disappearance: all the rest of the world can do is move on. Nobody knows who the Kryptasts are, because all the Kryptasts are “dead” – and all that’s left for a Kryptast is their role and their duty.
There are three historic rebellions introduced at the beginning of the game: Cabel’s Rising, Sarcifer, and the Laconnier Order. Of these, it’s the Laconniers that the Kryptasts are firmly tied to:
Over the past century, at least three Shayardene Pretenders have declared themselves heirs of the Lost Prince of Laconne and won swathes of the nobility to their banner. All three rebellions were swiftly quelled: two with Kryptast assassins alone, one with massed military and Theurgic force.
And while Cabel’s story is told by Elery (a brilliant military leader, reflecting the Rising’s armed rebellion and bloody suppression) and Sarcifer’s story is told by Yebben (our resident Theurge-in-training), the Laconnier Order’s story is told by our favorite traitor candidate Breden, whose “old masters” allegedly fancied themselves rebels against the Karagonds. Intrigue, espionage, and secrecy – that’s come to define the Kryptasts and the Laconnier Order both, and the one who links us, the readers, to their stories: Breden.
To draw another parallel, many characters speculate that Kryptasts are sowing the seeds of rebellion across the Hegemony to harvest as blood. Meanwhile, we’ve already seen a hooded nobleman set a rebel free into the wild because he’d “rather like more people to imitate you” – but that wasn’t a Kryptast (or was he? 
), but rather Abelard, a Laconnier. And it’s the Laconniers – likely funded by the Halassurqs – who try to make sure that nascent rebellion survives by giving it the tools to kill the Thaumatarchy’s Plektoi.
And more of the Kryptasts being the natural enemies of the Laconniers, from Horion this time…
Teren tells me that young Abelard has been muttering about a restored monarchy…and if ${xhe}'s heard it, I imagine the Kryptasts have too.
And it’s pretty likely, I think, that the Laconniers (and the Laconne forest) are named after Laconia, home to Sparta – or in other words, the land the Krypteia would’ve policed.
The Mystikon and the Kryptasts being of the nobility, for the nobility, then, would follow these parallels to the Laconnier Order, itself a rebellion of the nobility nominally for the sake of some supposed old Shayardene tradition, while exposing a delicious irony that these enemies really aren’t that different, in the end.
As an aside, this plays well with the suite of ideas framing Breden’s old masters as Laconniers, who Breden may or may not have had a hand in killing. A wilder possibility, for fun, is that Breden’s “old masters” are themselves disillusioned Kryptasts, who cultivated Breden as an informant/agent before being unceremoniously purged.
But if you wanted to get real crackpot, I think “Abelard is a Kryptast and a Laconnier” would still take the cake. I’m fond of it, though I don’t think it’s true.
Anyway, because this has gone on long enough already, fearing the Kryptasts is letting Them win and once we see them as people, they’re probably just as vulnerable and petty as people can be.
Unless they turn out to somehow actually be a panopticon through the power of Theurgy. In that case, [REDACTED]