A large arcane eye floats some distance away from a home base located within the Church of Sun & Scroll.
The 'apparatus' is a machination within the church that allows a form of manual control over the eye and its position.
With the eye, one can observe the surface of Torril, in the northern range of mountains surrounding the Cloud Spires range.
It can move a great distance, and point in any direction, including away from the Torril, into astral space.
The eye is invisible, lacking any physical or implied form; it functions magically and oddly enough, the apparatus is not overtly magical in and of itself.
The apparatus is a receiver with its own magics that allow it to communicate with the arcane eyes transmissions.
In other words, the eye is the powerful super item, floating in low orbit astral space and the machination, or apparatus, is a mix of low level magicks akin to minor illusion for the display and a clairvoyance spell to receive what the eye is sending.
Most of the apparatus is made of bent and shaped metals with a housing for a large iralite block. It is specially shaped to ensure the iralite block does not touch the floor, and is keeps the heat generated aimed towards a vent in the wall. The displaying crystal is made of a magically resonant stone that's been pressed and polished. These are not made by anyone in the Cloud Spires and nobody rememebers off hand who built the thing.
It's probably written down somewhere..