Thoughts on Masks

I’ve been trying to find a way of modelling mask magic for many years. There’s an arena in Istria, in the Transyvanian book, which has an ancient Roman theatre, for example, where if you pick up the actors’ masks you are possessed by faerie spirits and gain their powers. It was a way of bringing superheroes into the game which I never fully explored.

For a long time I’ve thought about mask magic. I don’t have a good name for it, but it occurs to me that it should be called Hypocritical Magic because a hypokrite was a an actor, or a person who figuratively wore a mask, so this means that the Tytalus magicians who take on an entirely new persona are hypocrites.

We have three works today. I see the first one as a Criamon magician, perhaps the second one as a Tytalus wearing a persona (although be cautious – it’s from Jonathan Swift so it’s full of misogyny) and the third one is a person who, to take the poem literally, is using hypocrite magic.

The three recordings come from Librivox. Thanks to the readers and their production teams. Creature template at the end.

Prologue to The Madman by Khalil Gibran

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

I’d take the poetic literally here. The seven masks become treasures. Each of them has powers and if you assemble all of them you can recreate the god that has become the madman.

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed by Johnathan Swift

Corinna, pride of Drury-Lane
For whom no shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a battered, strolling toast;
No drunken rake to pick her up,
No cellar where on tick to sup;
Returning at the midnight hour;
Four stories climbing to her bow’r;
Then, seated on a three-legged chair,
Takes off her artificial hair:
Now, picking out a crystal eye,
She wipes it clean, and lays it by.
Her eye-brows from a mouse’s hide,
Stuck on with art on either side,
Pulls off with care, and first displays ’em,
Then in a play-book smoothly lays ’em.
Now dexterously her plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her hollow jaws.
Untwists a wire; and from her gums
A set of teeth completely comes.
Pulls out the rags contrived to prop
Her flabby dugs and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely goddess
Unlaces next her steel-ribbed bodice;
Which by the operator’s skill,
Press down the lumps, the hollows fill,
Up goes her hand, and off she slips
The bolsters that supply her hips.
With gentlest touch, she next explores
Her shankers, issues, running sores,
Effects of many a sad disaster;
And then to each applies a plaister.
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the dawbs of white and red;
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon’t.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica seems transported,
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-Ditch’s oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But, never from religious clubs;
Whose favor she is sure to find,
Because she pays ’em all in kind.
Corinna wakes. A dreadful sight!
Behold the ruins of the night!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, and dragged it to his hole.
The crystal eye, alas, was missed;
And puss had on her plumpers pissed.
A pigeon picked her issue-peas;
And Shock her tresses filled with fleas.
The nymph, tho’ in this mangled plight,
Must ev’ry morn her limbs unite.
But how shall I describe her arts
To recollect the scattered parts?
Or shew the anguish, toil, and pain,
Of gath’ring up herself again?
The bashful muse will never bear
In such a scene to interfere.
Corinna in the morning dizened,
Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d.

I like the idea of starting up Corina as character who has legendary beauty but only so long as she uses her arts to maintain her facade. She can act as a completely separate character when unmasked. It occurs to me that that anyone who has the same set of materials called theoretically be Corina, to the public at least, and so it may be a shared persona. In time the shared persona may become so well known that the props, absent of a human within them, can walk the streets being Corina 

We wear the mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Again, to take the poem literally, there’s a body horror element here. A previous episode dealt with very prosthetic limbs. Could this mask be a faerie prosthetic face? A thing that interacts with the world on your behalf feeding on your joys and sorrows, so that they are never fully expressed to the people outside?

Creature Template: Masks

The mask creatures are an idea I’ve been playing with since Against the Dark. This is a general template for them: when we get to the part of the Venice writeup where we discuss carnival I’ll be using it to make individual examples.

Faerie Might: 15 (Mentem)
Characteristics: Int +1, Per +1, Pre 0, Com +1, Str 0, Sta 0, Dex 0, Qik 0.
These statistics are provided by the host.. Some masks provide bonuses to physical Characteristics.
Size: As host
Virtues and Flaws: Focus Faerie Powers (Possession, see below), 2 x Increased Might, Loosely Material*; Incognizant.
Modified to a minor Virtue: may only take forms using possession power.
Personality Traits: Vary by character, generally +3 based on role
Combat: Bite*: Init +0, Attack +8, Defense +6, Damage +1 (Modified by the host’s statistics.) Some mask roles have the ability to use props like swords.
Soak: 0 (as host, modified by any Characteristic changes)
Wound Penalties: As host (generally –1 (1–5), –3 (6–10), –5 (11–15), Incapacitated (16–20), Dead (21+)
Pretenses: Vary depending on role, capping out at 5 (with added specialisation). May use the pretenses or abilities of the host.
Powers:
Possession, 1 or more points, Init +2, Mentem: If this power penetrates, the host is possessed by the mask and is under the spirit’s direct control. Some masks have cooperative relationships with their hosts and allow them to control their bodies. Some do not.Any attempt to force a host to act contrary to her nature, or to use any of the host’s own magical powers requires the spirit to spend Might. A supernatural power (including spell-casting) requires 1 Might point per magnitude to produce.

• A questionable action that is contrary to the nature of the host requires the mask spirit to exceed the possessed being’s Personality Trait roll on a stress die + Might points spent. The Storyguide may give a modifier to the Personality Trait roll based on the nature of the command (see the Entrancement power, ArM5 page 65, for suggestions). Both Might costs must be met if the use of a supernatural power is also contrary to the host’s nature.
• If the mask is in direct control of its host’s actions, the host acquires the mask spirit’s Magic Resistance, but is also affected by wards that would normally exclude her. If the host is acting under her own free will, then she does not benefit from the creature’s Magic Resistance, but may also walk through wards with impunity.
• This power’s costs are not based on the Hermetic system of magic. It is instead based on material in Realms of Power: Magic.

Equipment: Someone else’s body, all of their material goods.
Vis: 3 Mentem, in the saliva of the host.
Appearance: Does not have a material body beyond the mask, but if seen with Faerie Sight, or
Second Sight it looks like an animal matching the temperament of the mask’s role.
Base creature: The Mormo (RoP:F)