Masquerade

sam sorenson tagged me into stella condrey's mask game. i'm gonna cheat a little. this is a supervillain for longshot city or troika!, but the masks would all translate pretty effortlessly to a d20 based system.

aaron i choose you.

Masquerade

Skill:9 Stamina:18 Initiative:6 Armor:4

Bartleby Fontaine has enjoyed a successful 20-year career as a high society art dealer, but he wants something more. His personal collection consists mainly of masks, several of which have unique occult histories and abilities attached.

Fontaine occasionally makes an appearance in the celebrity gossip pages for rekindling his on-again off-again relationship with the notorious Jack Towers, a.k.a. Rocketman.


Special: Bartleby wears a cloak woven from the unformed nightmares of infants, where he keeps a selection of magical masks stashed. Changing masks on his turn still leaves him enough time to act as normal.

Funeral Mask of the Broken King 

The Mayan King Tlacatla of Pétocten who was buried in this jade mask held onto his kingdom through much of the Spanish holocaust by allying himself with a nearby settlement of English privateers. Eventually the English abandoned the colony and its nearby allies to the genocidal whims of the Spanish.

The wearer can cause everyone in earshot to obey a direct command or adopt a simple belief at the permanent cost of one skill point. Luck test to avoid.

Void Mask

Forged, stained and cursed by aristocratic french magician named Jacqueline Du Monde who was executed during the Great Terror.

Absorbs all ranged attacks. Sucks melee combatants into a pocket dimension that drops them back into reality 1d3 miles away.

Bronze Helm of the Gladiator

Infused with the spirit of its wearer, Brutalis, a captive enemy of Rome forced to fight against overwhelming odds who somehow never lost. He lived to retire and die an old man, and he insisted on being buried in his helm.

Imbues the wearer with 2 ranks in Superstrength and 3 ranks in Fast Healing.

Broken Mirror Veil

Infused with the spirit of a bride-to-be named Lily Tenbaugh (to be Lily Pond) who was murdered in her dressing room by the best man, one Richard Haupstein in a fit of jealous rage.

Allows the wearer to become invisible at the expense of one Luck Point per round (or Stamina for NPCs). 

Steamboat Willy Gas Mask

Thousands of these were made in Hawaii during World War Two and distributed to families with small children in the hope that the kids would practice putting them on while playing. A little boy named Bobby Stipend was wearing this one while playing on the beach when a piece of unexploded ordinance from the battle of Pearl Harbor detonated underfoot.

Causes its wearer to physically transform into a child until the mask is removed.

Motives

1. Add to mask collection
2. Petty revenge
3. Appease an impatient entity
4. The excitement of a good heist
5. Unrequited lust
6. Enjoy the company of bad friends

Longshot Low-Down #2

What follows is the second installment of the Longshot Low-Down, a local news radio show trying to keep track of events in Longshot City. (It's actually written by Cade Crites who is playing as an Ace Reporter):

Welcome to the Longshot Low-Down here at 109.5 FM the Caltrop and wherever you get your podcasts, I'm Arden Merle.

Today's broadcast features more chaos taking place in the harbor district, a series of unsettling discoveries regarding Trisha Nano, and a deadly fight between man and monster in the waters off the Atlantic South African coast.

With further investigation into Trisha Nano after the last broadcast, there are no records of Nano's existence, from birth to education to scientific pursuits. Nano has allegedly employed Cleaners, a company with no qualms against burning civilians alive, to aid in her apparent escape from the public eye. Her last known location was the city zoo, giving her a possible tie-in to the primates used as a distraction in the museum heist. Investigation into the superpowered primates is still ongoing.

The follow-up to the museum theft itself has yielded little in regards to finding and capturing the culprits. Jack Towers, a.k.a. Rocketman, has been lying low since the sightings of him fleeing the art museum, presumably at the nightclub he owns downtown. I will continue to provide reports as accurate information comes in.

 

Moving on to the harbor district, chaos has struck once again. An NQA truck was found bombed in a building in the harbor district. Witnesses claim a number of our city's unhoused citizens were within the building, which now bears a hole in the roof and the following ominous message graffitied on one of the walls: "ECHO IS COMING FOR YOU"

NQA Trucking is known to have been making large deliveries of lab equipment to a location deep in the wetland preserve. Investigations into this are underway.

Finally, in news from outside the city: a group going by "Murder Patrol" discovered a deadly human-versus-chimeric monsters spectacle at a wealthy resort on an island far off the Atlantic South African coast. Witnesses report the resort's clientele engaged in orgiastic debauchery while watching the people dying in these fights.

Murder Patrol sent in images regarding this, attached beneath this episode's transcript.

If anyone knows more about these events and is able to share anything—or if you have questions or topics you'd like covered on the next broadcast, contact me at lsclowdowntips@proton.mail. Thoughts and comments are welcome under the episode.

As always, transcripts for today's show can be found under "episode transcripts," wherever you get your podcasts, updated after each Saturday show. Till then, this has been Longshot Low-down and I hope to greet you all again soon.

Stay safe out there.