faces at the masquerade
faces at the masquerade
there are things you can be in the lovely dark but i haven't written those up yet. mostly it's bugs and skeletons and hives of art nouveau blood flukes and stuff. but here's things you can be also. variations on the same theme, that being "narrows your character's ability to communicate with and relate to other people." which is a theme i keep returning to for presumably no reason. (also. the artist of these paintings, dusty ray, sells huge blankets with art prints on them, if you want that.)
49th Century Space Adventurer
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| satellite, by dusty ray |
Under your greasy black cosmonaut suit you're a reinforced skeleton packed full of copper plugs and corroded batteries and lightning-scarred xolotite computer chips.
You're immune to naked vacuum and sick irradiance and bitter cold and abject loneliness. Love burns you like fire.
You start with one of these:
1. harpoon gun (Heavy, motor winch can drag your body+kit weight)
2. a thousand obsidian razorblades (upgrade three weapons to deal max damage vs un/lightly armored)
3. fulgurite devil horns (zap you, then chain three times)
4. ghost balloons (13 colors of blown glass. ghost must willingly get inside, but can't leave. each ghost works like a Hit Die)
5. neurospike (unmakes ideas, which have HP = their host's INT. At 0 HP an idea regresses into its most childlike form.)
6. ovospike (unmakes growth, which has HP = its host's WIS. At 0 HP, your foe regresses into its most childlike form.)
7. white balloons (connote loss. catch you when you fall on a 5-in-6)
8. black balloons (connote desire. lift you into the air slowly and forever, or drop you. nothing in between.)
9. tyranny lace (if you offer politely to bind someone's hands with this, they agree. enough for one.)
10. cassowary boots (extremely loud and incredibly stylish. disembowel on a crit)
11. ulfbox (four doses of ulf. mental clarity, emotional stability, hope. makes hounds of mortals.)
12. queen of bones (eel skeleton of translucent necroplastic. animates and floats and nuzzles your neck and bites people.)
(If you forego all your usual starting equipment, you can start with two.)
You have to speak in impenetrable 49th century argot all the time. Here is some of that.
The format is denotation (connotation).
Vaka! = get real! (get fucked!)
Fyott = steal (kidnap)
Klo = steal (ravage)
Sup = learn (steal)
Gulper = pathetic (sexy)
Ankler = pathetic (creep)
Lands Court = makes sense
Clean = what you are and mortals aren't
Gemfaring = what you do and mortals don't
Drop = leave (for planetside, or suicide)
Yonder = outer space (fucking awesome)
Goner = outer space (i hate my life)
Shunt = outer space (i hate your life)
The Infinite Macabre = outer space (im gently grifting you)
Alas! = general purpose Hwaet
Glittery = pretty (but never beautiful)
Rusty = lonely and stark (good)
Noctivagant = person (cool)
The Noct Vedas = wisdom of experience
Thou = the only second person pronoun worth using
Shaking = needful (needy)
Melty = disgusting (cullbait)
Brāgit = useful (cullbait)
The Cull = will happen to everyone but you
Fire = something gorgeous and far away and impossible
Build the rest yourself, using archaic sentence construction and following the basic rule of cool shit + corrupted icelandic.
Elf
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| sea, by dusty ray |
Elfs engage with the world exclusively as a very complicated work of art to be studied and criticized. Some let it drift by them like sea wrack, others obsess over the fine details of a single life and collect nails and hair for a personal shrine, or dice people into tiny cubes with scrimshaw knives for standing in the way of their favorite romances. When a human friend dies they might extemporize a weepy eulogy, or replicate their death exactly on themself for comparison, or leave to complain to the other elfs about the tedious and predictable conclusion.
They congregate in cenotes and chasms, plush gray skin insulating them from the cold and pressure, staring studiously past each other with their vast well-black eyes, engraving their spiral tongue in stone for the others to read when they've gone. Other elfs are, grudgingly, equals, but the only virtues another elf can have are taste and consensus.
Elfs are not capable of making "I" statements, or articulating anything about themselves besides their tastes and preferences. They don't know what they look like, and hate to be told.
They don't bleed or get sick or feel pain. Inside they're like plushies. They understand their own experiences only at distant remove. Reconstructing the play from the reviews.
When an elf would die or be dismembered, they lose their (arm/leg/head/all remaining limbs), easily fixable by popping them back together like a doll, in a minute or two.
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| adogyawnsadogsighsadogsleeps, by dusty ray |
ONE THOUSAND THOUSAND SHARP SHARP SHARK TEETH CRUSHING GRINDING GEAR TEETH JAGGED GNASHING DOG TEETH CRUSHED INTO A SCREAMING MACHINE OF IRON AND BONE. HUMAN SKIN YOU'RE TWITCHING IN. THE THINGS THEY DON'T REMEMBER CRAWL THROUGH YOU LIKE WORMS AND YOU CUT AND GRIND AND GNASH THEM INTO SLIMY SILVER MEDICINE. LOVE DESPAIR HOPE SELF AS LUBRICANT ALL RENDERED DOWN TO WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT
WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT
WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT WANT
The two emotions you feel are "the want hurts more" and "the want hurts less."
If any part of you is ever uncovered, everyone can tell it's all wrong. They'll react to it like a pus-weeping sore.
Anything beyond animalistic pursuit of your wants must be a carefully rehearsed and scrupulously kept-up habit.
Over the course of six seconds, you may deglove your entire body, or reglove it.
Laid bare, you have stats as a panther, but can't do human things.
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