mask 05: jade and love
I was sent here by a bad doctor. Was It Likely? Doubtful. I tagged in an oldhawkeyes in an Unturned Hovel.
The earth wears our civilization and its people like a mask, squat little huts and great sky-scraping monuments both little more than tiny pores on her face. There is one such pore, long ago covered in dead skin-earth and oily rocks, that holds within it a piece of Malachite Who Mourns What He Made.
A fleshy half-mask with green strings and a single jade axe embedded flat in the brow. The mask depicts a beautiful woman with dark skin and bushy, uneven eyebrows. Her nose bridge is pierced with a long bone needle that cannot be removed.
The piece of Malachite Who Mourns What He Made is that jade axe, only superficially an axe, a flat little skipping stone no bigger than a thumb carefully ground smooth and slotted into the forehead of the flesh half-mask.
Wearing the mask does nothing on the short term, although in its present state many might venture to ask where the mask came from, or who the face belongs to. This will change.
The mask becomes the most beautiful woman you've ever seen, or whatever the wearer finds themself looking at the most. As it does this, the previous visage on the mask sinks into face of the one who wears it. The line between mask and man is blurry here in the petals of the Violet Flower. The wearer gains something from this merging; the earth is enriched by our gifts and provides for us in turn.
The Face of the Lover and its effects: (roll or choose or give them all, I'm not your dad)
- You gain her eyes as they were remembered; all who see your new eyes (including you) must save or be paralyzed.
- You gain her laugh. Once per day, your laughter may halt a combat or disagreement entirely, regardless of previous context.
- You gain her mind. She loved birds and nature; they remember her still, and now you know them.
- You gain her name. Pilli. None but you recall your old name. Hers was a name of great fortune; people see your presence as a lucky gift and you are invited into places and to things you shouldn't be.
- You gain her love. She loved the one who wore the mask. Now that is you. Her affection staves away magical fear and drives away the cruel spectral sands of magical sleep.
- You gain her soul. A weary little thing with a mask-shaped hole in it. It can always be found behind your ear, tucked beneath the mask's string. It becomes exactly what you desire only once, with a scream and a sound like ripping parchment.
The Face of the Abyss and its effects: A hole where there ought to be a face. Bony bricks line the edge of the mask, which clamps tightly onto the face and conforms to it perfectly, as though it were the entrance into the wearer's hollowed skull. This is what the mask becomes when dungeons are its wearer's love.
- You gain its silence. Make no noise. Ever
- You gain its darkness. You are nothing more than a shadow.
- You gain its dampness and its mold. You cannot die by flame and need no food or drink.
- You gain nothing; the one before you loved nothing dearly.
- You gain nothing; the one before you loved nothing.
- You gain nothing; the one before you loved.
The Face of the Wilds and its effects: Somewhere deep between the protruding brambles, briars, thorns, ivies, saplings of the mask's barely human visage sings a beautiful bird heard only by the void, long before the Violet Flower unfurled.
- You gain its tenacity. You and those you lead never falter and cannot be toppled. You will die standing.
- You gain its vastness. Your person becomes a font of space; carry three times the burden of your previous self.
- You gain its abundance. Your sweat is nectar and you shit edible fruit.
- You get nothing. The wilds spurned the love of the one who last wore the mask.
- You get nothing. The wilds spurned the one who last wore the mask.
- You get nothing. The wilds loved the one who last wore the mask.