The Unnamed Mask

The gist of this Trail of Cthulhu adventure is a strange, unnamed mask and its esoteric history. As the investigators unravel its mysteries they inexorably doom themselves to a descent into madness and death as the mask’s Mythos truths are revealed to them. Hence, the actual physical prop will be a key component of the adventure and will be used like the documents in The Armitage Files to fuel player imagination and encourage them to make choices and give narrative input that will then be used by yours truly to improvise a mystery for them to solve.

Papier-mâché frame

Inspiration

This whole project started when I came across a mask frame made of sturdy papier-mâché for just 3 euros in a local craft shop. At the time I had no idea what I was going do with it, but found it a cheap, handy foundation for a cultist mask or some other such prop. I toyed with some ideas like plastering it with occult pages and sheet music as a nod to one of my favorite HPL stories The Music of Erich Zann. Then, reading through the Call of Cthulhu I came across this bit:
What the police did extract came mainly from an immensely aged mestizo named Castro, who claimed to have sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China.
   Old Castro remembered bits of hideous legend that paled the speculations of theosophists and made man and the world seem recent and transient indeed. There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. (The Call of Cthulhu)
I found the image of the deathless Chinamen as the cult leaders very intriguing and from that the idea for the unnamed mask was born.

Mask-making

First, I started with cutting the frame to shape. Then, I took some pieces of leather and glued them on. This was followed with some work with my dremel and yarn to make the stitching and to attach the nose. The nose itself was just three triangular pieces of cardboard cut to shape and then overlaid with leather. After cutting the eyeholes and tweaking the leather a bit the whole thing was weathered with Citadel washes, acrylic paint and some water-effect used in miniature painting. Finally, the texts were painted with acrylics and the keys and the eyebrows and mustache (horsehair) were added.

The finished mask

As I wrote in my last post, the idea for The Armitage Files style of game was born as I worked on the mask and thought about giving it a backstory. The story of the mask will be revealed through a series of 3 or 4 flashbacks. These flashbacks tell parts of the mask’s esoteric history and reveal important clues to the investigators they can then use in the present day (the 1930s). In The Armitage Files players receive strange documents and, after studying them, decide which clues to follow. In this case, they will take the mask and decide which feature(s) will feature in the next flashback. 

My first thought was to give the players just the mask, but I soon realized that they would probably need a few other things/features to feed their imagination as the mask was kept mainly oriental in its features to keep it thematically and visually coherent. So, I added a box with a Miskatonic University label and I will most likely hide something under the stuffing (as soon as I figure out what). Now, the investigators will have at least the following features they can concentrate on (and use investigative abilities on):

• Just the fact that it is a mask can invoke images of disguises, masquerades, hidden identities, rituals, performances, noh masks, protective masks, masks of shame, carnivals in Venice, plague masks, cultists, Charles Dexter Ward like necromancers, the Pallid Mask etc. 
• What material the mask is made of? Is it leather? Human skin (if yes, than whose)? Why the inside of the mask is made of slightly different leather? 
• The nose could contain something, a secret note or a part of a spell etc. Or it could have been used to store something like herbs, incense, etc (like the masks of medieval plague doctors). 
• The texts in kanji could be invocations, protective spells, warnings, lists of names etc. (FYI, the texts are actually the “In his house at R’lyeh… “ and the “That is not dead… “ quotes from The Call of Cthulhu in Japanese.) 
• What is the red symbol on the left cheek? Elder Sign? Who made it? 
• What are the keys for? Where are they from? Do they open something? Is there a connection to Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate? 
• What is all the hair from and why are those coins there? 
• The box has a Miskatonic University label and a reference to an expedition. There is something hidden under the stuffing. 

As the adventure starts, we don’t know what the mask is used for, who is after it, or what the investigators are supposed to do with it. We do not know whether it is used as protection against the Mythos powers, or to summon them. All these things will be determined during the adventure with input from the players. They choose which clues to follow, what would be a cool setting for a flashback etc. However, even though player input will be encouraged some parts of the adventure will be more structured and laid out in advance than others. I'll write more about that in my next entry.