We’re exhibiting Mask of the Rose at LudoNarraCon, a narrative games festival hosted on Steam!
We’ll be streaming a prepared video about Mask of the Rose on our store page, and taking part in a panel about the joys of diverse romance in games at 1pm PDT on Thursday 5th May.
Fallen London players might be interested to watch the page stream, as it’ll include some never-before-seen location art for Mask of the Rose that you’ll recognise!
London is freshly fallen during the timeline of Mask of the Rose, taken to a cavern beneath the earth as part of a bargain unknown to most of its inhabitants. Theories and memories hold them together.
Afflicted by the Skies and the stars, Mazarine has seen quite some of them.
Writing under the cut!
They’re alone in their bridge - their locomotive is befallen by everything that befalls a locomotive in the skies. Massive frost and glass spikes break open their hull - they don’t seem to care. Or notice. You think you see rags tied to their engine like the death scavengers do, but its hard to tell. A glimmer of brass, underneath.** **> The hull is an amalgamation of parts from other locomotives, welded and molten together. You can’t tell how this thing is still sky worthy at all, but it seems to shunt forwards anyways, aggressively.
There’s a serious infestation of guests on board - you can see them splurging out from what must have been crew cabin windows, but they look starved and limp, only squirming pathetically. They don’t find enough nourishment here.
The horrific locomotive keeps lurching forwards, shrieking and shuddering and roaring, towards you. You hold your breath as it passes your own. You catch a glimpse of the captain, or whoever else the person in the bridge is - at least you think it’s a person.
They are propped up on the controls, staring dead ahead out of the windshield. Shards of glass sprout from their skull, almost like a distorted, jagged crown.
Fire fills their breast, spilling out between the ribs. Most of their skin is charred. An arm, missing, a clump of blackened, molten glass.
What’s a body part to an artificial sun, blinding and loving and filling?
What’s an artificial sun to the real one? To what lies beyond?
Their stare is piercing, something whirling and grinding and working behind their exhausted face, eyes bright and incomprehensible.
Are they alone? Do they have crew?
If you would ask then, they wouldn’t know the answer. They giggle. Does it even matter, whether anyone else on board is alive or whether all that remains are charred spots of ash? They laugh in the face of whatever it was that befell them.
Their engine burns too brightly, too vibrant, you think.
But you don’t ask them. If you’ve ever been sure of anything in your life, it’s that you want nothing to do with this…. you can’t even find the words.
You watch, tense, as the ragged locomotive passes you, seemingly no interest in your own. It disappears into the fogs - the horrific coughing and roaring of the engine clinging to your ears long after.
You tell your stokers to go faster. You steer the opposite direction.
Inspired so very much by the Dawn Machine/Clockwork Sun of Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies. The whole light-that-turns-people-to-living-glass thing is such a horrific and cool idea to me. So. A 5e lineage, in the style of the Van Richten’s lineages, for characters who have survived the touch of an alien, vitrifying light on a world where such things exist, where an alien force called the Glow, an eldritch, perhaps sentient radiance, breaks through the walls of reality every so often and turns everything living around it into glass.
(THESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESU—)
VITREOUS REMNANT
Beings of living, moving glass, transparent and tinted just faintly golden, the faint shapes of what were once veins and muscles and organs visible beneath their surfaces: these are the vitreous remnants, the fearful results of exposure to the Glow, that hideous, unnatural radiance that haunts our world. Where the Glow emerges, forcing its way into the world once more, all living things beneath its gaze are transformed, slowly and horrifically, into glittering glass. For most, this vitrification is fatal. For some, perhaps less lucky, this transformation is the beginning of a new existence instead. Undying, no longer flesh and blood, regarded with pity or revulsion by most who encounter them, vitreous remnants must find or make their way anew in this world. The trauma of vitrification, the unnatural touch of the Glow, is immense. Some remnants go mad. Others forget, both their transformation and all that came before. And others, some few, remember everything, and cling with all their might to the memory and knowledge of who they once were, even if they can wear its shape no longer.
VITREOUS REMNANT TRAITS
Ability Score Increase. Choose one of: (a) Choose any +2; choose any other +1 (b) Choose any +1; choose any other +1; choose any other +1.
Size. You are small or medium. You choose the size when you gain this lineage.
Speed.30ft.
Ancestral Legacy. If you replace a race with this lineage, you can keep the following elements of that race: any skill proficiencies you gained from it and any climbing, flying, or swimming speed you gained from it.
If you don’t keep any of those elements or you choose this lineage at character creation, you gain proficiency in two skills of your choice.
Invisible Light. Your vitrified body still emits an echo of the radiance that transformed it, visible only to your own eyes. You can see normally in dim light and darkness to a range of 60ft.
Vitrified Existence.Your body has been transfigured by the vitrification you endured, with the following results:
You have resistance to radiant damage.
You don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe.
You are immune to disease.
You do not age and cannot be aged magically.
You have advantage on saving throws to avoid being petrified or transformed against your will.
Echoes of Radiance. You know the Sacred Flame cantrip. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it (choose when you select this lineage).
Languages.You can speak, read, and write Common and one other language that you and your DM agree is appropriate for your character.
