Mask of Tears

By Myranda Kalis (nagaina@yahoo.com)

Description

This extraordinarily potent treasure appears, at first glance at least, to be nothing but an old, cheaply made ceramic mask. It looks like the sort of thing you'd find occupying a table at a local yard sale, the previously white ceramic yellowed with age, the paint faded, the glaze cracked. To Kithain eyes, however, the Mask nearly glows with Glamour, taking on the appearance of a translucently fine white ceramic, the features asexual, a single, blood-red tear tracing down its cheek. Kithain most sensitive to Glamour will discern a dark, but vivid, violet glow surrounding it, and sense a tangible aura of grief and loss twined through it.

Formed of Dark Glamour, the Mask has the ability to completely separate the Kithain soul of a Changeling from the human body that it inhabits. In this state, the Kithain cannot in any way affect the physical world except through Arts and cantrips that allow for physical effects that can be performed without the necessity of a physical bunk. (Good luck finding one.) However, while in this state, the Kithain can interact freely with the realms of the Spirit, the Dead, the Dreaming, and the Nightmare as though they were the physical world, with all the advantages and dangers that that implies. The Mask can be removed at any time by the wearer, simply by lifting the spirit equivalent off, an act which will also cause the physical Mask to be removed, usually by the expedient coincidence of "it just fell off."

Created by a Scathach sorcerer who used it to communicate with his late mortal lover, the Mask of Tears has a strange and elusive form of intelligence; it chooses whomever it wishes to have wield it. It rarely communicates in any real fashion with its wielder and normally seems to be more of a security precaution than a real mind. The precise criteria of selection that the Mask judges by is rather obscure, though it tends to select those who have either suffered a great tragedy in the past or will suffer one in the future. The Mask possibly even generates these tragedies itself, through various means both fair and foul, thereby bathing it in the Dark Glamour of its origin. No one knows for certain, as the Mask's creator is nowhere to be found, and the last Kinain keeper of the Mask died without ever imparting its secrets to another.