A perfect disguise.
This is a fairly normal, felt, black domino mask, which is held on by a string, and goes over the eyes of the wearer. When worn by itself, it has the effect of rendering the wearer unrecognisable. People will still react to them, still respond to them, but they will have no idea who they are. The anonymity is complete. If the wearer speaks to someone, goes away for a few moments, and speaks to them again, they will not recognise that it is the same person.
An even more powerful method of use is possible. When a photograph of a persons face is affixed to the front of the wearer’s head, everyone will recognise them as that person. The disguise is complete, and nobody, not even the person closest to the unfortunate subject of the mimic, will be able to tell the two apart. Only those already involved in the underground will even suspect magic, rather than, for example, stress or mental illness, as an explanation for strange behaviour.
The only danger of this artifact comes when the wearer looks at thier face in a mirror. They must make a rank-5 self check if they are wearing just the domino mask by itself, and a rank-4 if they are disguised as someone else.
I would imagine it is marginally more stressful to see yourself as an anonymous nobody than another person altogether. I was thinking about effects for a critical failure on these checks, and couldn’t decide between a physical effect, ie, looking totally anonymous, or exactly like the person you were mimicking, or a mental effect, ie, losing all sense of identity, or believing yourself to be the person you were mimicking, or both, or with conditions for both? Any feedback is appreciated, and YMMV
If a wearer is disguised as a player, and the two come into contact, the player must make a rank-3 self check. If they are not aware of magic, they must make a rank-3 unnatural check as well. If the wearer takes off the mask or the photo in sight of others, the audience must check at rank-4 against the unnatural.
I like it. If you were to wear a photograph of a famous person who was known to be deceased (such as President Lincoln) would people think you were him, or just someone who looked very much like him?
Hmm… whether seeing yourself as an anonymous nobody or as someone else might depend upon who the someone else was. What if it was a photograph of a fictional character (for example, the Joker from one or another of the Batman films?) What about a photograph of an animated character?
The possibilities are interesting!
Initially the idea was that you would have to take the photograph yourself, and maybe it had to be a polaroid, or you needed a special camera, so it could only be real people you had actually photographed in person. I hadn’t even thought of players trying to disguise themselves as dead or fictional characters! But it’s an intriguing idea.
But perhaps the effect would still work if you simply affixed any recognisable human face to your own. This would allow you to impersonate dead people (who have been photographed), famous people (possibly very useful), or even fictional people (you just need a clip from a film or TV show, not stills from the set, or promotional stills, only when the actor is ‘in character’).
I think you’d need to take a stress check against the unnatural to impersonate people both famous and dead. So anyone seeing you as Abe Lincoln or Hitler or James Dean would need to make a rank-5 unnatural check (unless they don’t recognise them, in which case they are fine, but if they don’t recognise them, why disguise as them rather than remain anonymous). Seeing a fictional character would result in the same level of check.
The disguise is not merely visual and auditory. You will sort of have an aura that makes people think you are who are disguised as. So if you affix an Abe face, and start to interact with people, they will first believe you look just like him, but it will be easy to convince them that you really are (with some historical knowledge and a good story), at which time they must make a check to see how mad they go at this revelation. The same would apply with fictional characters, but with an even greater stress check.
I think you should be allowed to disguise as an animated character, but it would result in an extremely bad series of unnatural checks for any witnesses. I would imagine that seeing something like that, 2D or 3D rendered, walking around in real life would freak most people right out, it would me!
What if someone films or photographs you while you’re wearing it?
Yeah, with the animated one, I was just thinking how obsessed some people are with anime– some people would probably kill to be able to pass themselves off as their favorite character! (Great, now I have an image of a 350lb. hairy guy using the mask to be Sailor Moon! I need to go make some checks now…)
Does the mask make you look how the person looked when the photo was taken, what people would expect that person to look like, or as that person really looks at that moment? Thin Elvis, fat Elvis, or zombie Elvis?
If someone films or photographs you while wearing it, you will appear to be that person in the image until you take off the mask. At which point you just like a dude with a photo on your face.
The disguise makes you look like the person at the time of the photograph. If you are within a few years of the real age of the person you are impersonating, that is fine, but if you look obviously younger or different, it will freak people out (unless you think fast and claim a miracle de-aging treatment, or something).
What effect will this have on an Iconomancer or a Personamancer?
From the effects of this artifact, I assume it was created by a Personomancer using one or more Major charges to create a permanent variation of Mask of the Man that could look like anyone at all. The anonymous “blank” version of the mask was just a happy side effect.
I think it’s far too power… maybe you should add that if you get a 5th failed notch in self while wearing this mask, you forget yourself (anonymous) or permanent believe you are whomever’s photo is attached to the mask and also the mask stops working for you. So rather than look like what any given person thinks Jesus looks like, you’re a guy claiming to be the son of god wearing a cheap mask with a picture of Jesus.