Patkin/BrokenSoulMask
Name: The Broken Soul-Mask
Concept: Honey-tongued Actress Turned Deathlord Agent
Caste: Day
Nature: Gallant
Liege: The Bodhisattva Anointed By Dark Water
Location: The Skullstone Archipelago
Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Charisma 3, Manipulation 5, Appearance 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 4
Virtues: Compassion 3, Conviction 1, Temperance 2, Valor 3
Abilities: Archery 2, Awareness 2, Dodge 3, Investigation 2, Larceny 5, Linguistics 4 (Native: Seatongue; Flametongue, High Realm, Low Realm, Riverspeak), Lore 1, Medicine 1, Performance 3 (Impersonation +2), Socialize 3, Stealth 1, Thrown 4 (Improvised Weapons +2)
Backgrounds: Artifact 2, Contacts 3, Liege 2, Resources 3, Underworld Manse 3, Spies 3
Charms: Aid of Ill Wind, Ivory Spine Attack, Flitting Shadow Form, Uncanny Impulse Evasion, Cunning Criminal Style, Evidence-Erasing Method, Flawless Doppelganger Disguise, Theft of Face, Theft of Mien, Language Absorbing Method
Willpower: 6
Essence: 3
Personal Essence: 15
Peripheral Essence: 36
Appearance: The Broken Soul-Mask is a young Western woman seemingly only in her 20s, with pale-white blonde hair braided into three long cords and a seemingly delicate skin tone that nears a death pallor. The Soul-Mask conceals her face behind a obsidian mirrored thespian's mask, crafted from three shards of soulsteel to appear like a broken mirror. Her body is hidden beneath a sleek black and green harlequin number, fitted to her body yet concealed behind black armor and a cloak. Weighted throwing knives hang from a slung belt around her hips, though at times of distraction, the Soul-Mask twirls and spins the knives as a sort of nervous habit. Her gestures are often exaggerated, her poses overdramatic and yet, even for such a ham, no one notices anything is wrong much of the time. The Soul-Mask in her moments of self-depreciation, finds this rather funny.
The Broken Soul-Mask was at one time just another actress in the employ of the Skullstone theatre companies. A vicious and back-biting ingenue, the Broken Soul-Mask sought more than anything to become immortal like the greatest actors of Skullstone and plotted her way into stealing their roles as best she could. This drive led her to her ghastly fate, leaving behind the corpses of lead actresses and actors behind, wrecked by her hungry desire for the spotlight. It was a production of her company for the Silver Prince at the citidal of her Deathlord that she stabbed the final back. What she had failed to notice was that her production would end in the lead actresses' death, something she had ignored as she imprisoned the zombified heroine and came to the stage wearing the actress' jade mask.
She bowed to the Prince, who seemed distracted, and beautifully portrayed her role as the Princess of Sabine, in the Rape and Murder of the Sabine Court. It was thus that in the third act, her murderer did not realize she wasn't undead, and slid the dagger between her ribs. She did not miss a line in her final soliloquy, though the wheezing rattle in her voice was unmistakeably real, drawing the attention of the Bodhisattva. She fell to the stage and as her life's blood oozed out onto the laquered floor, the Prince stood up and called for light. He ordered his best necrosurgeons to pick up the hard-hearted performer, and in the near-death that followed, offered her a place in his courtly intrigues. The Broken Soul-Mask accepted, thinking she would simply be brought to a state of undeath like the Prince's previous servitors. Instead, she was granted the Black Exaltation. A new life entered her bleeding flesh, a new master was granted her destiny.
The Broken Soul-Mask, now unable to claim her name, took on the identity of the Prince's cipher and spymaster. Wearing a mask of soulsteel, she learnt the languages of Creation and the faces of its people. She learnt how to mimic the boisterous sun-drenched chatter of a Southern merchant, the lazy decadence of a Dynastic noblewoman, the hard-scrabble existence of the River Province and the varied cultures of the West outside the Archipelago. And more than that, she learnt how to suborn them, make them serve the shadowland she loved and the lord she owed her life and heart. She bears her trials cheerfully, since her goals (making everyone spellbound and enslaved to her) dovetails nicely with the goals of her liege. The Soul-Mask keeps her master's spy network running smoothly and she knows more often than not the exact place to pull the pin that hlds an entire society together.
The Soul-Mask resides in a Manse on the outskirts of what in Creation is Coral, but in the Underworld is just more property of the Silver Prince. The House of Shadowed Halls is considered hers, a prize possession for her service. She also keeps a number of smaller residences in the Underworld, typically Manses no larger than a level-one. She keeps contacts in most of the Western islands not under control of the Bodhisattva, with the painful exception of the Lintha and Bluehaven. Both sides of that incestuous band have repelled her efforts to gain information, with any attempt to insinuate part of her network into their domain pulling back a bloody stump. This has grown to infuriate her, but she dares not acknowledge her failure to her lord, lest he decide on something suitable to do to her. While she knows it is only a matter of time before he discovers her troubles, it would be better to ask forgiveness in this case than accept defeat openly.
