What I know about Unnamed Masks Game is...!
MASKS is a tabletop role-playing game, this page is serving as a Just for Fun refrence sheet for out characters.
THE DELINQUENT: Noxus / Alias
THE JANUS: Huang Xia / Canary
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I've Got All This Ringing in my Ears and None on my Fingers
Huang Xia fulfills the Janus archetype as someone who struggles to maintain the line between her civilian identity and her hero identity. She is begrudgingly next in line to inherit the China Hero Instruments Group (中国英雄工具集团), a leading Chinese company in hero costume and weapon design and manufacturing. Zhelan Xia, her father and the current CEO of CHIP, has essentially created a thriving economy through a hidden arms race. By occasionally discreetly manufacturing tools for the villains, demand for more competitive hero gear shoots up. Rinse, repeat. Thus, inheriting CHIP means having to become responsible for both its current upstanding status and its discreet dealings.
Huang discovered these unfortunate truths when she was young, and was threatened into silence. Her fear manifested as pathological lying, which means lying constantly about important things, unimportant things, and just about everything in between. Living a lie for the rest of her life is her biggest fear, thus she became a hero to take her first step towards leading an honest life.
- Abnormal Ammo
- Action Girl: Hard to avoid as a hero and all.
- The Atoner: Huang became a hero largely to atone for her father's actions.
- Blatant Lies: Often and always.
- Broken Bird: And how! With all the abuse she has gone through causing her to become a pathological liar. On top of that, Canary is her adopted alias.
- Consummate Liar: To those who have yet to know she's liar, but a Bad Liar to those that have known her for awhile.
- Color Motif: One of Huang's meaning in Chinese is yellow, which essentially makes up her color scheme.
- Crying Wolf: You can only lie so many times until people assume every other word is a lie.
- Daddy's Girl: Despite rebelling against his terrible deeds by becoming a hero, Huang had yet to reveal the truth of his deeds ever since he told her to lie.
- Don't Tell Mama: See above.
- Eyes Always Shut: When drawn.
- Fangirl: Looks up to BLANK and BLANK in her group.
- Hairstyle Inertia: Has the exact same hairstyle in the past as she does now.
- Lonely Rich Kid: Played straight by Huang as the heiress to one of the top hero companies.
- Meaningful Name: Huang in Chinese can mean yellow, bright, liar, phoenix, irresolute, and panicked. Canary could be a reference to the canary in a coal mine idiom.
- Secret-Keeper: For the sake of her mother and the economy itself, Huang has to hide her hero identity from her father and her civilian identity from heroes.
- You Can Always Tell a Liar: Huang often covers her face when she is telling the truth, which is often read the wrong way.
THE NOVA: Ricky Hughes / Flux
Ricky Hughes lived a relatively stressful life as a young boy in San Francisco, the only son of two poor, black parents, but was still relatively happy with his lot in life up until his parents were hit by a car while chasing him across the street, killing them instantly. The trauma kicked off a previously hidden fountain of power in the 13 year old boy, and while his world metaphorically crumbled around him, it literally crumbled as well, as he inadvertently increased the local density of the Pacific Plate along the San Andreas Fault Line by almost 800%, triggering an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed a third of the city.
His powers involve manipulating gravitic fields and masses, but are directly linked to his emotional state, making control difficult. In addition, as he accesses more power he inadvertently increases his own relative mass, resulting in cracked, gray skin and a bluish tint as photons accelerate towards him, creating a sort of black body radiation. This makes it harder to damage him but also makes it more difficult for him to move, as the ground may not be able to support his drastically increased weight. He can fly by decreasing his own relative gravity and increasing that of air molecules in front of him, and do the same for others, but this takes extreme concentration, and he can do nothing else while in flight.
- The Atoner: After the immense destruction caused by his breakdown following his parent's death, he is constantly trying to make up for what he perceives as his greatest failure.
- Be All My Sins Remembered: Even though only a few people even know he caused the disaster that destroyed San Francisco, he still feels incredible regret, and as a result doesn't want any praise.
- Blessed with Suck: What might seem as an incredible power feels like a curse to him, as even slight mood swings can result in random destruction around him, and his tumultuous emotional state means that keeping his powers in check is a constant chore.
- Comes Great Responsibility: He believes that the only way his power should be used is in service of others, and constantly works towards this goal.
- Crater Power: Happens whenever he powers up from a standing start, as his mass increases drastically and crushes the ground beneath him.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Obviously.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: His parents dying was the catalyst that unleashed his powers.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: His powers theoretically have no real limit short of collapsing matter into a black hole, but he has no idea how to regulate them, and more often then not his emotional state is what actually determines his strength level/ability to not accidentally powder someone's skull.
- Doomed Hometown: Technically, even though he was the one that destroyed it.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: As he taps into his powers, his superdense body warps the passage of photons slightly, resulting in glowing blue eyes in addition to an overall bluish aura.
- Heroic BSoD: His reaction to his parent's death, accompanied by the awakening of his powers and an intense emotional response upon his recovery.
- Hulking Out: Anger, unsurprisingly, is one of the most destructive influences on his powers, and often results in extreme property damage.
- Logical Weakness: His gravitational manipulation can let him levitate continents or induce molecular fusion, but he can't actually change the effects of inertia on an object, which can lead to a lot of accidental destruction as he casually throws away a car that "weighs" only a pound, but still hits like two-ton piece of metal. At the same time, while his increased mass does protect him, he's still only slightly stronger than a normal person, so it prevents him from moving unless he focuses on it.
- My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction to the destruction of San Francisco, as well as any harm he does to others while using his powers.
- Power Floats: A side effect of his unique brand of flight via gravitic manipulation.
- Power Incontinence: As his power increases, his ability to control it decreases accordingly.
- Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Just as photons around him are affected by the increased mass, so is the density of the air, causing his voice to plummet several octaves.
- Powerful, but Inaccurate: At low levels, this isn't the case, but with more power comes a larger area of effect, given that gravity affects literally all matter in the vicinity regardless of his original target, which leads to:
- Quantity vs. Quality: His power level is inversely related to his control over said power.
- Super-Strength: Not really, unless you count his ability to still move himself while suffering extremely increased density, but he can mimic it by reducing the local gravity of things he touches. He can also levitate them from a distance, although this requires more concentration.
- Required Secondary Powers: His increased mass protects him from the consequences of drastically increasing the effects of gravity in his vicinity, while making it easier to use these effects on himself without crushing him instantly.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Boy is he. The sheer scope of his powers coupled with the incredible difficulty he has in controlling them means that this is unavoidable.
- Where I Was Born and Razed: More accurate, as his destruction of his hometown is a recurring element in his character, especially in his remorse.
THE OUTSIDER: Cirra Ch'Zona/ CeeCee
Cirra came to earth with a group of researchers from her homeworld, but was the Sole Survivor of a crash-landing, leaving her as the final remaining member of her original team. After crawling from the wreckage the Ship AI goes bezerk, attracting the attention of some nearby supers and the authorities. She joins forces with the other members to take down her own craft and gets stranded on earth for a time as a result. She initially wanted to figure out how to go home, but... Earth is just so fascinating! And it's been ages since she's gotten to meet another intelligent species.- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: After losing detection of all lifesigns in the ship, the AI inside the spacecraft Cirra arrived on went berserk and started attacking the surrounding area, resulting in the destruction of a city park and a sizable crater.
- Angst? What Angst?: As a 'disposable' member of the worker class, she is remarkably unfazed by the death of her fellow crewmembers upon arriving on earth, at first at least...
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Her species has 3 sexes, in a sense. Two are reproductive species, and typically stay on her homeworld, but the third kind is a 'worker' species that can't reproduce and are treated as disposable by her society. Cirra herself is of the 'worker' variety. Her high pitched voice and fondness for earth fashions lead to the group calling her by female pronouns in any case.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Because she's friends with The Canary, who is prone to lying, her information about earth's cultural norms is becoming....skewed. Examples include believing that playing the song 'Freebird' is some sort of peace ritual and that fast food restaurants are high-class places.
- This isn't helped by her odd teammates giving her wildly varying impressions about what earth is supposed to be like.
- In the second meeting it is established that she learns about human culture from TV.
- Cool Starship: Came in one initially, it sort of backfired when the ship AI went bezerk though.
- Fantastic Racism: A common practice on her homeworld against what she describes to the group as the "worker-class" members of her species.
- Glowing Eyes: A normal part of her species' Bizarre Alien Biology. They glow with a white light when she uses her powers to manipulate density.
- Green-Skinned Space Babe: Blue skinned, and rather cute in human clothes when she decides to wear them.
- Innocent Aliens: Has a cheerful disposition, giving everyone in the team influence over her, believes obvious lies from Huang, goes along with the group's antics with little protest, and thinks things as simple as french fries are fascinating. Cirra plays this trope to a T.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Clothing on her world is seen as purely functional... That being said she usually does wear clothing, but doesn't see the need for things like swimsuits and sleeping clothes.
- Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: in the second episode she and Ottie remained quite hidden during their investigation of the park. They would have gotten away scott-free if only Ottie had not killed the in pain metal chicken via a loud electric shock.
- With Catlike Tread: Even though she rigs up a field of invisibility for the park investigation, it doesn't block out sound at all. Luckily so many weird things were happening that Cirra and Ottie were Beneath Notice.
THE PROTEGE: Samantha "Sam" / N/A
- Took a Level in Badass: One of the defining points of her backstory is when she suddenly overpowers a large group of gang members, prompting her mentor, Bron, to take Sam under his wing for more hero-oriented activities.
THE TRANSFORMED: Osteros/ Ottie
An escaped machine lifeform. Giant robot. needs to fill out his TV Tropes page.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The gang of music-themed villains in the first episode wound up being very sympathetic to the players, and not very dangerous in the fight. The turn ended with most of the heroes comforting a young man who "Didn't even like playing guitar" and just went along with the evil plan to impress his dad.
- Similar Squad: The Millenium's young hero team under the CHIP-In initiative performs a similar role to the main team. (though with better publicity).
