The City of Masks

Val-des-Masques is a city built on water, a maze of canals where music and laughter echo day and night, and where everyone wears a mask: carnival for some, necessity for others. For in a town where everything is known, it is wiser to hide one's face. Beneath the festive veneer, intrigue seethes, and a masked smile may conceal a friend as easily as an assassin. This second act is played after Act I, The Escort.

The hook

The heroes arrive in Val-des-Masques carrying a sealed document to deliver to Lady Coralie of the Thread. They find her murdered, her lodgings ransacked with the cold method of a professional: the Order of the Ashen Diadem has beaten them to it. Yet beneath a floorboard, the old informant left a small casket the killer never found. Inside: a coded letter and an old map. The key to everything.

An open investigation

"Val-des-Masques is a stage, my dears, and we all play a role upon it. Those Diadem folk, though, do not play: they want to burn the whole theatre down."

This act is no corridor. Three factions share the power of the shadows: the Velvet Guild and its venal Countess, the Silver Fingers of the underworld, and the Eye of Vespra, a spy network in the service of the goddess of secrets. Each opens a different road to the truth, at a different price. It is for the heroes to choose whom to trust, in what order, and how far to go. Their alliances will echo far beyond this act.

What the act contains

• Six scenes: from arriving in the city to confronting the Diadem's agent, to the departure toward the Extinct House.
• Five detailed locations: theatre-casino, lowtown tavern, veiled temple, floating market, bridge of trysts.
• Three ready-to-run action scenes: a gondola chase, a street fight, a burglary.
• Nine side quests and a masked ball sub-plot, all tied to the main thread.
• A gallery of non-player characters, ready-to-say lines, and tables of encounters and rumours.

Advice for the game master

Let the investigation breathe: give out the places, the characters and the clues, then let the players lead the dance. Cultivate the light paranoia that gives an investigation its savour, without punishing reasonable trust. Note carefully the alliances forged and the services promised: Sévrine, Vidal and Vespra are threads you will draw taut again later. And if the Diadem's agent escapes, do not regret it: a foe who now knows the heroes' faces is worth far more than a corpse.