Parliament of Masks

“I inherited this mask from my mother, who inherited it from a stranger. The stranger earned it by exposing a fraud. The mask remembers all of us. The city only recognizes the one wearing it now.”

• Palladian citizenship primer

–

1. Setting Overview & Tone

Palladia was founded on the principle that identity should be earned, not born. Its founders believed that attaching rights to masks rather than faces would create a meritocracy where anyone could become anyone. The system worked, for a time. It also created a market for identity, a class of unmasked people with no legal existence, and a Parliament where no one knows who is voting.

The characters live in this system: some as established mask-holders, others as unmasked citizens fighting for recognition, others as mask-brokers, investigators, or political operatives navigating a city where your face is private but your identity is public property.

Tone: Politically sophisticated and personally disorienting. The setting takes its premise seriously: masks change how people relate to each other, how institutions function, and how trust is established when you cannot see someone’s face. The intrigue is layered: a political dispute in Parliament may also be a personal vendetta conducted through a mask that has changed hands three times.

Sensory Pillars:

1. Sight: A city of masked faces. Masks range from simple ceramic ovals for common citizens to elaborate lacquered constructions for Parliamentary members. The masks are beautiful, varied, and unsettling at first glance: a crowd of people with no visible expressions, communicating through voice, gesture, and the specific tilt of a mask that experienced Palladians read as fluently as a facial expression.
2. Sound: The resonance of a voice inside a mask, which amplifies certain tones and muffles others, giving every Palladian a slightly altered speaking voice. The formal cadence of Parliamentary debate, where speakers are identified by mask number, not name. The silence that follows an unmasking, which is the most dramatic moment in Palladian public life.
3. Touch & Smell: The weight of a mask against the face, warm where it contacts skin, cool on the outer surface. The smell of lacquer and ceramic. The sensation of breathing through a mask’s ventilation channels. The vulnerability of an uncovered face in public, which Palladians describe as feeling exposed in a way that has nothing to do with modesty.

–

2. The City

The Parliament House is a circular chamber where 200 masked representatives debate and vote. Masks are displayed on stands when not worn, and the stands carry the voting record. A mask’s history is public. Its wearer’s identity is not. The Speaker of the House, Mask 001, has been worn by at least four different people in the last decade. Nobody is certain which one is currently speaking.

The Mask Registry maintains records of every mask in the city: its creation date, its lineage of holders, its legal standing, and its Authority score. The Registry is housed in a fortified building with one entrance. Its chief registrar, a woman identified only as the Keeper, is the only Palladian whose face is permanently known, because the position requires unmasking.

The Bare Quarter is where unmasked citizens live. Without a mask, a person cannot vote, own property, sign contracts, or access most public services. The Bare Quarter is not a slum; its residents work, trade, and build community. It is invisible to the legal system. The Quarter’s informal leader, a man called Glass (because his face is visible), has been organizing for legal recognition for five years.

The Exchange is the semi-legal marketplace where masks are bought, sold, and brokered. Masks carry their Authority with them, so a high-Authority mask is enormously valuable. The Exchange operates in a converted theater, which is fitting: every transaction is a performance, and the buyers and sellers wear temporary masks to protect their identities during the negotiation.

–

3. Factions

The Binding Caucus wants to permanently attach masks to faces, creating a fixed-identity system that would end the mask trade, stabilize political succession, and eliminate the unmasked class by issuing universal masks. Their leader in Parliament, Mask 037 (a veteran politician who has held the same mask for thirty years), argues that the current system’s flexibility has become its greatest vulnerability.

The Free Mask Alliance opposes the binding and defends the traditional system where masks can change hands. They argue that separating identity from biology is Palladia’s greatest achievement and that binding masks to faces would create a rigid class system based on birth. Their champion, Mask 144, is a first-generation mask holder who earned their position through public service and has no interest in making that path impossible for others.

The Bare Quarter Council wants legal recognition for unmasked citizens, regardless of whether binding passes or not. Glass argues that both the Caucus and the Alliance are arguing about how to arrange the furniture while the Bare Quarter does not have a house. He is running a campaign to win a mask through traditional merit, which would give the Bare Quarter a voice in Parliament. The campaign is popular and several factions are trying to co-opt it.

The Mask Forgers operate illegally, creating counterfeit masks with fabricated lineages. Their work is sophisticated enough to pass Registry inspection in most cases. The Forgers are not a unified criminal enterprise. Some forge masks to help unmasked people survive. Others forge masks to facilitate fraud. The most skilled forger in the city, known as the Sculptor, has never been identified because they wear a different mask every day.

–

4. Unique Mechanic: Mask Authority

Each character’s mask carries Authority from 0 to 6.

Gaining Authority (+1 each):

• Complete a public service recognized by the Registry
• Successfully negotiate a political outcome in the character’s mask
• Earn public reputation through visible achievement
• Inherit Authority from a mask with an established lineage

Losing Authority (-1 each):

• Public scandal or accusation (proven or not)
• Legal challenge to the mask’s legitimacy
• Discovery that the wearer is not the registered holder
• Failure in a public responsibility

Thresholds:

At 0: The mask is void. The character is legally unmasked. They lose access to all mask-dependent rights and must either acquire a new mask or join the Bare Quarter.

Mask transfer: A character may give their mask to another person voluntarily. The mask retains its Authority, but the new wearer must pass a Registry audit within 30 days or the Authority begins to decay (1 per week).

–

5. Character Archetypes

The Inherited Mask

You wear your grandmother’s mask. Its Authority is 4. Its reputation is spotless. You have spent three years living up to expectations that were built by someone who died before you were born. You are good at the work. You are also beginning to resent a system that judges you by a ceramic face that is not yours.

• Drive: “Earn this mask’s Authority on my own terms, not my grandmother’s.”
• Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 2 | Mind 2 | Presence 3

The Bare Quarter Organizer

You have no mask. You work, eat, sleep, and build community in a district the legal system does not recognize. You are organizing a campaign to win a mask through traditional merit, which would give the Bare Quarter its first voice in Parliament. You know the system is broken. You also know that destroying it without replacing it would leave your people worse off.

• Drive: “Win a seat at the table without pretending the table was ever fair.”
• Approach Distribution: Force 2 | Finesse 1 | Mind 2 | Presence 3

The Mask Investigator

You work for the Registry, verifying mask lineages and investigating fraud. You are good at your job, which means you know how many masks in Parliament were obtained through forgery, bribery, or coercion. You have files on at least twelve sitting members. You have not opened them because you are not sure whether exposing the fraud would fix the system or burn it down.

• Drive: “Find out whether the masks in Parliament are legitimate before the binding vote makes the question permanent.”
• Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 3 | Mind 3 | Presence 1

–

6. Starter Scenario & Why It Matters

The Binding Vote: The binding law comes to a floor vote in three days. Mask 037 has the votes to pass it. Mask 144 needs four more votes to block it. Glass has announced that the Bare Quarter will stage a public unmasking at the Parliament entrance on voting day, forcing every citizen to see the faces of people the system has erased. The Sculptor has offered to forge enough masks to give the entire Bare Quarter voting rights before the deadline, which would be illegal, transformative, and impossible to undo once the binding takes effect. The characters must decide which outcome they are working toward, knowing that the vote will permanently define what identity means in Palladia.

Why It Matters: Parliament of Masks asks whether identity is something you are born with or something you build. The mask system was designed to answer that question in favor of merit. It created a new form of inequality instead: one based on access to masks rather than access to blood. The binding vote is not a choice between freedom and order. It is a choice between two imperfect systems, and the people most affected by the decision are the ones with the least power to influence it. The characters are in the middle, wearing masks that give them authority they may not have earned, making decisions about faces they may never see.

7. Alternate City: Cadenza

Want a different take on the same idea? Run the setting in Cadenza instead of Palladia. Here masks are narrow civic licenses that expire, so the pressure comes from a calendar rather than a vote.

“The law does not ask who you are. It asks who is speaking.”

• Cadenza civic oath

Masks in Cadenza are neither disguises nor costumes. They are registered civic instruments. A baker’s mask lets its wearer sell bread, a mourning mask may speak for a dead household, and an ambassador’s mask permits a foreign state to be present. Personal names exist in private, but public life runs through faces designed, licensed, and contested by the Parliament.

City Pressures

The annual Re-Masking is approaching. Thousands of identities will expire, including one mask that has held a district together for sixty years. Someone is forging new faces in bulk, and the forged masks appear to carry authority nobody voted to grant.

The Hall of Faces is Parliament’s circular chamber and the only place where an identity can be challenged in public. Its galleries are packed during controversial hearings because a successful challenge can make someone legally unable to finish a sentence.

The Unmasked Quarter is a temporary market built every Re-Masking season for people between identities. It is also where the city’s poor go when their work mask expires before they can afford another. The law calls this a free interval. The residents call it the long queue.

The Archive of Retired Faces stores masks with unresolved obligations. A person may take one only with a judge’s consent, but the archive’s keepers can tell when a supposedly dead face has been worn recently.

Factions

The Face Registry protects a system that makes identity legible. Its clerks see masks as the only reason a large city can grant rights consistently, and they are terrified of what happens when a forgery can command a public institution.

The Bare Name Society wants legal personhood without masks. Its members disagree about reform: some seek a gradual constitutional change, while others are preparing to publish every private name held by the Registry.

The House of Reprises brokers old masks and specializes in identities whose previous wearers have disappeared. It offers useful second chances, but its ledgers reveal how many identities were sold because their owners had no other way to pay a debt.

Variant Mechanic: Authority Types and Marks

Instead of an Authority score, choose one Authority for each mask: Command, Testimony, Passage, Sanctuary, or Commerce. A mask can invoke its Authority once per scene to gain +1d6 when the right is publicly recognized. Mark Authority after using it in a politically significant situation, whether the roll succeeds or fails.

At two marks, someone begins asking who benefits from the mask. At three, a rival may issue a formal challenge. Resolve the challenge with evidence of past obligation, witnesses who recognize the wearer, or a public action that proves the mask’s purpose still matters. Clearing a mark requires fulfilling an obligation attached to the face, not simply waiting for attention to pass. Changing masks clears all marks but creates a new problem: who loses the rights you just stopped carrying?

Cadenza Archetypes

The Registry Forger. You can make a face that passes a cursory inspection, but you know every forged identity owes someone.

• Drive: “Find the source of the new masks before they turn the city into a private monarchy.”
• Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 3 | Mind 2 | Presence 2

The Mourning Speaker. You wear a mask that lets you speak for a household after a death. The family believes you are protecting their interests. You have learned that the deceased left instructions for a public scandal.

• Drive: “Give the dead an honest hearing without letting their last request destroy the living.”
• Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 2 | Mind 2 | Presence 3

Cadenza Starter Scenario

The Mask That Voted: A mask used by three generations of a respected family casts a vote at midnight, though its current wearer is in the characters’ custody. The vote changes the succession law. Proving fraud may expose a private name the family has protected for decades. Letting the vote stand could make every retired mask a possible political weapon. The characters must find where the mask was worn, decide whose identity is actually at stake, and survive a challenge hearing before the city wakes to its new law.