Velvet Mask

The Velvet Mask is a cabal on the world of Curcalen that specializes in magics of transformation. They are especially fond of using their ability for disguise and infiltration, forming themselves and their agents into the shapes of other people, or beasts, or even inanimate objects, the better to get where they aren't supposed to be and take their rivals unawares. They also enjoy using their powers on others for revenge, turning enemies into vermin or furniture or things even more humiliating.

Because of their skill with disguise, members of the Velvet Mask are sometimes hired on missions of espionage. This, however, is a tactic of last resort, since whatever secrets the Mask discover on their mission they may find a use for later, and their erstwhile employers may come to wish they hadn't allowed the information they wanted to reach the ears of the cabal.

Philosophy and Goals

Ostensibly, the philosophy of the Velvet Mask is that one can best know oneself by changing one's shape, that by taking on different outward forms, one better learns to appreciate and utilize one's inward qualities. As with many of the cabals, however, this philosophy has become distorted and misused over time, and while some cabal members may still seek the goal of self-knowledge, probably more have joined the cabal because of its reputation for expertise in clandestine activities. Indeed, the Velvet Mask has become so good at ferreting out information that this has become an end in itself, and though nominally its goal may still be its members' self-knowledge, in practice it seems more interested in gathering knowledge about everything else.

The Velvet Mask does not, however, merely gather this knowledge only to do nothing with it. Rather, it uses it to bolster the cabal's influence and abilities, through blackmail, bargaining, theft of rare treasures whose hidden locations and protections they have discovered, and the employment of magical arcana. It places agents, some of whom spend years in lowly guises, in places of power, to spy on, and to covertly influence, important individuals. Still, the cabal seems to use its power only to gain more knowledge and uncover more secrets. It seems the Velvet Mask is much more interested in learning new information than in actually gaining any political power, and that it uses the latter only as a means to the former.

This isn't to say that the Velvet Mask may not be ultimately working to take over the world. After all, what better way to be in a position to discover all the world's secrets? But if it ever does, it will be in a clandestine way, running everything subtly behind the scenes while puppet figureheads act as the public rulers, perhaps themselves ignorant of who is really pulling their strings.

Of course, it's impossible to prove that this hasn't already happened.

Organization

The leader of the Velvet Mask is known as the Cowl, though he isn't known to actually wear any such item. Not that he's known not to, either... in fact, nothing is known about him, including whether or not he is really a "he". For that matter, nothing is known about most of the rest of the cabal's members, either. Although it may not have started out this way, nowadays the Velvet Mask has an organizational structure that well mirrors its concern with secrecy. For one thing, given their penchant for disguise, members need some way to recognize each other, and to be able to verify each other's identities... after all, going by physical appearance is no good when a member of the Mask can literally look like—and smell like, and feel like—almost anything. Thus the Velvet Mask has developed a special enchantment, called the masquer's mark, to enable them to identify each other. On admission to the cabal, each member is given a unique magical mark, which cannot be seen or otherwise sensed except by means of a certain spell, called the unmasking, which is taught to all cabal members (and jealously kept from outsiders). The unmasking spell does not reveal the name or other details of the subject, only the mark... but this can at least reveal to the caster whether or not the subject is a particular person whose mark he is familiar with. The mark cannot be falsified or imitated, though it can be suppressed; a subject of the unmasking spell cannot fool the spell into giving a false reading, but can choose to not allow it to give any reading at all. There may be one exception: rumors tell that, alone among the Velvet Mask's membership, the Cowl can assume a false masquer's mark... but, like everything else that's said about the Cowl, this may be nothing but idle talk.

Of those above him in the organization, each member knows only the identity (including the masquer's mark) of his immediate superior, though he may (or may not, depending on circumstances) know the identities of any number of his subordinates. Of the identities of those above the immediate superior, he is completely ignorant, and even of just how many levels above him there are. In fact, supposedly the only member of the Velvet Mask who knows just how many superiors he has is the Cowl himself... even those directly under him don't know that the person they report to oversees the entire organization, and don't know just how close they are to the top. This isn't to say that members of the Mask might not meet and occasionally work with other members; on the contrary, cabal members frequently collaborate and form relationships both social and professional. But unless one is the direct superior of the other, two members will not know each other's ranks and positions, and know only as much about each other's true identity as they choose to tell (which could be a complete fabrication). They may or may not know each other's masquer's marks, if they found it convenient to share that information, but even if they do it tells them nothing about their positions in the organization; a cabal member may have worked side by side with another many times without ever finding out whether his colleague was a raw recruit far below his station, or the Cowl himself.

Promotions within the organization are granted by the promoted member's superior's superior. Conscientious members therefore continually keep an eye on the inferiors of their subordinates to watch for worthy candidates for raising in rank, although in many cases the promotion is recommended by the subject's direct superior. In any case, newly promoted members are not positioned directly under their former superior's superior who raised them to that position; rather, they are posted elsewhere in the organization under a different superior. (The exception, of course, is for those promoted directly below the Cowl, who have no superior's superior to promote them; they, of course, are promoted by the Cowl himself, though they won't be made aware of this.) The promotion is done without fanfare or announcement—including to the promoted individual, who suddenly finds himself abducted and relocated.

How a new Cowl is chosen when the old Cowl dies is presumably a secret known only to the Cowl himself. Since the Cowl's direct inferiors don't even know their superior is the Cowl, the method of replacement must not rely on them, which seems to leave a great deal of room for things to go wrong, but so far the line of succession has always run smoothly—or at least, if it hasn't, the Velvet Mask has done a characteristically good job of keeping the problems quiet. It has been suggested that when the Cowl dies, his direct subordinates would notice after a while that their superior has disappeared and not been replaced and would presumably deduce who their superior was, and that then they must decide somehow amongst themselves which of them rises to the new position, after which the new Cowl uses some magical technique to wipe the memories of his former peers so they are once again ignorant of his position. While there's no good evidence that this isn't true, it remains pure speculation.

Headquarters

Despite its reputation for secretiveness, the Velvet Mask has quite a few known headquarters. After all, its existence isn't one of the facts the organization wants to keep secret—nor is it in general even particularly concerned with keeping the identities of its members secret, as long as their positions within the organization are unknown. (Many members of the Velvet Mask do choose to keep their membership a secret from nonmembers, and even from those within the organization with whom they don't directly work, but members are neither required nor necessarily expected to maintain this level of secrecy.)

Their largest known building is an edifice in Rhagoum called the Rose Labyrinth, a rather apt name given its confusing architecture and layout. Some members make their homes in the Labyrinth, but mostly it's known as a library of sorts where the cabal keeps documentation of many of its secrets... though each member who tends to these documents knows only a small part of the Labyrinth, and no one, probably including even the Cowl himself, is familiar with the entire building; given the difficulty in navigating its halls and the many traps and hazards there to catch the unwary, any outsider trying to steal the secrets here would be in for a very hard task. Another well known building belonging to the Velvet Mask is the Living Hall, said to be partly made up of cabal members who take turns transformed into elements of its structure and furniture either as penance for past misdeeds or to curry favor with their superiors. Exactly which parts of the building are cabal members isn't so well known. In any case, while many parts of the Living Hall are open to the public or rented out for various purposes, it's best to keep in mind that the walls themselves could be listening in to anything going on there. One significant structure owned by the Velvet Mask is the Secret College, a school where the cabal trains spies. Of course, the Velvet Mask doesn't provide this service for free, but students are sworn to secrecy about the price they have to pay for their instruction.

Naturally, though, not all the cabal's headquarters are so apparent. The velvet Mask does have many secret meeting places scattered all over Curcalen, in unfrequented shops and apparently abandoned homes, in hard-to-find structures in lonely wildernesses; deep underground in the stone surrounding the world. Given the members' penchant for shapechanging, it's even said that quite often they meet in the open, but in disguised form, and that, for example, the birds chattering on the rooftops may really be members of the Velvet Mask holding a meeting. There are rumors that the Velvet Mask has developed a number of secret languages that sound like bird calls or other natural noises to facilitate just such meetings.

Magic

The Velvet Mask specializes in spells of changing form, which means principally transfigurement and transsubstantiation. They are not particularly interested in spells that alter limbs or perform other partial transformations; the cabal prefers magics of full transformation into something else entirely—either a wholly different person, or some beast or plant or other form of life, or an inanimate object that few would ever suspect of being a transformed person. They use these spells on themselves and on each other for disguises and for the experience of being something else, but they're also not above using them on others as well, often to teach them a lesson, but sometimes just to (perhaps temporarily) eliminate someone who's in the way or causing them inconvenience.

The Velvet Mask has perhaps not created quite as many new spells as most other cabals; the spells to suit their interests already exist, and they focus on using them well. Still, they have created a few new variations. Favorite spells that the cabal originated include the "collective cue", which allows the caster to read from those around him their expectations of what he should do, very useful in impersionations, and "thas and tha", which changes the subject successively into a number of different items from its environment—but only has the change take place when no one is looking.

Like most of the cabals, the Velvet Mask has also created a number of new talismans that accord with their particular specialty and philosophy. The shaping stone is commonly loaned to allies of cabal members to allow them to do what most members could do on their own; held in the mouth, it allows the possessor to enact a variety of transformations, though if the stone is swallowed the transformations become permanent. Sorcerer's Dust transforms all (macroscopic) creatures it comes into contact with, the nature of the transformation decided at the time the dust is created.

Relationships

The Velvet Mask keeps most other cabals at a distance, cultivating neither alliances nor rivalries. It does, however, have working relationships with many governments and private individuals of means, by whom it is employed on missions of espionage and sabotage. Exactly which individuals and governments employ the Velvet Mask to this end is, of course, not a matter of public record; Araldi is widely rumored to make heavy use of Velvet Mask agents, but this has never been proved.

The velvet Mask's relationship with the Aabelon is somewhat complex. To some degree, the two cabals share similar philosophies, and similar interest in transformation, so they often coöperate and exchange ideas. However, originally, the Velvet Mask had only seemed interested in transformations into other creatures, and it's only after an interchange of ideas with the Aabelon that they ventured into transformation into inanimate objects as well, and many in the Aabelon still feel that the Velvet Mask has merely copied their own specialty, and resent it for treading on their turf. (The exchange of ideas hasn't been entirely one-way, however; the Aabelon now makes frequent use of the immovable veil, a spell created and still commonly used by the Velvet Mask that protects transformation spells from being discerned or removed.)