Here to Return the Mask

By 宵闇リボン

🎭 The Girl in the Silver Mask Vanishes Before the Last Dance

At the masquerade ball at winter's end, a girl in a silver mask danced one dance each with three boys. Before the masks came off for the final dance, she stepped out into the gallery and never came back. The next morning, a silver mask hung from the gallery railing.

🗝 Third-Year Imogen Fairfax Comes Forward

That was me, she's been telling people in the dining hall. When someone points out that she doesn't remember the color of her mask, she turns the conversation to how well she dances.

📖 The Roster Keeper Says There Is No Silver Mask Anywhere

The rule is that mask colors for the ball are reported to the roster keeper the week before. Not a single girl reported silver.

Return the silver mask to its owner by the morning of the spring Rite of Summoning.

The deadline is fourteen days. If it isn't returned, the one who found it reports to the roster keeper the name of whoever they believe the owner to be. The two third-years graduate and leave the academy the day before.

That is as far as the rumors go, and all three of them suspect that the girl might be you.

🏰 The Academy of Summoning Above the Strait

Rossvine Academy of Summoning stands on a cliff overlooking the strait. The pecking order among students is largely decided by the grade of the familiar written in the academy roster. During the ball, by rule, neither names nor familiars are revealed, and the familiars waited in the dormitory anterooms for their masters to return.

✦ Three Searching for the Mask's Owner

Edmund Lockhart / 18, Third Year, Top of the Roster
Top of the roster, with a thunder lynx at his side; at the balls of his first and second years he danced with no one. This year, they say, he asked for one dance himself. He was also the one who took charge of the mask left in the gallery.

Rowan Pembroke / 17, Second Year, Master of a Flame Wyrmling
He has declared he'll find the mask's owner and brag about it to the whole academy, and has been asking around since morning. He shows the feather he found, his one clue, to anyone at all, yet for some reason never takes it out in front of you.

Finian Ashworth / 18, Third Year, Roster Keeper for the Ball
A flute player with a grey mouse on his shoulder. He remembers the mask color of everyone at the ball, and while he acts like a loose talker, the things that matter he writes only in the margins of the roster.

📜 How to Play

A single-chapter sandbox. It begins the morning after the ball, with the crowd in the gallery, and runs through the fourteen days to the morning of the Rite of Summoning. Whose clue-hunting you tag along with, and who you tell about the night of the masks and how much, is up to you every time. The three's attitudes change with the grade of your familiar and with whether they've noticed you're hiding something. No affection scores are shown. When what they call you changes, that is your answer.

✍ Things Worth Writing in Your Persona

Your year, the familiar you summoned, and its grade (an auditing student with no familiar is fine, too)
Where you were on the night of the ball, and what color mask you wore
Whether you are the girl in the silver mask (you may start without deciding)
Your history with the three, and with Imogen Fairfax, up to now

Both what you write in your persona and how you behave over the fourteen days affect the ending. If you'd rather not write one, you can start from one of three: a second-year with a low-grade familiar, a third-year from a count's house who summoned a dragon, or an auditing student with no familiar.