GenCon. John Harper's the MC. Matt Wilson's playing a chopper, Elizabeth Shoemaker Sampat's playing an angel, Marc Majcher's playing a battlebabe, I'm playing faceless. I don't remember anyone else's names, but my name's Zuto.
Elizabeth's angel and I have a thing. She's got a horribly scarred face but I think she's pretty; she thinks I must understand what it's like, since I always wear my mask. It's a cute, unconsummated 2-way crush thing: "aw, the hulking meat-giant and the scar-faced healer are sweet on each other! But they're both shy! Aw."
I'm the LT of Matt's chopper's gang, and Marc's battlebabe is my best friend. She recently helped me do something terrible, and the rest of the gang doesn't know it. We ambushed and massacred some people under the protection of this warlord guy in the swamps, shit got out of hand, and we (inadvertently?) left a survivor, Matilda. Matilda is the person that Elizabeth's angel gets her medical supplies from.
Play opens in this warlord's stilt-compound, with Elizabeth's angel and my Zuto walking over to Matilda's to re-up on morphine, with Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe kicking back in what passes for the bar in these swamps. It goes all wrong pretty much immediately. Matilda keeps Elizabeth's angel occupied in her hut while three of her friends close in on me on the bridge, the warlord's guys surround Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe where they're drinking on the roof of the bar, and suddenly everybody's shooting and diving and crawling and grabbing a dude by the face and drowning him in the swamp.
It's a half-hour battle. Elizabeth's angel and I manage to connect with Matt's chopper and Marc's battlebabe at the end of it -- oh, too much to tell. In sum: the faceless is a fucking beast in a fight.
The fight ends with:
Me sunk under the mud, open-brained, clawing toward the surface.
Marc's battlebabe, my best friend, in the jaws of a 40-foot apocalyptic hell crocodile, who's tumbling with her through the swamp. She's at 10:00 harm and counting.
Elizabeth's angel, my crush, bargaining desperately with the world's psychic maelstrom for our lives. The maelstrom will give her two of us, and she chooses me and Matt's chopper. She always figured Marc's battlebabe for a bad end.
But Matt's chopper, our boss, isn't willing to let Marc's battlebabe go. He's in the swamp too, fighting with the crocodile to save her, and now Elizabeth's angel's in the swamp, fighting with HIM to save HIM. The swamp lets me go, per its agreement with Elizabeth's angel. I reach the surface and my mask wants me to go finish Matilda now that Elizabeth's angel isn't there to get in my way but I want to help my friends, so I'm acting under fire, and I hit with the 7-9, and John says "sure no problem, you can help them, all you gotta do is take your mask off for a minute so you can think clearly."
On the faceless character sheet there's a checklist, choose 2, for what you are when you're unmasked. I look at it. Unmasked, I am:
x Grotesque. Every PC who sees me goes immediately to Hx+3 with me.
x Ashamed. I have hard=0 until I cover my face again.
I stare at that for a long time.
"Uh, sorry," I say. "I've gotta go finish Matilda."
Elizabeth's face! Oh my god, Elizabeth's face. She bargains with the fuckin world's psychic maelstrom to save my life, and I run the other way.
--
Things after that went further to hell. I don't remember whether I killed Matilda or not. Marc's battlebabe died. Matt's chopper and Elizabeth's angel straggled themselves out somewhere, betrayed and sad. I dunno.
After the session, I showed them what had made the decision for me, x Grotesque and x Ashamed. I'd refused to show them during play, out of shame. Matt, Marc and John nodded and said "ah..." in understanding, but it made Elizabeth mad.
"Dude, I was GROTESQUE, and I was ASHAMED, the WHOLE TIME. You're a COWARD."
The end.