Editing LEGACY MAD CITY (section)

=Nightmares: Guardians of the Deep=
==Mistress When - Pain 10==
With the slaying of his brother, the Plague King, the One Eyed Jack stood over the corpse of Mother When, and worked a dark dweomer on her soul, giving life to the Nightmare Mistress When. 

Mistress When is a striking beauty whose features match the expectations of whoever gazes upon her. Considering her position, most expect exquisite. And Mistress When is nothing if not exquisite. It is said Mistress When expected to gain influence and power the day the Jack visited her tower, but when he entered, her beautiful body began to seep and sag, what was supple and soft turning into something flaccid and rough, a putrid bag of black and rotting flesh. Reportedly, she screamed blood, demanding if this was the form he expected.

To her horror, he simply replied that he had come without expectations. Then he turned and walked away, the implication hanging in the air like judgement.

It is rumored that Mistress When cursed his voice with the spectre of death that day in retribution and that is why he no longer speaks aloud.

==The Menagerie - Pain 4==
What happens to Nightmares who grow up? In the Mad City, where Time is sluggish with paradox and reluctance, they never should. But in Mistress When's capable hands, they do. The Menagerie is what happens to the Night Callers who leap too close to her tower. The girls anyway. The broken remains of the few boys who do survive her malice can be found in the Sun Tower tormenting broken Locals and wishing for death.

The girls are another story. They remain mostly young but grow tall and straight where they ought and plumply curved where she demands. Their animal faces become idealized porcelain masks of the same animal, but can never be removed. Tails and feathers and fur become part of a costume made more of skin than anything else.

This is Mistress When's Menagerie, taught to be relentlessly cruel, like the Ladies in Hating of an earlier age.

==The Wretched - Pain 5==
Those in the Menagerie who grow strong enough to potentially threaten Mistress When. She robs them then of mask and costume, ripping their lower jaws from their faces and forcing the fingers of their hands to grow as long as their forearms.

For whatever reason, this only bonds the Wretched closer to Mistress When, increasing their loyalty. The Wretched serve fiercely and devotedly.

====The Faceless - Locals====
The Faceless look like Nightmares, with featureless, hairless heads: no nose, ears, mouth, eyes - not even eye sockets - just smooth skin. But that is just how Mistress When reshaped them when they came to her service. The Faceless are rarely seen by guests of the Tower of the Moon, moving silently through corridors carved for their use alone, doing their service and ghosting away as they came.

==The Broken Ones - Pain 2==
Male Night Callers who survive Mistress When's tortures flee to the Tower of the Sun, broken in body and spirit, their animal flesh torn away, never to regrow, open wounds exposed to the air, faceless faces terrifying to behold. Beast shaped masks of blood. Gone are the nights leaping between the Spires. The Broken Ones live only to visit the same torture that was visited upon them on others, though they are often too weak to manage it effectively.

====The Dispossessed - Locals====
Typically all denizens of the Mad City have some purpose to fulfill and tend to fulfill it continuously, almost mindlessly. But while change is rare in the Mad City, at length it comes, and sometimes when it does it leaves holes in its wake. Holes full of single minded folk whose focus is no longer called for. Some of these wander into similar situations as the ones from which they were taken, adapting over time to their new place until it is as if it was the only existence they ever knew. 

The rest find themselves in the Tower of the Sun. These are the Dispossessed.

An enterprising few of these - usually those previously attached to criminal elements - manage to re-imagine themselves as a band of outlaws on the City's fringe, occupying the tower like a fortress, and selling their service to the Nightmares who bid on it. Others - nearly all of the Others - re-imagine themselves as eternal deserving victims and become easy prey for the Broken Ones. 


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