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<span class="mu-i">Material reality shifts, things buckle, a crate - shutter-step - reasserts itself. A man in a mask opposite Spider-Rat-Man makes a soft "hm" as if witnessing entropy negated is much like making breakfast, the sort of thing expected, but he can be shocked. Surprise is the last thing to die because you will always find it, there, in your mind, hidden, springing out as a, well, take a guess.
As Spider-Rat-Man volunteers for things unknown - unknowable - the Threshold Scientist eyes him up, sharp, quick, flicker-fast, and Spider-Rat-Man feels the weight of his intention shifting, changing, assessing the man before him like a morsel at a market. Good stance, developed physique, self control high, inhibition graduated through practice, abnegation personified, a penchance perhaps for glory-seeking, awash with the symbolism of the Mask, and though this Vanadian doesn't quite understand the full truth of the Dance, he does understand the nature of symbols.
Iconography.
And what is a <span class="mu-s">Mask</span> but an Icon one wears to show one's True Face? To be, in fact, free of the flesh but bound by the soul that one deigns to wear, for an evening out at town, in search of deeds grand and designs intricate?
Perhaps.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Every other avenue tried, tested, experimented, the trails turned to ash and fears and burning facilities and screams, and what man tires not of being chased by militia and hunted by goons of a government that wishes to burn the very memory of your war-winning designs to the ground? Perhaps a new breed of subject could be useful. Desirable. The twin-bound impulses of the Imbued, the Refification Process, the Threshold-Tresspasser Paradigm, we've tried loyalty, we've tried Service, we've tried nationalism, patriotism, desperation and - here in Pyther, in the grand city of fire, we're trying now again with theology, mystery and a cleaned slate.
But maybe.
What if.
What if we *really* need is simply an anchor. A design, already described in the mind of the man who is to become something Other? They wear a Mask. They Dance the Dance. But a Mask can be an Icon of many things. He taps his clipboard. And Spider-Rat-Man can sense his long, lingering smile. Little dreams of grand goals, but little dreams are all one needs, to anchor a design on.</span>
