Masks Recaps: Pilot + Sessions 1 – 3 - Owl (& Bon) Notes Characters: Vandal (Van) ‘Delinquent’, he/him Powers: Paint manipulation, incredible mobility Personality: Stubborn, a man of the people, rebellious and hot-headed, with a deep passion for art. Royce Rutherford (“13”) ‘Nova’, they/them/any Powers: World-shaking psychic ability Personality: Timid, overly kind-hearted, socially overwhelmed, sees the good in everybody. Dolores Darling ‘Janus’, she/her (Dolly), they/them (Roach) Powers: Insect control, venom generation Personality: Arrogant and intelligent, devastatingly loyal to her friends and loved ones. Pilot & Backstory Vandal and Dolly met before Dolly was a hero, when she came across him tagging a wall. They hit it off, and in becoming friends, Vandal inspired Dolly to take up the mantle of a hero and become Roach. Sometime after this, Roach and Vandal attempted to rig a local election. However, the tampering was caught, and the election was redone. Royce and Vandal met as heroes, sometime after Royce’s escape from the secret facility on the moon. [Data missing…?] Royce and Roach met when they were assigned to the same hero team by Aegis – but Dolly knew of Royce from before. 20 years ago, when Royce was born, they caused a psychic shockwave in the hospital (as despite being only a baby, they were also an incredibly powerful meta-human). This shockwave had devastating mental effects on everyone in the ward, and physically shook the entire hospital. Dolly’s father, Mr Darling, was an obstetrician of this hospital, and was unfortunately caught in the blast. For the last 20 years, he has been in a coma, and Dolly has been trying desperately to heal him. 5 months after the “Bunnings Incident”, the team is invited to the Bunnings reopening ceremony. The “Bunnings Incident” is where the team first met: Vandal used an entire wall of paint, and Royce accidentally ripped the roof off in order to capture a villain. They were assigned to a hero team by Aegis, and assigned a mentor - Patrick Flanegan, ‘The Immutable’. Six months of hero training followed – basic boot camp, the legal jurisdiction of heroes; basically getting a ‘hero license’. We're paid a stipend by the government, Superhero Centrelink. There's a bonus for the capture of supervillians. Newcastle’s primary hero, the Novacastrian, has recently joined the GDL (the Global Defence League). Aegis is a worldwide organisation that works closely with local governments. Their job is essentially to clean up after super-fights, spin news stories and hold supervillians. Session #1 - "Who's got the Beat?" The team is assigned to a hostage situation at Newcastle Uni. Gunmen with strange rifles and bug masks are acting seemingly without malice toward the hostages. They have dubstep guns, they go wubwub. The team makes their entrance onto the superhero scene! Roach dramatically sends a wave of cockroaches towards the villians, proclaiming ‘looks like you need some pest control!’ in their best ‘hero’ voice. Vandal activates the sprinkler system, wrecking their guns, but making his paint harder to control. Royce looks into a gunman's mind for info, and learns they are assessing something, looking for something, somewhat perhaps to do with the clipboards and questionnaires they’re carrying around. They also saw a cricket and something about the name "Beatle." The team remembers a music artist called DJ Beatle. He apparently does bush-doofs, and wears a beetle costume that is rumoured to not actually be a costume. Vandal apparently despises his music on artistic grounds. Roach thinks he’s fun, and compliments the songs. After hurting a gunman, Royce is scared, and tries to help the hostages out. Gunman don't run away, they run to the science centre. Speakers on top of science centre of the Newcastle Uni surround the DJ Beatle himself, as he deals damage via musical shockwaves. Vandal attempts to chest kick him, and eats shit. Roach nearly falls off the building, before Royce catches them. Finally, Roach uses their insect control to stop DJ Beatle dead, and Royce prevents further shenanigans by lifting him off the ground. A white van is seen swiftly pulling out of the uni, and Vandal quickly sends a small red dot of paint after it, marking it so we can hopefully track it later. Tired but victorious, the team turns over DJ Beatle to the Aegis officials that soon arrive. Aegis, we know, is the authority responsible for the regulation of Supers. We meet Agent Jerry Ozrick, who takes DJ Beatle into custody. Still frustrated by his performance during the fight, Vandal sasses Agent Oswick, insisting on calling him ‘Jezzer’, and challenging his authority. To vent his frustrations, he ‘accidentally’ cracks the holo-graphic paint, and the Aegis symbol on Agent Ozrick’s car. Roach ducks out of the press interview early, citing a mysterious obligation, vaguely described as ‘somewhere they have to be’. This leaves Vandal and Royce to manage the press’ questions, and afterwards, Vandal gets Royce some Shortbread Creams to comfort them. A magpie lands on a branch nearby the Uni. An Ibis stands a top the science centre. An eagle follows a van with a painted red dot on the roof. Session #2 - “As it Began, so it Shall End” Part #1 Formal debreifing for the DJ Beatle incident. Patrick thinks we did pretty well. We do some research, and learn DJ Beatle tends to stick to "wine-country" for their pop-up events. Visiting DJ Beatle and inspecting the "Dubstep Gun” will take time to organize with Aegis. With time to recover, Vandal goes on patrol, Da Roach goes home and writes up some code for their job and 13 goes into a food coma after eating Guzman's for the first time. Sometime later, while on her way home from work, Dolly sees a car flung across an intersection with no heroes around, and makes the reluctant decision to do a Superman ‘quick change’ inside the nearest Dangerfield. The retail worker who sees this seems taken aback, but offers to watch her clothes anyway. Roach runs out, and stalls the villain until the rest of the team arrives. The team confronts a 10ft stone/marble man named Slate, throwing and destroying cars. Vandal tries to reduce his movement and ends up making two cars t-bone. 13 overcharges their psychic might and forcfully plunges them waist-deep into the asphalt. As Vandal tries to blind Slate with paint, Slate breaks an arm out of the road and swings on Vandal. 13 flings Slate into the sky after he hurt Vandal, moments later a sonic boom erupts. Feeling as though their venom and insects are a bad match for this villian, and helpless because of it, Roach saves civilians stuck in the t-boned cars While in the air, Slate is struck by an unknown hero and starts careening toward the t-boned cars, right where Roach is standing. Vandal creates a shield of paint to protect Roach, and Slate ricochets off, hitting the ground hard. 13 pulls Slate toward them and begins to rewrite their personality and make them feel remorse for his actions, and almost seems about to hit Slate. Before we learn if they do or not, a new hero called AO punches Slate across the street, and puts out a hand towards 13, saying something like ‘I’m glad I saved you from doing that’. Sometime during and after the fight, Royce hears a voice in their head, urging them to wield their power without restraint, calling humans small and insignificant. Royce is rattled by this, believing it to be a darker part of their own psyche. Still feeling helpless, and grateful to have been saved, Roach flatters and praises AO for her timely interference, which AO laps right up. Vandal climbs out of the rubble to find AO hogging the public spotlight, and storms off, resentful. Roach goes and grabs their civilian clothes and speaks to the Dangerfield employee, named Veronica, that saw them change, and as thanks for her silence buys a cute but overpriced keychain. Vandal calls his sister, and lets the phone ring but eventually chooses to talk to her. Royce calls their psychologist, and floats across to her office curled into a little ball, like an egg. Their psychologist, Grace Geitsman, talks to Royce about their underlining humanity, and how it’s still in there no matter what they do or think. Session #3 - “Express Yourself!” Back at the warehouse base, the team watches TV, where local news channels are focused on "AO having saved the day”. Vandal, still resentful, asks if the team is also frustrated by this – to which Roach agrees that they’re also frustrated, but since there’s nothing we can do about it, has decided not to let it bother them – something Vandal simply cant understand. Patrick explains that there’s a lot of reasons for people to become heroes, and that some of them do end up as ‘showponys’. Meanwhile, Royce wonders about the possibility of a cape. The team gets a briefing from Patrick that an exhibition is being held for graffiti, featuring some of Vandal's work. The team goes to the exhibition. Vandal wears their regular clothes, and Royce is wearing a collared shirt, fitted jeans and a muted red "suit cape". Dolly is wearing their civilian identity, and a lovely fashion-conscious red dress, as a nod to Vandal’s signature colour. The independent, Laney Sol for Newcastle is in attendance, and has a spirited conversation with Vandal about important political issues. Dolly met a local investor, Frank Lockheed, and had a chat about small businesses, including her online fashion store. Royce realizes that the voice that contacted them yesterday purposefully merged their thoughts to obfuscate their identity, and that it might not be coming from inside their mind. They also find a level of enjoyment in the simple ‘graffiti tag’ pieces of art that don't invade their mind. Vandal is approached by Lorenzo, the man who auctions off his art replicas. Vandal tags the ceiling with "No Gods, No Masters, No Bosses". Royce makes their way to the roof when people are directed to the car park, as they plan to reveal the celebratory graffiti. The graffiti is revealed, but has beige blocks on over the top that spell out "Graffiti is not art". Vandal crashes out and throws paint indiscriminately on everything. Royce and Dolly both try to comfort Vandal, but he lashes out – first at Royce, who flies all the way to the desert in pain. When Dolly also steps in his way, intending to force him to confront what he’s doing, Vandal angrily throws paint across her dress, ruining it. Dolly gets on her bike and drives off, offended and hurt. Vandal moves inside to find that the photos of the graffiti looks as if they're all overexposed and in anger, shatters the ceiling. Vandal calls Royce, who flies all the way back from the desert in an instant. After Dolly doesn’t pick up, he texts her an apology, after which she turns the bike around. Vandal looks at the security footage prior to the event, where a figure dressed like a janitor walks past the exhibits and holds up a card that says "One Master" in the Arial font. Vandal calls up Lorenzo asking for as much paint as he can get his hands on, and to have it at a specific location. In a basement, someone tied to a chair, stripped to underwear. A mysterious figure says ‘they don’t like doing this’ before punching them so hard that blood and teeth splatter onto the concrete, floor. The figure turns to camera, is wearing a half-face raven mask and a feather cloak. Sounds of birds erupt from the rafters. Eyes go from humanoid to avian.