Extra-Strength Masquerade: Difference between revisions

Normally this sort of thing gets a [[Hand Wave]] about the [[Ancient Conspiracy]] or [[The Men in Black|some other entity]] erasing everyone's memories of the event, passing the whole thing off as a hoax, or at least claiming people's [[Weirdness Censor|Weirdness Censors]] take care of the [[Masquerade]] for them. Sometimes, though, we don't even get that. The [[Masquerade]] just seems to [[Snap Back|repair itself]] of its own accord. This is, of course, the [[Viewers are Morons|most insulting]] way to handle it.

* ''[[Digimon Adventure]]'' had digital monsters terrorizing [[Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe|Japan]] and, later, the rest of the world, for approximately 3 days. People could look up in the sky and see another world going on. Yet not only does [[Digimon Adventure 02|the world return to normalcy within the next three years]], ''nobody'' remembers any details about the events. They seem to recall that the events happened, but nobody seems to know exactly what. Either that, or their [[Weirdness Censor|Weirdness Censors]] are set too high.

* Noteworthy in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'', especially ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' where rampaging and crazy [[Our Werewolves Are Different|wolfmen]] are just a fact of life. In most cases, this is canon -- said werewolves inspire a horrible and mind-numbing panic in normal humans, the vampires are secretive and have fingers everywhere, and the mage willing to try magic on television will just blow his own head off in a way that everyone ''believes'' is natural. Still, the canon events alone seem like they'd have made more people aware, never mind what a careless GM can cause.

** The most clear example of [[Extra-Strength Masquerade]] is found in a [[Splat]] where a Son of Ether descends over the World Science Fair in early 20th-century Paris with a fleet of robot-guided airships. He declares world dominion by right of higher knowledge. Airplanes sent up to fight him are useless, but eventually the Technocracy manages to drive him away by using flying Mark robots. The breach in the Masquerade is total, but so is the Technocracy's propaganda machine, working around the clock for years to eradicate all memory of the incident.

** Vampires' [[Extra-Strength Masquerade]] is backed by them having the most thorough organization for maintaining the [[Masquerade]] of all supernatural splats, an organization which at least ''claims'' every vampire in existence as a member, and by said Masquerade also being the lynchpin of their political maneuverings. Individual vampires try to avoid even the most trivial Masquerade breach for fear that their enemies might use it to bring them down, young vampires try to curry favor with their elders and eliminate the competition by cleaning up everyone else's breaches, and every elder vampire who lasts long enough to become an elder fervently agrees with maintaining the status quo. Also, entire campaigns can be made out of playing [[The Men in Black|Archons]] responsible for cleaning up after [[Off the Rails|neonates gone Michael Bay]].

*** Also keep in mind that, in the New World of Darkness, [[Muggles]] '''DO''' [[Broken Masquerade|start to believe in the supernatural]] when they see monsters come around their backyards. However, when those enlightened muggles try to make their discoveries public, they are viewed as cranks and [[Conspiracy Theorist|conspiracy theorists]] by the world at large. Add to that the fact that both the [[Government Conspiracy]] and the various non-human [[Masquerade|Masquerades]] systematically erase the evidence, and it's easy to see why people remain largely unaware. [[Hunter: The Vigil|The Union]] is a good example of such enlightened muggles.

** Then there are the powers/side effects of said powers that automatically lead to an [[Extra-Strength Masquerade]]. As mentioned above, ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]'' has the Delirium, where the vast majority of humans who see werewolves in their war form get overwhelmed with ancestral memories of fear and dread and automatically blank out memories of what they experienced; this carries over into ''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]'' as Lunacy, a blessing from the werewolves' patron goddess. ''[[Changeling: The Dreaming]]'', meanwhile, has The Mists, a side effect of widespread Banality where any observation of fae magic will usually slip out of a mortal witness's mind by the end of the scene. ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'', in addition to [[Weirdness Censor|Paradox]] (which targets vulgar magic as it goes off), has Disbelief, which means anything obviously magical (like, say, a rampaging fire elemental crafted by an Obrimos) will rapidly degrade under observation by [[Muggles|Sleepers]].

* The Palladium Books game ''<s>Nightspawn</s> Nightbane'' for the most part is a normal [[The Masquerade|Masquerade]], but the event that started it all was literally seen by everyone on Earth. On March 6th, 2000, also known as Dark Day, the entire Earth seemed to be cut off from the Cosmos. No sun, no moon, no stars, for 24 hours. To those with knowledge of the supernatural, it was the day evil beings from parallel dimension breached the wall between the two worlds and began a covert operation to control the whole world. To everyone else, it was a freak occurrence they'd all rather forget about. A number of excuses for the event were put forth, and people accept that there must have been some natural explanation, regardless of how flimsy it is.

* Whether or not there are any [[Extra-Strength Masquerade|Extra Strength Masquerades]] in the [[Real Life|Real World]] is debatable, depending on one's personal [[Properly Paranoid|level of paranoia]]. There is, however, a rich tapestry of [[wikipedia:Fringe theory|fringe hypotheses]] in which Masquerades could hide. [[Powers That Be|Western academia and law enforcement]] are skeptical to say the least, arguing that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Many of our credentialed intelligentsia have been defamed and discredited for giving mere [[Epileptic Trees|consideration to fringe theories]], often in fields at most tangentially related to the one they study.