Empire of Masks

The story of Empire of Masks

Key institutions: the Chamber of Authenticity, the Imperial Academy of Investigators, licensed identity clinics and the black market beneath them. Losing your certified self is worse than death; stealing one is the crime of the century.

Places

• Petrograd Prime · city. The soot-covered, brass-wreathed imperial capital.
• Chamber District · region. The administrative heart of the city, dominated by clockwork cathedrals.
• Academy District · region. Gothic spires filled with researchers, spies, and logic engines.
• Clinic Quarter · region. A maze of steam-hissing clinics and brass laboratories.
• The Canal Slums · region. Waterlogged industrial ruins where stolen identities are bought and sold.

Peoples

• The Certified · Arrogant, Predictable, Legally untouchable. The bureaucratic elite who possess state-verified identity signatures. They lead lives of rigid predictability, their faces and memories etched into the official ledger.
• The Blank-Faced · Anxious, Adaptive, Resourceful. Individuals who have sold their original identity or had it stolen. They exist in the margins, wearing cheap, brass-hinged prosthetic masks to blend into the city.
• The Graft Surgeons · Cold, Obsessive, Highly skilled. Technician-priests who operate the brass clinics. They see identity as a medium to be sculpted, often blurring the line between medicine and art.

Powers and factions

• Chamber of Authenticity · High Proctor Nikolai Serebro. The supreme judicial body that maintains the Ledger of Souls. They authorize all legal identity modifications.
• Imperial Academy of Investigators · Grand Inquisitor Tatyana Reznik. A paramilitary force tasked with hunting 'Identity Thieves' and verifying the authenticity of high-ranking officials.
• The Faceless Cabal · The Architect. An underground network of black market dealers who trade in stolen memories and discarded faces.

History

• The First Graft · 1872. Professor Arisov successfully transplants the memory-map of a terminal patient into a donor body, sparking the age of identity-craft.
• The Ledger Act · 1885. The Tsar mandates that all citizens be registered with the Chamber of Authenticity, officially turning personal history into state-regulated property.
• The False Duke Scandal · 1899. A notorious identity thief lived as the Grand Duke for three years before being discovered, leading to the creation of the Imperial Academy of Investigators.

Who lives here

• Natalia Novikova