March Rewards 4

Darkfire57 

So let's see what scenario I can come up with: - Becoming the mask: A cosplayer wants to make her eldritch costume more life-like, the costume begin to fuse with her.

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There are many cursed magic items in the world, either cursed through spite and hatred released from years of use by a particular individual, or infused with a sick darkness by a witch or dying curse. One of the most truly horrific cursed items however is the cursed mask. They are often created by entities such as Mask Witches or Mask Hags, and various forms of cursed mask exist. These masks are known as masks of the murderous. A mask of the murderous is a mask crafted through a dark ritual that involves skinning a creature as it's life is fading and then tanning the hide or flesh that will be used as the material to craft the mask. It must be soaked in the blood of a murderer instead of using water after flaying. During this process, the blood will be absorbed into the flesh during an arcane ritual and the essence of the murderer's bloodlust and sin will be bound to the flesh. From there it is crafted into a mask of any type.

This ritual is not always a cursed one, as some barbarian tribes use a similar process to create masks that grant them great power in battle and allow them to wear the skins of their enemies to gain power. It purely lies in the skinning of humanoid creatures and the dark magic imbued in the mask by the murderer's blood that makes it such a deadly and disturbing item. When donned, the mask of the murderous feels like a second skin and seems to be quite realistic. When wearing it, a creature gains small insights, physical boosts and knowledge increases to tasks that the murderer knew about, and their inhibitions are lowered when it comes to committing murder or killing an enemy. The cursed masks however begin to adhere to one's flesh and become very difficult to remove as the flayed flesh begins to meld with your own and seal itself shut.

These masks then make the wearer take on more qualities of a murderer, and in some cases they can be possessed by the murderer that the blood was taken from, however more often than not they are used by a witch or some other form of spellcaster and controlled through the mask. The mask grants them more and more supernatural strength, pushing the person above and beyond what they would normally be capable of, even allowing the person to fight if they've been killed as it is a common tool for a necromancer to use to animate dead bodies with ease. They can also be found in unfortunate circumstances in which someone finds an abandoned or discarded one and wears it for fun, not realizing that they are giving themselves to the mask to take control of their body. Cursed Masks that aren't given direction usually give in to their base bloodlust and murderous tendencies and kill indiscriminately or follow whatever the murderer did previously in life.

Creatures wearing cursed masks may be able to speak still beneath it, and will often yell for people to run or get help as their body advances and commits violent crimes against those it's targeted toward. The masks granted can also occasionally allow a creature to grow extremely powerful with the right magic, with some Witches using a mask as their familiar, granting her familiar powers to whatever creature is taken over by the mask.

These masks aren't the only kind of cursed mask that there is...