Part 1: Only Love Could Be So Cruel

Betrayer's Theme

Mask of the Betrayer is a fantastic role-playing game and has the finest story ever written for the computer screen.

That's all that needs to be said, really. I feel that Mask is a truly excellent story and game. Honestly, it's the one thing that gives me hope for the medium as a whole; it's better than Knights of the Old Republic 2, better than Planescape: Torment. Hideo Kojima? Ragnar Tørnquist? Forget them, Obsidian Entertainment are the ones to watch.

But I don't think I'm doing a very good job of explaining myself, so I'll start again.



Mask of the Betrayer is a fantastic role-playing game and has the finest story ever written for the computer screen.

Mask is the expansion pack to Neverwinter Nights 2, Obsidian's second game. NWN2 was a solid, traditionally epic high-fantasy RPG set along the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. It was a good game, maybe not a classic, but it was big and quite funny and it had flashes of brilliance.

You may remember (from playing the game or from reading the LP) that NWN2 ended poorly. The player character defeated the malevolent King of Shadows, only to be buried alive in a rockfall... a bit of a bummer as you can imagine.

Mask picks up almost immediately after where NWN2 left off. We'll be following the same character as they explore a strange new land and uncover a terrible secret hundreds of years in the making. It's a whole new story, so you don't have to be familiar with the events of NWN2, but it helps!



All right, so you're still not buying it. Okay, let me put it like this:

Mask is a story about truth, and the differences between what is obvious and what is actually real. It's a story about learning and knowledge, and also about ignorance and falsehoods. It's a story about self-discovery.

Mask is a story about death, and the dead. It's a story about God, the gods, and the godless. It's a story about what happens to you after you die, and why bad things happen to good people (and the other way around).

Mask is a story about love. Not a love story, mind, but a story about capital-L Love. Love of family, love of friends, religious love, love for your country and, yes, romantic love.

But enough repetition, on with the show!

Cast

Calliope - The Knight-Captain of Crossroad Keep, she (almost) singlehandedly defeated the King of Shadows in mortal combat. Her reward was to wake up alone and half-dead in a cave hundreds of miles away, in the land of distant Rashemen.

Safiya - A Red Wizard of Thay, but unlike others of her kind she isn't a brutal tyrant and enslaver. This doesn't mean she's not morally flexible...

Gannayev-of-Dreams - A hagspawn shaman and dreamwalker, imprisoned for the crime of being "too handsome." His arch manner and wry witticisms seem simply amusing at first, but there's more to him than meets the eye.

Kaelyn the Dove - A former Doomguide of Kelemvor who converted to the worship of Ilmater, god of martyrs. She's been thrown out of her faith, exiled from Celestia, disowned by her family... and now she's joined our party.

Okku - First he tries to kill us, then he wants to serve us... We spared the life of the Rashemi god of bears and made an ally out of a former enemy. A shame he can't remember anything of his past - or of this strange new curse of ours.

One of Many - The possessed remains of the fallen bear god, animated by the insane hatred of thousands of murderers, rapists and heretics. One of Many bound itself to our service in the hope of finding more souls to devour and add to its gestalt intellect. For evil characters only, duh.