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Masquerade Enforcer
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A.k.a. The Unmasker Punisher Sometimes, magic only works when unobserved by muggles. The moment you try to show off to impress your muggle friends, the Masquerade Enforcer works to punish any Breach of the Masquerade, literally forcing the existence of a Masquerade, usually through two means: Environmental means, wherein the laws of nature are structured in such a way to punish any visible magic (Ex: Paradox from Mage: The Awakening and Mage: The Ascension. Agents who act to enforce the will of the Masquerade Enforcer (Ex: the Agents from The Matrix, Paradox Spirits in Mage: The Ascension). This is different from a Weirdness Censor, which stops normal people from seeing anything super via an illusion, BUT doesn't punish anyone from using their powers in front of people. By contrast, the Masquerade Enforcer actively punishes any super-person for getting their powers sensed by muggles. Often, it means getting Killed to Uphold the Masquerade. However, other fates including being banished to another dimension, or drawing the attention of dangerous entities. Also, this is far more than just an Anti-Magical Faction or a group of The Men in Black. The Masquerade Enforcer is much more like a force of nature, effectively an invulnerable, permanent feature of the setting, like a Lord British Postulate or an Invincible Villain. Any direct challenge will result in complete loss. Fear not! Just make sure that your super-powers don't look like super-powers. A fireball in public would backfire, but a gas main accidentally exploding is fine. In addition, the Masquerade Enforcer can be outwitted, its environmental effects can be evaded, and its agents can be overcome, via the masquerade. Masquerade Enforcers tend to fall into 2 types: Type 1: Villainous. Something wants to murder all super-people, and it's so powerful, it can easily do so. Here, human beings as they are serve as a domesticated animals, unwitting agents for their secret masters. As humanity spreads and increases in power, so do their secret masters. Here, "magic" means "whatever threatens the power of the secret tyrants that rule over muggles". Type 2: Benign. There's a powerful authority trying to protect muggles from magic. The higher being must have a great interest in humans and in controlling their development, and again, it can't be humans themselves. Humans would leap at the chance for super-powers. Here, there would be a world where mere knowledge or awareness of magic could be some sort of mimetic infection, making the muggle open to being controlled or hurt in some way. The Masquerade Enforcer then would destroy the magic before it could threaten this muggle. Here, "magic" means "what can threaten the physical or mental health of muggles". Scientifically speaking, this trope utilizes Operant Conditioning, specifically positive Punishment. Here, whenever a super-person uses their super-power in view of a normal person, they receive noxious or aversive stimuli, thus encouraging said super-person to keep their super-powers hidden. In an RPG with a Masquerade, it incentivizes players to respect the Masquerade. The Masquerade Enforcer would be a good way to resolve the Masquerade Paradox, however, the author must still address why anyone bothers to use magic at all when it's so much safer not to. In some cases, the wizards don't bother, retreating to a Magical Land and leading to stories where The Magic Goes Away and the characters have to deal with it. compare Ancient Order of Protectors. |
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Pact. The Masquerade is incentivized by two facts: First, that introducing someone to the world of practitioners causes any mistakes they make to reflect upon your own karmic balance. Also, most magical beings (though not all) have been bound by the Seal of Suleiman bin Daoud, compelling them not to attack non-practitioners without some excuse. Bad karma comes from violating social mores and norms, like the Seal, or in failing to properly teach a newcomer, as their mistakes reflect upon their mentor. Bad karma generally causes small, deniable bits of bad luck, with the occasional piece of extreme bad luck to balance out large amounts of bad karma. People with a lot of bad karma find that everything that can go wrong going does so in horrible and painful fashion. Second, for the majority of people, ignorance of the supernatural is in fact a defense that prevents many supernatural creatures from acting openly against them. The fact that any practitioner can create a Perception Filter by cutting connections probably also helps. | |
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The World of Darkness gamelines have several examples: In Mage: The Ascension, we have Paradox. Because a mage believes he can fly, he can. Problem is, that's not what the vast majority of people say, and popular consensus decides what the current rules of reality are. Do anything that's too explicitly magic, flaunt your ability to alter the way things have become, and Reality will give you a wedgie. Keep going, and you might summon a Paradox Spirit, or be exiled to a pocket dimension. Mages therefore have to make their magic look like coincidences or pre-existing technology to avoid Paradox. Various mage groups vie to secretly manipulate the popular consensus of reality so that they can use their magic. The 3rd edition of Ars Magica was written to be a direct prequel to Mage: The Ascension. It introduced the Realm of Reason, which was the result of rational mechanical philosophy and manifested as Anti-Magic. This Realm of Reason would eventually grow into the Paradox of the modern day. However, later editions got rid of the Realm of Reason and made the setting of Ars Magica completely separate from the rest of the Old World of Darkness. Another prequel to Mage: The Ascension would be Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade, which takes place in the Renaissance. Instead of Paradox, there is the Scourge. Like Paradox, the Scourge endangers any mage who wields their magic in open. There are significant differences. However, whereas Paradox is viewed as the result of violating the Consensus, the Scourge is seen as divine punishment for hubris. In addition, the Scourge is much more unpredictable, and could help a mage or hurt it. Instead of Paradox Spirits, Scourgelings can manifest, some of which embody Virtues and could reward heroic characters, while others embody Vices and could are much more dangerous. In the canonical timeline, Scourge will eventually become Paradox. Werewolf: The Apocalypse has The Weaver, one of the three great Celestine spirits of the spiritual hierarchy. The Weaver is the embodiment of order and stasis. While it is a champion of human civilization, science and technology, it has gone completely overboard and wants to create a Worldof Silence. It is served by a legion of Weaver spirits and Drone that tries to stamp out anything magical or spiritual, primarily the titular Werewolves. Some of the Mages of the Technocracy of Mage: The Ascension may also revere her in one guise or another, often naming her as Stasis; certainly, the Weaver's supposed goal of unending perfection mirrors the Technocratic goal of a static reality. In one book, the Book of the City, the Weaver even has its own version of The Menin Black, which here are Drone spirits. Despite their shared goals, the Technocracy's own Men in Black are rivals with the Weaver's agents. |
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The Matrix. The Matrix is a massive simulation maintained by Machines to entrap human minds. Anyone that is a threat to the Matrix will bring the Agents, nigh-unbeatable programs that will neutralize that threat with extreme prejudice. | |
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One way to interpret the SCP Foundation. There are specific interpretations that argue that the Foundation itself is a manifestation of some higher power working to contain, and knowledge of, the various anomalies. Among the proposals for SCP-001, Dr Clef's Proposal is arguably one of these. A being of immense power, it can erase from existence any object that it strikes, and it literally has unlimited range. It's heavily implied if not outright stated to be the Archangel Jophiel, who chased Adam and Eve out of Eden and took up the flaming sword to keep humanity out. This article postulates that it was responsible for inspiring the creation of the SCP Foundation. Another SCP-001 proposal is Scantron's Proposal. Here, the Foundation itself began as an anomaly that took over a High School. The ruling council of the Foundation, the O5 council, is also revealed to have been an FBI field team that never returned from their field op. And whatever they encountered in there, it turned them into the Council with a drive to secure, protect, and contain, using their training from the FBI to run their new operations. The field team that followed them in later reappeared as guards, staff, and other personnel that became the Foundation. Essentially, it was an anomaly that became a counter-anomaly. |
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The vampire community in Forever Knight has one literally called the Enforcers whose job is making sure humans don’t find out vampires exist. One episode has Nick trying to hypnotize a guy and get his videotape before the Enforcers get to him. | |
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In Planescape, the Masquerade Enforcer is the Lady of Pain, an invisible Lord British Postulate that rules the city of Sigil. The extraordinary activity that she punishes is the open worship of the Lady of Pain. Anyone who openly worships the Lady of Pain will, at least, get trapped in an interdimensional maze, and at worse suffer a horrific death. | |
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KULT: Divinity Lost has the Archons of the Demiurge, a solid Type 2. Our reality is an illusion, a Veil created to keep us captive. We have been imprisoned for ages by a dictatorial creator. The player-characters are working to break free of the Veil and regain their innate godhood. If you are witnessed doing anything in public that might threaten the Veil, the agents of the Archons, like the Lectors, will appear in force to shut you down. | |
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The titular Department of Truth was created to prevent conspiracies from manifesting as a retroactive status quo. This makes them a zig-zagged example, as while most cases manifest as monsters or other things that can be killed or contained, most of the conspiracies would manifest as a Cosmic Retcon; the Department couldn't keep such abnormal things a secret if they tried because then they would have always been "normal", no matter how outlandish or horrifying it would be. | |
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Shrouding, the Mist-based ability that is the foundation for all the abilities and gear wielded by the Gatekeepers. It works by using the Mist to blanket out expressions of Mythos power, with especially talented Gatekeepers able to bind Mist into objects to create anti-magic weapons or even forcefully cancel out Rift powers mid-battle. | |
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In both versions of the Vampire game, the enforcer is the entire vampire social structure. There's nothing physically preventing a vampire from being obvious about their nature, but every vamp bright enough to survive five minutes is also bright enough to realize that 1) revealing themselves to humanity will probably provoke a war, and 2) absolutely nothing good can come of such a war; if nothing else, it would be devastating to their food stocks. So vampire society is basically entirely structured around making sure nobody breaches the Masquerade and any slip-ups that do happen get covered up pronto. | |
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In Promethean: The Created, there's Disquiet. A Promethean constantly, invisibly sends off signals that they shouldn't be, that their existence is something wrong, and living creatures can pick up on this. If a Promethean spends too long around an ordinary human, the human becomes increasingly uncomfortable and suspicious of the Promethean, until it reaches the point where they gather a mob to have the Promethean destroyed. What makes it this trope is that if the Promethean does something that gives away their true nature (using supernatural powers or anything else that reveals their Disfigurements), Disquiet spikes, ensuring they'll have to run for it sooner than they otherwise would. | |
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Peter Pan has one in the form of Pilkington, who appears in The Little White Bird, Or Adventures In Kensington Gardens. He is a schoolmaster with a cane who makes Children go to school. He is described as a shade with a large cane which is described as a hook. The fear of Pilkington is what forces fairies to hide by day. Many consider Pilkington is a precursor of the more famous Captain Hook. | |
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Werewolf: The Apocalypse has The Weaver, one of the three great Celestine spirits of the spiritual hierarchy. The Weaver is the embodiment of order and stasis. While it is a champion of human civilization, science and technology, it has gone completely overboard and wants to create a Worldof Silence. It is served by a legion of Weaver spirits and Drone that tries to stamp out anything magical or spiritual, primarily the titular Werewolves. Some of the Mages of the Technocracy of Mage: The Ascension may also revere her in one guise or another, often naming her as Stasis; certainly, the Weaver's supposed goal of unending perfection mirrors the Technocratic goal of a static reality. In one book, the Book of the City, the Weaver even has its own version of The Menin Black, which here are Drone spirits. Despite their shared goals, the Technocracy's own Men in Black are rivals with the Weaver's agents. |
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That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis has a subdued example in the form of the Dark Archon and his bent Eldila, (i.e. Satan and his Fallen Angels). While their ability to inflict direct physical damage is limited, they have the ability to whisper and tempt human beings, to such an extent that they bent Eldila effectivley control human civilization. Any attempt on the part of the heroes to expose the existence of the truth is immediately shot down: | |
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In Planescape: Torment, much like the tabletop game that inspired it, there is the Lady of Pain. You can't kill the Lady of Pain because A) she has no stats and B) she never appears outside of FMV cutscenes. Pissing off the Lady of Pain is possible by becoming a believer of Aoskar, the dead god of portals, slaughtering large numbers of townsfolk, murdering Dabus, the servants of the Lady, or worshipping and/or making fun of the Lady dozens of times. The player may draw her attention exactly once and survive. The second time, she kills The Nameless One out of hand, causing one of the game's few game overs. | |
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The Esoterrorists definitely has a negative version in the form of the Outer Dark, a place of chaos and madness, are separated by the Membrane, which is shaped by belief and perception. In our enlightened society, the laws of physics are strengthened, as we believe that reality is ordered and makes sense. If belief in that fades, the Membrane gets thinner. The titular Esoterrorists' modus operandi is to commit atrocities and fabricate hoaxes in order to make people believe that the world is unstable, weakening the Membrane. If the truth of the Outer Dark existing becomes widely known, said knowledge alone will greatly thin the Membrane, if not destroying it outright. As such, the player-characters has to keep the public ignorant of the struggle conducted behind the scenes. After all investigations, the veil-out process (covering up the supernatural event or entity after its defeat) is crucial to reduce public anxiety on about the possibility of reality not being as stable as we all believe. | |
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Another prequel to Mage: The Ascension would be Mage: The Sorcerer's Crusade, which takes place in the Renaissance. Instead of Paradox, there is the Scourge. Like Paradox, the Scourge endangers any mage who wields their magic in open. There are significant differences. However, whereas Paradox is viewed as the result of violating the Consensus, the Scourge is seen as divine punishment for hubris. In addition, the Scourge is much more unpredictable, and could help a mage or hurt it. Instead of Paradox Spirits, Scourgelings can manifest, some of which embody Virtues and could reward heroic characters, while others embody Vices and could are much more dangerous. In the canonical timeline, Scourge will eventually become Paradox. | |
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Retired Witches Mysteries: The Grand Council of Witches maintains a crew of mind-wipers to make sure people won't realize magic is real. Werewolves have their own way, by murdering any of their own kind who change where they can be seen. | |
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In Werewolf: The Forsaken, the werewolves keep the Herd ignorant for much the same reasons as the vampires do: even the "good" faction frequently kill humans (and even more frequently kill things that used to be human and that the average human would think still are), there are a whole lot more humans than wolves, and way too many of them know to use silver bullets. | |
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In addition, the games of the Chronicles of Darkness, and its older counterpart World of Darkness has its own version. In both versions of the Vampire game, the enforcer is the entire vampire social structure. There's nothing physically preventing a vampire from being obvious about their nature, but every vamp bright enough to survive five minutes is also bright enough to realize that 1) revealing themselves to humanity will probably provoke a war, and 2) absolutely nothing good can come of such a war; if nothing else, it would be devastating to their food stocks. So vampire society is basically entirely structured around making sure nobody breaches the Masquerade and any slip-ups that do happen get covered up pronto. In Demon: The Descent, there is the The God-Machine. Any eponymous Demons were former angels of the God-Machine that chose to Fall and try to hide amongst humanity from the wrath of their creator. The God-Machine works to hide the existence of anything magical in general, and the Demons in particular. You can defeat pieces of God-Machine, and make it concede. However, any Demon that tries to fight the God-Machine directly will get a painful reminder that the God-Machine had been holding back. The trick is to exert juuust enough amount of bullying to make it feel annoyed and say "Screw this, you want this so bad? Take it!" instead of actually making it feel threatened and decide "You Need to Die". All of reality has this problem in Mage: The Awakening. When the Exarchs took up room upstairs, their ascension cut off humanity from the Supernal Realms, and the Abyss quickly moved in. To avoid anyone challenging their hold on the Supernal realms, the Exarchs made sure to determine that any use of Supernal magic runs the risk of attracting the Abyss. As a result, any non-subtle spell risks Paradox, which can make magic go wrong. And when an area is heavily tainted by the Abyss, the last thing you want to do is try throwing fireballs. In Promethean: The Created, there's Disquiet. A Promethean constantly, invisibly sends off signals that they shouldn't be, that their existence is something wrong, and living creatures can pick up on this. If a Promethean spends too long around an ordinary human, the human becomes increasingly uncomfortable and suspicious of the Promethean, until it reaches the point where they gather a mob to have the Promethean destroyed. What makes it this trope is that if the Promethean does something that gives away their true nature (using supernatural powers or anything else that reveals their Disfigurements), Disquiet spikes, ensuring they'll have to run for it sooner than they otherwise would. In fan-made Genius: The Transgression, the enforcer is the fact that Inspiration and everything derived from it aren't quite real, being the result of pulling discredited and impossible theories into the real world. So, if any non-Genius gives your work a peer review, all your theories will come off as meaningless Techno Babble (because, by real-world standards, that's what they are), and your wonders will break if you're lucky, and go on a homicidal rampage if you're not- a phenomenon called Havoc. On the off-chance that whoever you're talking to is receptive to your insanity, they'll probably Catalyze into a Genius themselves- and that's just another lab to feed. Most Inspired learn their lesson after the first few times they make themselves look like idiots and keep things on the down-low. In Werewolf: The Forsaken, the werewolves keep the Herd ignorant for much the same reasons as the vampires do: even the "good" faction frequently kill humans (and even more frequently kill things that used to be human and that the average human would think still are), there are a whole lot more humans than wolves, and way too many of them know to use silver bullets. |
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El Goonish Shive: Magic itself is a sapient force that wants to be used, but only by a small number of people. It enforces its own Masquerade as best as it can, and relies on human governments to regulate how widespread it becomes. However, the masquerade is always eventually broken, at which point magic changes its own rules, causing everyone to lose magic until people rediscover magic again slowly over time. The cycle is finally broken due to a combination of modern technology and the growing human population. One in every seven million people are seers, born with an intrinsic ability to gain understanding of the new magic system if it were to fundamentally change... which would mean that magic changing would just result in potentially every seer quickly posting "how to get magic" tutorials on the internet, immediately destroying the masquerade again. | |
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In Nomine, all Angels, Demons, and other supernatural creatures have to hide their presence from humans. This is ordained by the Almighty in order to preserve secrecy on a case-by-case basis and to allow humans free will. | |
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In fan-made Genius: The Transgression, the enforcer is the fact that Inspiration and everything derived from it aren't quite real, being the result of pulling discredited and impossible theories into the real world. So, if any non-Genius gives your work a peer review, all your theories will come off as meaningless Techno Babble (because, by real-world standards, that's what they are), and your wonders will break if you're lucky, and go on a homicidal rampage if you're not- a phenomenon called Havoc. On the off-chance that whoever you're talking to is receptive to your insanity, they'll probably Catalyze into a Genius themselves- and that's just another lab to feed. Most Inspired learn their lesson after the first few times they make themselves look like idiots and keep things on the down-low. | |
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Akata Witch: The Leopard Person society has Seers and judges to detect and punish any use of juju that "lambs" witness as overtly supernatural. Sunny falls foul of them twice: for a minor infraction, she's locked in a cellar with dangerous monsters for the weekend; after a larger one, she avoids the enforcement squad long enough to save the world, which gets her off the hook. | |
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In the rpg Scion, this takes the form of You Can't Fight Fate, in the form of Deific Fatebinding. Here, Fate is the collective force of humanity's mythologies, narratives, and stories about how the gods and other supernatural creatures work. Basically, the memes about the gods. In this setting, these memes can have a binding effect on the Gods, forcing the Gods to act in ways that conform to those memes. This is known as Deific Fatebinding. Whenever they do act in the world, the Gods, therefore act in ways that are subtle and hidden from humanity, less the stories generated from open action Bind them to roles they don't want. Few have suffered so much from the inescapable hands of Fate as the Aesir, the Norse pantheon. The doom of Ragnarok is so prevalent in their prophecies and mythologies, that their leader, Odin, pretty much spends all his thought and time doing two things: Looking for a way to avoid it or making everything work out fine in spite of it. No success on the former, but potentially promising results on the latter. Keyword being "potentially". |
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The Ultimates 2. Odin serves as this for Loki. As a Norse god, Loki has full-blown reality-warping powers, and uses them to aid the Liberators in attacking America and the Ultimates. However, when asked by his allies why he does not use his powers openly, he says that doing so would enable Odin would find him. When Loki finally does openly use his powers, Odin sends an army of warriors of Asgard against him, removes most of Loki's powers, and enables Thor to banish Loki back to Asgard for punishment. | |
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In Demon: The Descent, there is the The God-Machine. Any eponymous Demons were former angels of the God-Machine that chose to Fall and try to hide amongst humanity from the wrath of their creator. The God-Machine works to hide the existence of anything magical in general, and the Demons in particular. You can defeat pieces of God-Machine, and make it concede. However, any Demon that tries to fight the God-Machine directly will get a painful reminder that the God-Machine had been holding back. The trick is to exert juuust enough amount of bullying to make it feel annoyed and say "Screw this, you want this so bad? Take it!" instead of actually making it feel threatened and decide "You Need to Die". | |
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Unknown Armies has the Sleeping Tiger. As the masses cannot deal with magic, any display that is too explicit will likely result in mass hysteria, possibly leading to mass violence, most likely directed towards the mage. | |
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In Night Wizard, an anime based on a popular Japanese rpg of the same name., there is the World barrier, which not only denies easy entering and leaving, but is also provided with power to repair the world. If something magical or supernatural happens, the World Barrier will return Earth's reality to conform to common sense. For example, even if someone who got involved in the fight between Wizards and Emulators dies, the World Barrier will manipulate people's memories and records, rewrite traces on the scene, so that this victim's death is treated as "a death due ordinary causes". Accordingly, to the circumstances, this victim might even be made as if not existing from the beginning so that the outcome called death is canceled. The World Barrier targets both Emulators and Wizards, forcing both to stay hidden. | |
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All of reality has this problem in Mage: The Awakening. When the Exarchs took up room upstairs, their ascension cut off humanity from the Supernal Realms, and the Abyss quickly moved in. To avoid anyone challenging their hold on the Supernal realms, the Exarchs made sure to determine that any use of Supernal magic runs the risk of attracting the Abyss. As a result, any non-subtle spell risks Paradox, which can make magic go wrong. And when an area is heavily tainted by the Abyss, the last thing you want to do is try throwing fireballs. | |
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The 3rd edition of Ars Magica was written to be a direct prequel to Mage: The Ascension. It introduced the Realm of Reason, which was the result of rational mechanical philosophy and manifested as Anti-Magic. This Realm of Reason would eventually grow into the Paradox of the modern day. However, later editions got rid of the Realm of Reason and made the setting of Ars Magica completely separate from the rest of the Old World of Darkness. | |
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In the 1990s series Charmed, there are the Cleaners, a race of magical neutral beings that were empowered by the Tribunal with the eternal task of protecting magic from exposure. Existing beyond time and space, the sole purpose of their existence is to ensure that mortals never became aware of the existence of the magical world, whatever the cost. According to the Charmed Wiki, they are invincible and cannot be harmed in any way. | |
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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines has a Masquerade meter that falls when you allow humans to learn about supernatural forces, like by using Blood Magic in front of them. At zero, it causes a Non Standard Game Over and your fellow vampires take you out as a liability. | |
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In Christopher Nolan's Inception, extractors design dreams with architecture like vaults, and then lure the target person to sleep. The target then fills the dream with their memories and secrets in those pre-designed vaults, as well as anthropomorphic manifestations of their memories that act to protect the dreaming target and their memories. The extractors then try to break into those vaults and get access to those memories. The extractors in a dream can start to change the dream for their own ends, like summoning weapons out of thin air, or altering the environment. However, the more they change the dream, the more attention from the projections, who sense the foreign nature of the dream, and work to protect the target dreamer and any foreign elements. In addition, the dream itself becomes more and more unstable. | |
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In City of Mist, the titular Mist paradoxically both grants people powers, but also hides them away. Depending on how blatant the supernatural event was, this can range from a Perception Filter (for example, a fireball spell being seen as a gas line explosion) to full on Laser-Guided Amnesia. In addition, on the enforcement side, there are the Gatekeepers, whose job involves making sure that the truth of the City never becomes widely known, and they can manipulate the Mist to alter memories, cancel out Mythos powers, and even (in special cases) forcefully warp reality to ensure that the truth stays hidden. Shrouding, the Mist-based ability that is the foundation for all the abilities and gear wielded by the Gatekeepers. It works by using the Mist to blanket out expressions of Mythos power, with especially talented Gatekeepers able to bind Mist into objects to create anti-magic weapons or even forcefully cancel out Rift powers mid-battle. Rifts who lose their powers and become Sleepers once more can enter a state called "Denying the Beyond", where their former Mythos powers instead enforce the Weirdness Censor and suppress the powers of all Rifts who come in contact with them. |
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