: Ooh, idea! What if he is "Faceless" because he
: has no face of his own? No set appearance - he simply
: copies the look of someone or someTHING else. So you
: wind up hunting down Thrall and Myrmidons and Soulless
: and other such monsters, and the Faceless Man is
: amongst them but hangs back to the very back of those
: forces, and runs away when they're about to be beaten.
: Then later, when he has taken the form of a Trow or
: some more powerfull enemy, he actually tries to fight
: you, but when he is defeated, he vanishes and some
: sort of thin smoke floats away to another point,
: reforming into his Trow form, which stomps off into
: the distance...
: You chase him down again, and find some more powerfull
: enemies, Shades or something. As you're battling them,
: in the midst of it all this this black smoke creeps in
: and forms into another Shade, who tried to fight you,
: but dissapears into that black smoke again, which
: races of into the distance...
: But now, when you follow down the direction that this
: smoke went to, you wind up in a forest of dead, dried
: trees, wandering through these paths looking for
: something, and then out of the blue one of the trees
: (a Changeling) jumps out and attacks you! You kill it,
: but when it dies a thin ring of black smoke dissipates
: out into nothingness. One of your units asks,
: nervously, "I... is he dead?", but gets no
: response.
: All of the units would be named "The Faceless
: Man" and have various flavor texts explaining his
: nature.
Ever read The Invisibles? There's this fleshless (not skeletal--his body is just...abstract and kinda scribbled) demon called Orlando who always wears '20s-era white suits and has a habit of ripping people's faces off and slapping them on the front of his head. His "glamour" makes him then look and sound like his victim to the casual observer. He's the best mimic-type character I've read. There's a picture at http://www.barbelith.com/bomb/char_orla.jpg (yeah, he has a penchant for gardening tools.)
As an alternate form of 'facelessness', suppose the Faceless Man isn't actually there? He could be something like a holographic person--gone now, but he's been imprinted on the environment so that his image can be reconstructed from sensory perceptions of the rest of the world. Listen to the wind, or to the busy noises of a city, and you can faintly hear his voice; glance through a wind-tossed hedge and you can just make out his form on the other side. Yes, I know an interference pattern that walks like a man would be difficult to depict with the Myth engine. I still like the idea. :-)
--SiliconDream
