Sunday, April 16, 2023

The Maiden In the Mystery Mirror, A Menace From Beyond Reality

This "villain" is a supernatural entity whose nature is so unclear that exactly who's the boss between the villain and their upgrade-linked lieutenant is hard to say.  They might even be facets of the same being.  They also offer a chance to get meta-textual about the "publishing company" side of things, which I don't do much.  Feel free to ignore it completely for your campaign, especially if you're running in a canonical Sentinel Comics game when it won't fit their elaborate fictional company at all well. 

Mystery Mirror Magazine

The Mystery Mirror Magazine comic book started out in 1950, dropping the "Magazine" part of the title on its fourth issue.  It was initially intended to get a piece of EC Comic's "weird tales" pie and ripped off their supernatural horror books shamelessly.  The book used a framing device where a host character known only as the Maiden In the Mirror would appear in the titular Mystery Mirror and introduce stories set in "strange reflections of your own comfortable world" to the readers.

Sales were good enough to keep the book going until the Comics Code was put in place a few years later, which forced a lot of changes to tame the book's content.  The new, less shocking material did not go over well, and by 1957 cancellation was looking unavoidable.  Then a junior editor had a brainstorm and was allowed to run with it to see if the book could be salvaged.  The book's "alternate worlds" motif was integrated with the company's booming superhero titles, becoming the place to run what other companies called "imaginary stories" and later Elseworlds and What If? titles.  The Maiden & Mirror framing device was retained, sometimes with the Maiden actually interacting with characters within the stories, something that wasn't done previously.   This worked well for years, and was used to test-market new characters in "parallel universes" before tweaking the most successful ones and introducing them to the main continuity.

Eventually Mystery Mirror was cancelled when the 1990s comics crash struck and forced major line contractions.  That wasn't the end, though.  In 2002 a nostalgic writer brought back the Mystery Mirror itself and the Maiden in main continuity crossover event story that sprawled over multiple supers titles.  They were now cast as supernatural remnants of a lost multiverse who were now bent on warping reality to match their former home.  The event ended with the Mirror being shattered while the Maiden was trapped within its shards, seeming a final end for the framing device characters.

To everyone's surprise, the fans loved the new take on these classic characters and the nod to their own "home book' being cancelled after so many years.  The "Broken Mirror" event was the most successful in years, and it wasn't long before the partially reformed Mystery Mirror and the shattered Maiden were revived for use in less ambitious stories, a status that continues to this day.

The Maiden In the Mirror

Mystics, sorcerers and dimension travelers all agree that the Mystery Mirror is some form of relic that transcends the known multiverse, with some insisting that it originates from beyond the fabled Fourth Wall.  There's some question as to whether the Maiden In the Mirror is the master of the Mystery Mirror or the other way around.  Perhaps both are facets of the same meta-entity.  

Both work together to flood reality with unnatural entities from alien dimensions and distorted reflections of alternate timelines.  Their goal is unclear.  Sometimes they simply seem to spread chaos, other times they actively attempt to damage soft spots in spacetime, and on some occasions they focus on terrifying individuals or small groups as though they were horror movie villains.  They've been foiled many times, and there are several reports of the being destroyed in the process, but they seem to re-form autonomously over time.  The best heroes can do is to try to minimize the harm they do and protect innocents whenever possible.

While these two often work alone, they do occasionally appear as apparent allies to some of the stranger entities in the supervillain community.  Noted examples include the bizarre Three Bears family, the mysterious Silent Harvester, the doom-saying Reckoner, and the inscrutable Johnny Crisis.

Description: A swirling mass of palm-sized shards from a shattered mirror, floating in mid-air on defiance of gravity and sometimes seeming to stutter in and out of reality.  There seems to be a young woman in a sleeveless red shift dress reflected within them, although it's hard to make her out properly among the ever-moving fragments.  Her cold blue eyes stand out the most, radiating a mad hatred toward the world.  She never speaks, but the clashing shards give off a constant low chiming sound.

The Mystery Mirror itself is a much larger single pane of glass, over eight feet tall and three feet wide and somehow reflective from both sides.  Its edges are all jaggedly broken and several cracks run across its surface.  Reflections within are distorted and often show terrible things that aren't present in reality - yet.  It glides silently through the air, occasionally "blinking" short distances without passing through the space between.

Gender: Female           Age: Early Twenties (Apparent)        Height: 5'7"          Eyes: Ice Blue

Hair: Jet Black             Skin: Porcelain White               Build: Willowy

Approach: Creator                    Archetype: Fragile

Health:  10 + (5 x H)

Powers: Teleport d10, Awareness d8, Presence d8, Flight d6

Qualities: Otherworldly Mythos d10, Acrobatics d8, Alertness d8, Broken Mind d8, Magical Lore d8

Status: Green Zone Health - d10 / Yellow Zone Health - d8 / Red Zone Health - d6

Abilities:

Devour Fragments (R) When one of your minions is destroyed, roll its die and you Recover that much health.

Kaleidoscopic Image (I) Whenever your personal zone changes, you may immediately move elsewhere in the scene.

Mirrored Terrors (A) Use Teleport to create a number of minions equal to the value of your Max die.  The starting die size of those minions is the same as the size of your Min die.

Reflected Infinities (A) Attack using Otherworldly Mythos.  Use your Max die.  Defend yourself against all Attacks against you with your Min die until the start of your next turn.

Upgrades & Masteries (usually in use unless the Mystery Mirror has been destroyed earlier):

Villainous Vehicle +15 Health  Include a Mystery Mirror d12 lieutenant with the following abilities in the scene.  Escape Plan (R) If the Villain is Attacked roll this vehicle's die.  If it rolls higher than the villain's current Health, both the villain and the vehicle escape the scene.  Minion Deployment (A) Add minions to an existing group equal to half the vehicle's current die size.  These minions are of a size equal to the highest die size already in the group.  If the vehicle has a bonus or penalty adjust the number of minions by that amount and then remove that mod.    

Master of the Unfathomable (I) If you are in a situation involving eldritch forces, automatically succeed at an Overcome to do the bidding of eldritch entities beyond human concerns.

Tactics

The Maiden In the Mirror relies heavily on her minions and her upgrade for effectiveness, and is usually easily dealt with once the Mystery Mirror has been destroyed.  She generally opens a battle by summoning a swarm of extradimensional minions with Mirrored Terrors, reusing it if all her minions are wiped out.  After that she uses Reflected Infinities against whatever target seems to be the greatest threat, rending their mind with impossible visions and protecting herself by distorting space and time around herself.  She repositions herself to safety with Kaleidoscopic Image when damaged (her low health makes it easy to trigger), and uses it again whenever her Devour Fragments reaction heals her back into a higher zone.

Her Mystery Mirror relies on Minion Deployment to reinforce the Maiden's minion groups, and will employ its Escape Plan reaction to teleport them both out of any fight that seems to be going against them, usually leaving a mob of minions behind to deal with.  One minion will use its action to Defend the Mystery Mirror at all times, and others will Boost the Maiden (who puts the mod onto her Min die when using Reflected Infinities) and/or her mirror (making Escape Plan easier or adding to the number of minions deployed).  Minions not providing support will mostly Attack foes, although anyone displaying strong multi-target abilities will be hit with Hinders as well.

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Terrifying Reflection usually a d10 minion, although d8 or d6 are possible too if created while the Maiden is in her Yellow or Red personal zone

Description: These can look like anything from across the infinite dimensions reflected in the mystery Mirror's depths, but they've always got an aura of indefinable wrongness to them.  Most will be blatantly monstrous or jarringly unnatural, violating reality through their mere presence. 

Unnatural Demise: When you fail to save against damage from an Attack, roll your die and Hinder the Attacker before you are defeated.


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