Content Warning: Masked Butcher is not a happy story. This writeup discusses the unabstracted violence commited by the Butchers throughout their narrative. To be clear: the titular masks are the literal removed faces of beings killed by the Butchers. This is a key theme of the narrative and cannot be divorced from it. There is no detailed description of murder or this removal, either in this writeup or the mission tree itself, but if you’re not comfortable with reading about that content please do not read further.
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
As discussed in Vels Fadhecai’s post, Europa Universalis IV is not primarily a narrative game. Anbennar turns the table on its head in this regard, being notable for its lore and storytelling within the constraints of the game. I aimed to do something unique with Masked Butcher; I wanted to tell a horror story.
Perhaps the biggest question I had to answer going in was that of the narrative perspective. I was already familiar with character-based storytelling and I knew I wanted to do something similar, but I also didn’t want to have a particularly strong, immortal ruler figure to structure the story around. The lore of this tag I had going in was also relatively freeform – they were presented as the bogeymen of the Serpentreach, sneaking around its dark tunnels and surrounding villages in search of beings they could cut the faces off of. As such, I took a very novel approach to the story – it’s told entirely from the perspective of your victims.
Although not as grand in scale as Zokka, I would go as far to describe Masked Butcher as my magnum opus in Anbennar. In the 2025 Community Survey, it was rated as the #2 most popular Mission Tree in the entire mod, only behind The Command (which had a full team of developers and writers behind it, so I can hardly be too offended).
You start in a very unassuming position, with vision of only 3 provinces, and an equally unassuming mission tree…The four missions in the centre column serve to introduce the player to the people they’re playing. Please don’t judge my accent-writing too harshly. “Ourdia” refers to the region outside of the mountains, to your immediate west.And this is what the Butchers initially get up to in the openning act. They stumble across a vampiric Hook Horrow beneath they’re holy Bloodied Altar, which infects a few of them. Because the tribe has a cultural tradition of blood sharing, this goes exactly as you expect.And this is what happened to Sofina, Arya, and Alin. Take a note of that “Keepers Of The Razor” unlock – it’s where a lot of the bespoke gameplay created for this nation takes place.Outside of the central column, these two missions introduce you to two important characters for the second act of the mission tree – Dominic of Lakeshire and Kalas Kettlebrook.Here’s why they’re important – they join the party of Arianne sil Verne, the Dauntless Six!It does not go well for her.Royan Roypecker, in his fury at being abandoned underground alone, surrounded by monsters, manages to kill the Otar, revitalising his hope…And unlike the others, he manages to escape! He’ll be back, though…Here’s that estate I mentioned earlier. I entirely hijacked the Anbennar-specific Vampires estate, renaming it and making a series of custom privileges. These privileges represent the masks you can create by sacrificing members of the mask’s race. You unlock the Human and Halfling masks from slaughtering the Dauntless Six, but you can upgrade them by invading Human and Halfling lands respectively.A couple of the masks reference actual characters you get to meet in the mission tree.I tied the masks to Masked Butcher’s religion. You spend Religious Power to activate Religious Actions. Preparing a mask creates or upgrades one of the privileges seen earlier, whilst Summoning a blood moon gives you the resources to do so.If the player is overzealously culture converting, it’s possible to softlock yourself and leave the mission tree uncompletable. As such, the player can unlock Racial Reserves for most races, ensuring they’ll always have access to the races they need.You unlock Mask Capacity – the number of masks you can equip at once – through the Moonlight modifier. This upgrades throughout the game.
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