Shadowseer

**Shadowseer** is a masked psyer from **Warhammer 40000**. They can send confusion and fear to other player's battlefield.

## History

Shadowseers use manipulation of the mind as their foremost weapon. In battle, they turn their victims' senses against them, blinding eyes, driving brave men mad, or gouging fatal psychosomatic wounds. At the same time, they shield their allies from harm, wreathing them in veils of illusion until the moment comes to strike. Enigmatic masters of trickery and misdirection, the Shadowseers' prodigious psychic abilities are a powerful tool in the ongoing war against the servants of Chaos.

Amidst the mayhem of battle, Shadowseers use their phantasmic powers to terrify and misdirect, drowning the enemy in nightmare visions, and should one of the dreaded Solitaires deign to join a battle, they can slaughter entire enemy regiments in impossible displays of martial prowess. In the Harlequins' performances, the Shadowseers play the role of Fate. They act as narrators, speaking in monologue, song or rhyme while their fellow Players whirl and spin around them. It is the Shadowseers' subtle psychic abilities, coupled with the hallucinogenic *creidann* grenade launchers they wear upon their backs, that provide diverse illusions for their shows. Blasts of multicoloured light, glowing swirls of blinding mist and white-hot illusory flame -- all are conjured forth with consummate showmanship.

All Shadowseers wear a featureless mask finished to a silvered, mirror sheen. They never remove their masks in the presence of others, and so none, even amongst their peers in a Harlequin troupe, have looked upon the wearer's true face. Instead, when each looks upon that mirrored mask, that individual see something different. Some see what the wearer wants them to see, others what they themselves want to see. During a performance, this mask takes on a myriad of identities, as is appropriate to the Shadowseer's role of the personification of fate. During battle, when a Shadowseer is performing the so-called Dance of Death, the mask reflects back upon those unfortunates that see it a terrifying range of faces. It is said that many see their own deathmask in that reflection, though, if this is true, none have ever confirmed it, for all who gaze upon it die within moments.

Though a Shadowseer's own mask is a blank, faceless thing reflecting nightmares back at those who dare gaze upon it, he carriers two other masks on his belt. Facts are few but truths are many where the Harlequins are concerned and the masks on the Shadowseer's belt are no different. Some say they are the masks of slain Troupe members, held by the Shadowseer until a new Player is found, though there may be a little more to it than that: Shadowseers can foresee the fate of their fellow Harlequins, so when an Aeldari becomes a Harlequin it will often be a Shadowseer who presents the new Player with their mask, peering into the new Harlequin's future to scry the role they were fated to play

Shadowseers are skilled in reading the skeins of the future. However, their second sight is differently honed to that of Farseers; they are concerned less with the literal manipulation of events, but rather the fulfilment of the mythic roles that others unknowingly assume. Concealing their identities with stage names, Shadowseers act as envoys to their Craftworld or Commorrite kin, their faceless masks revealing nothing of their thoughts or intentions.