Troupe

A Troupe is the beating heart of any masque, a company of Players who together perform the myth-cycles and, in battle, dance the enemy to death. Clad in dazzling holo-suits that scatter their outlines into shards of shifting colour, the Players wield an array of lethal instruments, the humming caress of the harlequin's kiss, which injects a monofilament that liquefies its victim from within, the powered embrace, and the flashing blade.

In combat a Troupe moves as one, a whirl of leaps and pirouettes that no eye can follow, each Player weaving through incoming fire as though it were choreographed. They strike with bewildering speed, tear apart their foes in a storm of blades, and are gone before a counterblow can land. To face a Troupe is to be drawn into a performance one cannot survive, a dance whose only possible ending is death. They are the Harlequins at their purest, art and murder made indistinguishable, beauty wielded as a weapon.