Black Mask

Black Mask is evasion program. Creative ICONography is a tricky business, but very popular among the best Edgerunners in the Net. Making yourself look like other people or things is easy, just buy a Black Mask program. They come in five levels and last until de-rezzed. Their disadvantage is that you have to choose whatever image your dealer has on his shelf at the time. This program overlays the 'runners' ICON with another; he can look like another 'runner, a program, even a data file. It will remain active until de-rezzed, and so does not count against a 'runners actions. It can be penetrated by the Looking Glass series of counter-intrusion/detection ICE, or by a modified SeeYa or Hidden Virtue.

This program can (not so easily) be modified to changing other people's icons by turning it into a Anti-system type. The program now looks like this: Programming Difficulty 42+, cannot be bought, you must rewrite an existing Black Mask. See Example infobox.

It makes an anti-system attack vs. target's cyberdeck; success implements the imagery as per the shelf version. Failure has no effect. The target must use a Killer to remove the Mask. For those quick combat changes, it's a Very Difficult Programming skill roll. you must make one attempt while activating the CREATE/DELETE function of your Menu, then make a second attempt while activating the EDIT function. Each programming attempt takes one Net round. Failure of one roll results in your having no ICON, just a fuzzy fractal cloud (which is illegal in some regions). Failure of both rolls results in the crash of your deck, dropping you out of the Net In addition, it reduces the Trace Value for your line by 3 (you make a lot of noise when you crash).

Source

• Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net, pg. 57, 58
• Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout, pg.48, 49