Smiling Faces

Overview	Episode 1

“	Don't make such a sad face, lad~ We all gotta have more smiles and laughter in our life.	”
–Mi mocking Thelma

The Smiling Faces are a Urban Nightmare-class Syndicate of cannibals with influence all across the City. Distinguishable by their grinning iron masks, rustic accents, and the smell of tobacco, these uncanny predators are dreaded by everyone who knows of their actions.

Members of the Smiling Faces, collaborating with The Blue Reverberation, visit the Library on his orders, making up the second guest group of the center-left column of  Urban Nightmare.

Composition

The reception of the Smiling Faces takes up a single Episode, where a total of 8 Guests are fought over 2 Acts. The first Act consists of four generic Smiling Faces, while the second Act consists of the three named enemies plus one generic Smiling Face. Up to 4 Librarians can be used for combat.

To Invite the Smiling Faces, the Book of Yujin and the Book of Shi Association are needed. Both of these can be acquired from the reception of the Shi Association.

Character	Description
Wang	The second of the three Smiling Faces to speak, following Argalia's requests on what to do to Thelma; Wang is the one who cuts up Thelma's flesh and blindfolds and gags him while Argalia taunts him. Wang mediates the disagreement between Jin and Mi about the consumption of Thelma's flesh.
Jin	The first to speak of the three Smiling Faces during their interaction with Argalia. Jin banters with Wang and becomes frustrated with Mi for eating some of the flesh "slices" of Thelma in advance. Jin also uses smoke to dull Thelma's pain while the Smiling Faces cut him up alive.
Mi	Mi asks Argalia where to travel once they finish their work with Thelma. Mi consumes some of Thelma's flesh off the plate before the other two get a chance to, which aggravates Jin. Mi makes fun of Thelma's tears and pain at the end of Argalia's visit.
Smiling Face	A standard, unnamed member of the Smiling Faces who wields a smoking pipe and an additional blade.

Story

In-game

Main: Smiling Faces/Episode 1

The Smiling Faces are first mentioned in the Shi Association's episode, where Tenma notes that Argalia has managed to recruit the Smiling Faces in Nest L to his cause.

The Smiling Faces make their appearance in their reception, where they are shown helping Argalia get rid of Thelma by cutting him into 10,000 flakes and cannibalizing him. Argalia then instructs them to head into the Library and pick up the Book of Yujin. The Smiling Faces are defeated in the Library, helping feed the Library's Light.

The Distortion Detective

The Smiling Faces make an appearance in Chapter 32 of The Distortion Detective. While traveling through L Corp's Nest, Moses, Ezra, and Vespa Crabro are attacked by seven Smiling Faces. Seeing them completely quiet, Moses and Ezra are confused why the Smiling Faces are not talkative like they are usually known to be. Moses also sees that they are moving differently, twitching like wooden puppets. After defeating the Smiling Faces, all three Fixers conclude that they were being controlled by an outside presence. This presence is revealed to be a Distortion known as the "Human Thunderbolt", which had killed the Syndicate members and was animating their corpses with electricity.

Background

The Smiling Faces originated from the eastern parts of the City, but over time they have expanded across almost the entire City. Their appearances and movements are distinctively uncanny: dark red rag clothing, smiling iron masks of the Hahoe village, and gigantic smoking pipes, accompanied by the smell of tobacco and loud, talkative personalities.

The Smiling Faces' gigantic pipes are their weapons, doubling as both blunt warhammers and swordsticks (with a blade sheathed in the pipe's bowl), but this is not the end of it. The Smiling Faces' smoke contains narcotics, enhancing their own strength while dulling their opponents' (and prey's) senses.

What makes the Smiling Forces truly feared is their penchant for cannibalism, and their particular way of "preparing" their food. The Smiling Faces carve up their victims into extremely thin slices or flakes, so thin that they are transparent. Even Roland is impressed, if disgusted.

Key Page stories

Wang’s Page

They call the Backstreets unsafe because there’s this one time o’ the day when darkness comes out and your friendly neighborhood watch can’t do jacks about it. The Night in the Backstreets, when the City shuts its eyes. Breakin’ any rules are forgiven during that time. Means to protect yerself from harm like recording videos or hirin’ peacekeepers? All rendered useless. And those rusty ol’ fellas sweep every corner of the streets, so no evidence is left behind. No corpses, no weapons, no nuthin’. Not only do all the security measures stop, peeking at folk as a whole is banned during these hours! Well, stumbling on the scene o’ the crime ain’t banned. What it really means is… you ain’t suppos’d record videos o’ the scene or spy it with security cams… No one should be strolling the streets that late in the first place though, hoh hoh hon! Cause of that, they don’t ask a darn thing about crimes happening during that time unless an eyewitness shows up. They just can’t, if I’m bein’ blunt. The public institutions… Ye know the deal, those shuckin’ shucks at the Head, Fixer Associations, vigilance peeps n’ the like. If one o’ those officials try to take a dig at somethin’ that happened during the Night in the Backstreets, some scary fellas called the Claws go after ‘em… I hear the Night in the Backstreets is considered a whatsit time for doin’ whatchamacallit permitted by the Head? I’ve got no dang clue why they set a time like this when every soul ‘ere’s already frightened to the bone. No matter what folks say, the Night in the Backstreets starts at 3:13 and ends at 4:34, ne’er too early or late by a single second, every time~

Jin’s Page

The Backstreets aren’t some unlivable mess like some folk’re saying, ye see? Rough things do happen often ‘round here, sure, but there’s some effort at peacekeeping goin’ on to stop a whole lotta people dying all the harking time. Every area of the streets has some kinda neighborhood watch made outta local residents voluntarily doing jobs like Fixers do, trynna make the Backstreets a safer place. Unlike the so-called public safety Association that starts with a Z… whatever that stuffy org is called, the neighborhood watch ain’t chained to any official authority nor do they ask for huge fees. Each area’s got different styles of neighbors, so not everyone in every corner of the town likes ‘em. Most folks do appreciate that they’re kee’ing ‘em safe, though.

Mi’s Page

There’s this one rule that stands squarely in this nigh-lawless land. Doing any kinda harm to the residential area is forbidden… No invading people’s homes, no demolishing ‘em, n’ all that. Not even the big n’ tough crooks of the Fingers can touch this! I’m guessing they decided it’s gotta stay the most whatsit place. If ye didn’t know, the City’s taboos are a ‘uge deal, ‘s much more serious than taboos of the Nest. You break it, and yer life’s over right then n’ there!

A Smiling Face’s Page

The rules o’ the Backstreets don’t work in the Nest, and the opposite’s also true. You could drag a higher-up working for whatchamacallit from the Nest to the Backstreets and do whatsit to ‘em and get away with it, as long as it was during the Night in the Backstreets and no sneaky rat saw you doin’ it. But if you did the same whatsit in the Nest, you’d be breaking rules. The Night in the Backstreets is only a thing in the Backstreets, like da name suggests.

Battle Symbols

There is one Battle Symbol related to this guest group.

Battle Symbol	Name	Slot
	The Smiling Face	Headwear 3
	Effect
	5% chance to boost attack damage by +1 while this character has 10+ Smoke
	Condition
	During a single Act of an Urban Nightmare-level reception, engage in a clash where both the character and the opponent have 10 or more Smoke.

Gallery

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  Wang
• 

  Jin
• 

  Mi

Trivia

• In the Korean voiceover, Jin and Wang speak Jeolla-do (전라도), while Mi speaks Chungcheong-do (충청도). These are nonstandard dialects of Korean which have what could be considered a rural association to them.
• The masks that the Smiling Faces wear are Hahoetal (하회탈), which are associated with traditional Korean culture. They are used in various ritual dance dramas of the Hahoe Folk Village, a location directly mentioned by Moses in The Distortion Detective. According to game director Kim Jihoon, the Hahoetal masks were the inspiration for the creation of the Smiling Faces.
• The smoking pipes used by the Smiling Faces may take their design from the tobacco pipes used in Beona-nori (버나놀이) performances.