Mason Pocket

Dr. Mason Pocket was an antiquities archivist for the British Museum in the Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace one-shot. He was played by Phil LaMarr.

Appearance
Dr. Pocket is virtually identical in appearance to his player Phil LaMarr in all but his dress. He wears a beige tweed jacket and vest, alongside a simple white shirt and black tie. He relies on a pair of rimless spectacles.

Personality
Dr. Pocket is a scholarly man with a strong interest in ancient mythologies. Meek, but polite and personable, he is described by fellow investigator Hanako Hayashi as "a charmer." Being a man of simple means, he is quite overawed by his companions.

Background
Mason Pocket is an antiquities archivist working for the British Museum. He has spent most of his life working on a pamphlet called The Sacred Nightmare of the Ancients, which earned the attention and accolades of Rupert Meriwether, but is disregarded as pure fiction by the general public.

"Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Crystal Palace" (Sx46)
At the request of Mr. Meriwether, Dr. Pocket is able to use his position at the British Museum to divert some exhibits, including a casket that Meriwether desires to possess, to the Crystal Palace. Along with Alexandra O'Neil, Captain Bentley Badger, Hanako Hayashi, Septimus Goodfellow, and Ida Codswell, he is tasked with retrieving the casket with the promise of a substantial reward, using the cover of entering his cat Io in the annual Cat Show being held at the location. Like most of the others, he wagers 10 percent of the job's earnings that his cat would win the Cat Show, not knowing that Goodfellow had already bribed the judges to ensure his own victory.

While Dr. Pocket's knowledge of the myths of ancient peoples and the museum's archives prove invaluable to the group's search, his curiosity gets the better of him, and his tampering with the artifacts puts the party in a great deal of danger. As the strange happenings of the night get more and more surreal, Dr. Pocket becomes increasingly neurotic and obsessed with his own theories, to the point of rambling uncontrollably and developing monomaniacal preoccupations. Dr. Pocket is the first to realize the connection between the unnerving images in the mirrors of the palace and the monstrous shadows hunting the party.

Unfortunately, he makes a tragic mistake in assuming he can save the lives of his companions by shattering the mirrors, and is consumed by the shadows when this fails.

Io
Io is Mason's cat. She is named after Io, a lover of Zeus in Greek Mythology.

Trivia

 * Taliesin's described his inspiration for Mason's character on the Critical Role blog as follows: "Every job needs an inside man, and Dr. Pocket was our access to the main artifact — as well as the excuse to set up the rest of my occult mouse traps. I gave Phil just enough solid information to guide the group through this new mythology while making sure he would be tempted to fiddle with at least one of the triggers I had spread around. Phil eventually ran with the tiny bit of information I gave him and managed to put forward several impressive theories on the shadows that were SCARY close to my secret canon."