When a stranger emerges from an amniotic slate, a domesticated face-taster machine hunched and looming in the nursery engulfs their head. Normally this would result in the detachment of the faceplate, but domesticated face-tasters are detusked and fed a calcite and semi-organic diet that promotes shell formation. So instead, the stranger's face is slathered with a mask of white, lacquered chitin that solidifies when exposed to air. A copy of the face underneath is saved by the taster's databanks.
Using similar technology to memory wafers, strangers are fed identity-wafers on a monthly basis. These wafers contain the stranger's face-data, and ensure the mask of white chitin does not begin to grow and eat at the skin underneath, destroying the face. The progeny controls the supply of identity wafers.
In order for Strangers to obtain these wafers, they must pay the face-tax, which are production quotas strangers must deliver to the Progeny. Breaking their mask of chitin is strictly forbidden, and difficult without tools, which are a major part of any rebellion. As the masks appear to give near-immunity to Dreamspace and resistance to many other dangerous hazards such as Hydra and infophages, some strangers do not object to this practice, which was originally a purely medicinal facemask. But rising quotas in recent years have put severe pressure on Isolates.
This is a major point of contention between the Progeny, Monad, and Tetras, which were former strangers who freed themselves from the Progeny in an uprising. Tetras wishes for the practice to stop altogether; Monad at least expects that it returns to the status quo when Kora was alive, where strangers had both both rite of conversion (the ability to obtain a Kora-face even after printing) and rite of visage (their faces were not barred from being seen at all times). These laws have become far more severe as the Progeny have lost territory and turned upon the strangers in their midst as a fifth column.
