The Crimson Mask

A prince in Fifteenth Century Bucharest, Alexandru Movilâ was involved in the desperate struggle to keep Eastern Europe under the control of Christianity. He was not otherwise a good man, as he asked a high price for his service in money and favors from the crowned princes of Christendom and from the Holy See itself.
Movilâ dabbled in the occult, developing curses for his (many) enemies as well as ways to sustain his life and increase his influence. He was also an extraordinarily bad neighbor: an unreliable ally and a repulsively cruel enemy, even by the standards of that time and place.
In the most desperate battle, the defense of Transylvania against the Turks, Alexandru accepted a bribe from the Turks and betrayed its lord, Stefan Báthory to his death. Unfortunately, Báthory was a sorcerer of great power who was said to sit at the devil’s left hand, and he placed a terrible curse on Movilâ. He would not die, but live so Báthory’s spirit could torment him forever. Movilâ found himself chased nightly by a terrible apparition he had no power to resist.
Alexandru ran—straight into the arms of Báthory’s closest ally, Vlad Dracula, Lord of the Vampires. The monster punished Movilâ with the death of ten thousand cuts; each day, a hundred tiny, precise cuts were cut on Alexandru’s face, and then washed with vinegar. Each day for a hundred days, the process was repeated. Alexandru was supposed to go mad from the pain and eventually die from infection. His face became a pus-ridden blight; always bleeding from his sores, they mockingly called him the Crimson Mask.
However, death never came. Alexandru lived. When Dracula set him on a tree and impaled him, Alexandru crawled off the spike and fled into the night, still pursued by the haunting spirit. Wherever he went, he heard the voice of Stefan Báthory whispering, “Traitor, traitor,” in his ear, filling him with horror. In desperation, Alexandru entombed himself and put himself to sleep, “until the time of one whose power can break this curse.” Whether such a day would ever come was a matter for debate, for Báthory was more powerful than any sorcerer had been for generations.
Movilâ awoke in 1918, when the founding members of The Thule Society needed three masters of the arcane to empower their Armistice Day curse on France. His disfigurement was not cured by the centuries, so when they asked Alexandru his name, he simply replied, “The Crimson Mask.” He assumed a position of power within the Society, using the other sorcerers to keep Báthory’s ghost at bay.
For twenty-five years, the Society built up its magical talents, only to have them destroyed by Adrian Eldrich at the end of the Second World War. Báthory’s ghost afflicted the Crimson Mask once more, so he fled Germany and took shelter within an artifact known as the Cabinet of Grim Silence, where Báthory’s voice could not assail him. He stayed in the cabinet for over a decade, until Wilhelm Kantor released him and put an end to the curse. Kantor had been a Báthory in one of his previous lifetimes of evil, and in that family line, blood is stronger than magic. After five hundred years, Stefan Báthory was silenced.
The Crimson Mask has sworn never to be so tormented or humiliated ever again. Since his release, all of his energies are devoted to becoming Earth’s new Master Mage—which he sees as an unassailable position—and heaven help anyone who gets in his way.