Masque

Masque was simply the latest and most famous nom d'guerre used by Valdemar Michaelis, Shadow Centurion, albino freak and international anarchist revolutionary. Those with a care have found traces of his involvement in almost every major revolt, rebellion or terrorist campaign in the greater 19th century. He rose to his greatest prominence under this newest pseudonym after his involvement in the Paris Commune in France in 1871.

Of his actual origins, little is known. His name, appearance (aside from the whiteness) and traces of an accent hint at an origin in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire, but the truth is that he has long since shed nationality, fighting for causes all over the world and travelling everywhere in between. He has railed against injustices, mostly true ones, all over the world for his entire life, coming to a conclusion early on that they are inherent in the nature of the stratified, hieratic society and its ultimate and vilest incarnation and instrument: the state. But whenever he tried to turn another disturbance caused by local, passing grievances into a bloody total war, those people would show up and stop him. With time, he learned more, and understood; they were the Century Club, a group closely tied to the elites all over the world. The watchdogs of the injust world order, made all the worse by their intolerable, blinkered self-righteousness... and the fact that sometimes they did do good deeds, though in defense of a civilisation he could not support and therefore basically by accident. Still, it... bothered him. He tried to win over the more idealistic among them, but with little success. He tried to ignore them and fight them only inasfar as they got in his way. But with time, it became more and more clear that he would need to take them down if he was to succeed in his great goal of breaking the world's chains.

It must be said that by the time he became the Masque, Valdemar had become an extremely dangerous foe. He was charismatic, articulate and visionary, capable of coming up with plans on the fly that would wrongfoot his opponents, though they were more unexpected than brilliant as such. He had acquired a great amount of technical expertise, especially when it came to the weapon of choice of all true anarchists: the bomb. He won over converts - and contacts - all over the world, not just in Europe. And he had acquired some curious, uncanny items in his travel... not least of them the mask that gave him his name, which augmented the natural fervour of his followers - at least, that is what he was half-able to convince himself it did. In any case, all means were good when it came to combatting oppression.

In one sense, this lack of proportion and restraint was his greatest flaw, but perhaps an inevitable one, as without it, his idealism might have made him more a martyr than a villain. It was perhaps the symptom of a madness born of extreme frustration and powerless hate. On the other hand, as a Shadow Centurion he was quite effective, but hampered by the same residual idealism: he did not wish to hurt the innocent directly if he could avoid it; he had a particular point about not hurting children (something that won him relentless mocking and many cruel threats from the great hero Kim Kwon-sung when he discovered it). He was, of course, something of a hypocrite; fires and bombs and angry mobs inevitably killed innocents as well, but he preferred to be blind to this, as to quite a few other things. He was also hampered by his love for theatrics, and tendency to get carried away; the same unpredictability that made him such a dangerous opponent could also undermine him, when yet another inspired plan turned out to be merely crazy instead of being so crazy it could work.

The Zanzibar Incident of 1901 was surely one such case, as his attack on the underground slave trade ended up with him setting the city on fire and running into its highly dangerous catacombs to evade the pursuit of Manfred von Richthofen and his team. He only survived because the one who managed to track him down was, of course, the bounty huntress: Rose Hayes. They had fought before, and every time, Masque was able to make Rose's resolve (already undermined by other events) weaken a little more. This time she had him at her mercy, but was talked down from making the shot. They left as friends if not allies, or so he put it, brought closer by the hardships involved in getting out of Zanzibar in that night. Rose was not won over to his cause, but left the Century Club to become a hermit in Africa, effectively getting out of his way; she also gave him her enchanted rose quartz necklace, to help preserve his life. It is unclear what - beyond his general lifestyle - might have been threatening it. Rose having by then acquired some limited gift of healing magic may have had something to do with it as well.

Be all that as it may, Masque was indeed determined to see the dawn of a new era; and in the 20th century, he came upon a new idea of how it may be brought about. His theoretical ramblings and practical experiences both pointed at violence as the root of the coercive power that he wished to destroy. But there were rumours of a way to overcome death itself, the greatest tyrant, and in so doing defang all lesser tyrants too. Naturally he and his followers would need to receive it first, so that the old powers would be unable to stop them as they set the people free. Discoveries made in Ancient Aran at once encouraged this hope and made him more cautious, due to clear evidence that something in their process was flawed. Oromassi, the high priest he had found during his Central Asian visit, was immortal enough, but impossibly twisted, though he claimed to have perfected the formula. Between those risks and the threat of the Century Club trying to stop him, Masque made a number of unsavoury alliances with otherwise antagonistic Shadow Centurions: Dr. Mostro, Madam Czarna, James Burke and, at a greater distance, Mr. Ming. Jacob London, a sometimes-ally, oftener-traitor, played upon Masque's hopes and fears, telling him that some of the Centurions were pursuing the same lead, to acquire immortality - and deny it to others. Desperate that he might be running out of time, Masque made his move... and the rest was history.

Valdemar was not so naive as to not realise Jacob and his own hired "procurement specialist" Juan Juarez had their own agendas, and that his other allies were playing their own games as well. But in the end it was too much for one man to keep up with, and the failure to secure any of the younger Centurions for leverage over their mentors (except for poor Ray Freedom, whom Czarna had refused to share) had sealed his doom. Desperate, he drew back to his inner sanctum and attempted to create the elixir on his own, then, when it became clear he did not have any guarantee of possessing the knowledge necessary to be certain of success, made a deal with Oromassi - however, by then, the Centurions had already cornered him, despite all of his tricks and preparations. A little earlier he managed to plant the seed of doubt in the fertile grounds of the mind of one of them - Sarah Hayes, the foundling-pupil of Rose rescued from that very same Zanzibar incident, and it prolonged his life for a couple of minutes. But Lin Tsao, Kim's pupil, was not so easily tricked, and with the help of Jacob's understudy Viktor Vaughn the vicious little Chinaman ended his miserable life.

Has since appeared in dreams, magical visions, etc. The usual package.

It is also worth noting that his cause had lived on. Tendaji in East Africa and surely others in other places have retained control over parts of his anarchist army, living as self-governing military communes fighting a perpetual guerrila war against local authorities and waiting for someone to resume control over the cause, even as other, more pedestrian anarchist organisations either remain ignorant of their existance or mock them for their bizarre cult of personality. But he also made another investment in the future: children of a certain age from different parts of the world that he took in and raised at Saint Haven, but sent away before the final confrontation with the Centurions. One of them, it turns out, was Sarah's twin brother found by him at Zanzibar and given the name of Julius Michaelis...