The Mad Marquess

The Mad Marquess
A.K.A.	Milord Marin Mausdorf
Character Information
Species	Ghost
Gender	Male
Residence	The Home City, Prime Universe
Behind the Scenes
First seen in	PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere
Copyright	Aristide Twain

In the Prime Universe, the Mad Marquess was the preferred alias of the ghost of Milord Marin Mausdorf, although he was technically a duke. Either way, Mausdorf was a temperamental, arrogant ghost whose domain lay close to the Home City.

Description

Physical appearance

The Mad Marquess had the hazy, transparent appearance common in ghosts. He always wore a metal mask or helmet resembling an animal head, with more always appearing underneath it whenever he took one off. His masks included ones resembling he heads of a “roaring lion”, a heron “in a state of dumbfounded confusion”, and a goat. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)

Personality

The Mad Marquess was somewhat out of touch with the world, as was common with ghosts — tending to act as though he was in the heart of his domain even when he ventured into the outside world unless his current surroundings were insistently pointed out to him. He was, in any case, arrogant and self-aggrandising, insisting on making any situation he blundered into about him. He insisted on calling himself “the Mad Marquess” due to loving the alliteration, in defiance of the fact that he was in fact a duke in life, not a marquess. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)

Powers & abilities

As a ghostly apparition, the Marquess could move in many anatomically impossible ways, such as rotating his head all the way around on his shoulders. When he tried physically touching living beings, they felt a chilly sensation moreso than actual pressure, but the “hazy rapier” he could draw at will was capable of injuring flesh-and-blood beings. His most idiosyncratic quality was the arbitrarily large amount of animal-themed masks he possessed; whenever he took one off, another appeared beneath it, tending to somehow reflect his mood. He could give away individual masks permanently, and the Company of Free Genies, who took payments in the form of magical items, once accepted one as a fee. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)

Biography

The Mad Marquess once visited the headquarters of the Company of Free Genies to purchase a wish. He was in the waiting room, having yet to make his request, when Jenny Everywhere entered the lobby and began to place her own order. He was upset that she was served before him, and at her overly-familiar manner, but the Desk Genie managed to talk him down long enough to grant Jenny's wish of being transported to the current location of the Lurigadawne of Tipperary. However, when, after she disappeared, the Mad Marquess resumed his supercilious complaining, the Genie purposefully misinterpreted an offhand statement as his wish, and sent him to Jenny's location.

This turned out to be an unfortunate turn of events, as Jenny, perceived as an intruder by the Secret League of the Orange-Bearded Gnomes, was in the process of laboriously convincing them that she was not a malicious attacker, and that she didn't intend to bring any backup — with the sudden arrival of the angry, sword-wielding Marquess cancelling out what little progress she'd made. (PROSE: The Interlude of Jenny Everywhere)