Montresor

Montresor was the dubiously-human Keeper of the Cellar of the Strange and Wonderful House. He was a mysterious figure who apparently controlled the giant rats also dwelling in the Cellar, and appeared as “a shriveled old man in a mouldering suit with sharp yellow teeth”.

When siblings Christopher and Mandy snuck into the Cellar and shattered a bottle, (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Cellar) Montresor appeared and pulled Chris out of the hallucination into which the fumes of the distilled memory had plunged him. Irate, Montresor introduced himself to them and explained the true nature of the bottles as containers of distilled memories to the children, before telling them that the bottle Chris had just broken was the very one the Master of the House had requested be served during upcoming negotiations between himself and the Goblin King.

Distressed, Montresor ordered them to create a new bottle by convincing a legendary pirate to give up some of his memories, and then artificially aging the bottle in Father Time's attic — threatening them with the giant rats who also lived with the cellar if they didn't comply. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Cellar, Montresor) To allow them to do such a thing, he let Chris drink from a bottle full of a wizard's memories in a glass he'd somehow pulled out of his pocket, flooding his mind with knowledge of magic. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The First Step)

Behind the scenes

Montresor takes his name from the narrator of Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, who murdered his enemy Fortunato by luring him into a wine cellar and then walling it up.