Lord Malfortune

Lord Malfortune (real name Lord Robert Blackwood) is a wizard and a hereditary peer in the House of Lords. He also known in some circles as Brother Cortéz. He uses his own fortune to acquire as much magickal lore and artifacts as possible in order to remove them from possible unauthorized circulation and to study them for The Brotherhood's purposes. Of course, Lord Malfortune rarely leaves his Mansion's grounds, instead using his resources and seemingly legions of lackies, contractors, and understudy witches and sorcerers to do his dirty work.

Obviously only other brothers know of Malfortune's secret society connections. Fewer than that know of his mastery of magick; those being his acolyte magicians, some, but not many brothers and people like Julian Adler, and of course the legendary Hugh Charlesworthy.

Despite all this acclaim, all he seems to do all day it sit in a big leather armchair, smoke cigars and drink port.

Lord Malfortune is an expert in fire magick and is one of less than a dozen outside China that can speak ancient mandarin. He is also knowledgeable about smoke magick and fission magick. He has never fired a gun in his life, and is far to old, weak and smart to get into fisticuffs. If ever endangered, he allows whichever sycophant, lackey, understudy sorcerer or hired goon to throw their bodies in the way of any danger. As a last resort, he sets fire to the general area and makes his escape in a puff of choking, black smoke. He will often make an example of any would be band of wizard-slayers by melting their leader's face off with word of copper. Lord Malfortune is very well connected, having such greats as Julian Adler, Hugh Charlesworthy, The Prime Minister and most influential MP's on his speed dial, as well as various lords, a large number of brothers and Illuminati such as Brother Caesar and Illuminatus Prime, even Gabriel Iago has had favourable dealings with him.

Lord Malfortune has few enemies, being as most of them are dead, unaware of them, or he has made himself too useful or tricky to take out. His current enimity is with the Shreke Duke; Gara Utash who is recklessly selling magick wares in a black market outlet in London. He has on more than one occasion taken acolyte witches and sorcerors along to help torch whatever base of operations or home the duke is holed up in as a final test to join his entourage. In exchange, the Duke is known to send Malfortune severed bits of apprentice. This rivalry has had no public exhibition other than the odd arson attack or murder.

Malfortune has a decidedly large amount of government power and a rich pool of contacts, but seldom flexes his might as he is single-mindedly concerned with keeping magick secret from the world and protecting the United Kingdom from occult threats, not caring if people are unemployed, or if there's too much immigration and so on. He both invests in and lends his wisdom to organisations such as The Agency and PENDRAGON.

Lord Malfortune is very old, supposedly being born in early Victorian times. This is neither confirmed nor denied by him. As a consequence, he is probably alive during 2059 and at least the start of the Theta Wars. It is not known what his actions or agenda are, though as the brotherhood's priorities change and they become an angry band of fascists he has probably divorced himself from them. It is also known that he is working on fission magick after coming into contact with Dr. Vladlena after the fall of the Berlin wall and may well have expanded his repertoire with its word.

As of 2013, Lord Malfortune has moved to a small town on the outskirts of Moscow, after his base of operations just outside Oxford was destroyed in a siege conducted by The Brotherhood. He left the land to his estranged son, Ethan Blackwood.