Nobody knows exactly where he came from, or what he is. Even the name he goes by isn't really his. He has long since embraced the name given to him by fearful Turkish peasants in the 4th and 5th centuries, when he rampaged across Turkey and Hungary. They referred to the mysterious murderer using their word for unclean, evil, sick and brutal: Fenalik.
During the Fourth Crusade he masqueraded as Brother Merovac, the leper monk and occult advisor to the Frankish leader Count Baldwin. In this role he was able to abscond from Constantinople with the Sedefkar Simulacrum in 1204. The power of the statue allowed him to take up a life of luxury and excess, ranging across Europe for 500 years.
By 1789, as Comte Fenalik, he was the darling of King Louis XVI’s court. He had constructed a mansion in Poissy, at the edge of the Forêt de St. Germain, not far from the Seine. Here he hosted lavish parties that were the talk of the court. He was a favourite of Marie Antoinette, and a staunch royalist.
However, his murderous tendencies soon came to the fore and his parties at Poissy became more and more depraved. Finally, the authorities acted. They sent soldiers to arrest the Comte for his excesses.
At the recommendation of Dr Rigault, the Royal Physician, Fenalik was taken to Charenton Asylum. After some run ins with the staff and other inmates, he spent the next 140 years dormant and forgotten in the asylum's cellars.
In 1927 he was found by a curious orderly, and rescued by the asylum's director. This "rescue" didn't end well for either the orderly or the director.
Now free again, Fenalik seems to be dogging the tracks of the investigators. They've seen him several times, but he doesn't seem to wish them harm. What is his agenda, and what is he planning?