A few centuries back, Conde Hernando Gomez de la Cadiz entered the Jesuit order and sailed about the world as a missionary to help and convert the heathen. He was always attended to by his accolyte Ignacio, who he took as a lover as well. Ignacio contracted cholera and perished on the island of Hispaniola. Nothing that Hernando tried could bring him back and he began delving into the dark art. After many years of study, he was able to animate the corpse - now merely bones - of Ignacio, and secretly kept the animated body of his lover with him as he traveled.

English pirates attacked the colony of San Cristobal and set fire to many of the buildings. Among these was the house of Hernando. While the priest-sorceror escaped, the animated skeleton did not. He vowed revenge upon the English and their allies and for the next decades would sail with the treasure fleets, sinking and killing English, Dutch, and French pirates.

This attracted the attention of his superiors in the church. Some of them favored allowing Hernando to continue his vengeance, but those who believed in the church and God wanted the priest to be brought to the Inquisition. And, eventually, this did happen.

The Inquisitors soon found that shackles could not hold the necromancer who declared vengeance upon the Spanish for turning their backs on him. After numerous soldiers died in one attempt to capture the sorceror, he disappeared and was not heard from again... at least not outright. Through the next five centuries, a man fitting the description Conde Hernando was seen in undocumented reports, always near graveyards and always with the undead.

Once a dedicated missionary, Conde Hernando changed when his lover died. Now, he goes only by Conde de la Muerte. And he will stop at nothing short of destroying a quarter of the living and ruling the rest. His empire of the dead and living will feed a spell that might bring Ignacio back to him.

"You're better off dead."

Conde de la Muerte will allow his Knights and other members of The Living Dead to engage in combat with enemies. He likes to open up an attack by making the setting feel more comfortable to himself and less comfortable to his enemies. Then, he'll use a wide array of necromantic spells to attack, taking advantage of enemies' vulnerabilities. For his own protection, he has enchanted the skin of a vampire and uses it as his cloak.

Conde de la Muerte appears as a man in his fifties dressed in black and gray finery. Instead of a coat jacket, he has a vampire skin cloak which sprouts bat wings when he so desires.