Marcos the Mage is a necromancer expelled from the Serapeum of Alexandria who became chief sorcerer and adviser to the emperor Aurelian. He is unique; no guild, order or school claims him.
| Type | Character (necromancer, lich) |
| First appearance | 275 A.D.A. |
| Spanish entry | Marcos el Mago |
History
He belonged to the Serapeum’s circle of sages and canons and was expelled, among other reasons, for digging up the dead in the city’s necropolis. He then joined the imperial court as “the adviser, the emperor’s sorcerer”, Aurelian’s chief counselor. He is also recorded as having lived in the Invisible Cities. He first appeared in 275 A.D.A. and is said to be a thousand years old.
Description
He is tall, gaunt and robed. He travels in an animated, “deadly” ship that is “only a metal frame”: the skeleton of a ship that can float “or move like a spider”, full of “creatures unworthy of God’s love”. One consolidation calls him a lich; others call him sick, though not fatally. “Something happened to him for being too close to the stone.”
Roles
- Necromancer: raises hosts and “brings plagues and death to cities”.
- Courtier: reaching him means reaching the emperor; confronting him means confronting the whole court.
- Pact-maker: deals with devils, seeks immortality, and was once dominated in hell; he reportedly “got trapped in hell” while extracting a certain book. “Coerced by the devils”, he staged a pantomime to deceive the heroes. He was seen “negotiating the way out with Torreón and with a nymph”, offering black pearls as payment.
Names and lineage
- One voice suggests, never asserts, that he is known as Alfonso Vélez.
- “One day he told me I’m going to Persia. And he became Arsaces, he became a dynasty”: he founded the Arsacid line.
Not to be confused with
Simon the Magus, the bearer of an electrified sword with “four images around”, who walked with Paul on the road to Damascus. The archive establishes no link between them.
Conflicting accounts
- The cosmology of early Alexandria gives him Nefedo as spouse; another voice calls him the ex-husband of Neferu, which clashes with the school that makes Neferu the first wife of Khalim.
- Location: one voice hesitates between Rome and Brindisi; another states flatly that he is in Brindisi with the emperor and the court. How he can be at court and also trapped in hell is unreconciled.
Open questions
- He “seems to have magic for travel”, so his location is uncertain.
- Whether “the lord mage of the king” in the Desert King’s retinue is he is open.
- The ship’s metal, size and crew are unknown.
- What the stone did to him is unknown.
- Why he went to Persia, how he became king, and the dynasty’s relation to his place at Aurelian’s court are not established.