"The Masque of the Red Death" Trivia Quiz

Answer: A series of drug trials

In 1979, Dupin was called to a cemetery to investigate an odd occurrence in which a body was exhumed from its grave and stolen entirely. Dupin would end up shooed from the crime scene by another detective, mainly because Dupin was just a junior fraud investigator at the time.

In describing the concern to his superior, Dupin noted he was at the crime scene on account of a woman who notified him three weeks ago that her mother was added to a mysterious drug trial on the recommendation of a doctor she'd never met let alone heard of. It turned out that there were multiple complaints regarding the same drug trial from several people. When he looked into it, there were five bodies missing from graves in the past four weeks, all part of the same drug trial.

Dupin asks Roderick when it was ever going to be enough, or if there was ever an amount of money where they could pack it all up. Roderick says they're not there to talk about that though. And when he sees the ghostly apparition appear in the basement doorway, he shifts the discussion to his youngest son, Prospero, who Frederick believed was the informant. Roderick asks if there's any truth to that, but takes back his question. It doesn't matter. After all, he killed Prospero.

Dupin reminds Roderick that he knows how Perry died, but Roderick says he doesn't.

Answer: Condemned buildings

Prospero, Roderick claims, was crazy.

And it's quite likely he was. After the family dinner, Prospero went back to his apartment and spent the night in a drug-fuelled orgy with some of his closest gadabouts. Waking up in the morning and heading to the kitchen, he nearly stabbed a fork through someone's face over a pack of missing eggs (black-headed gull eggs, only fresh three weeks of the year).

He complained about the rejection of his club plans too, but on rethinking the night, he realized that the nest egg investment was likely a bad idea, especially since the other kids got theirs and it changed them for the worse, putting them under Roderick's thumb for life.

Prospero received a call from Frederick over breakfast and it clued him in-- a meeting with the lawyers at the office. As it would seem, environmental studies have been unfavourable; Fortunato's condemned testing facilities have not been compliant. Some tracked with such acidic groundwater that they were unrealistically harmful. Frederick and Pym both refused to admit any wrongdoing or ownership of the facilities, but upon seeing one, Prospero had a good idea tied into his nightclub plans.

Partway through the meeting, Frederick reminded Prospero that he was there solely as a shadow and not to acknowledge problematic allegations. Additionally, he was simply assured Perry was the mole, and a soon as he could prove it, he'd serve him up to Roderick on a silver platter.

Answer: Six months

Prospero almost immediately visited the facility that caught his eye from amongst the bunch, bringing his friends with the aim to convert it into an exclusive pop-up club the very next day-- permits be damned. The best part was that this building was owned by the Ushers and had its own power and closed water supplies to support the old labs within. It would be completely off the city's radar. Most importantly, it would be a masquerade. While his friends, Jenny and Faraj, went off to plan, Perry looked at the roof of the building, spying a woman in a red coat watching him from above.

In the lab, Victorine hit a setback when her monkey trial testing the experimental heart mesh ended in the death of her test subject. Though she worried about the funding drying up, Al knew it could be a good thing. After all, if the monkey would have tainted their results on account of the use of adrenaline, injected in a last-ditch attempt to save its life. Speaking to Roderick later, Victorine discovered that her father hoped human trials would be done in six months. He wouldn't explain why he needed it to work, but it was important to him.

Answer: Leo

Prospero visited Leo after stopping at the condemned lab with an aim to gather enough drugs to supply the event on short notice, and while Leo was reluctant, he handed over two contacts who'd be eager for the sales opportunity. Leo let his sibling know that he felt the event idea was beneath him and encouraged him to think bigger. If he did, he'd be unstoppable.

Camille, from her office, reviewed the day's events, flipping between the trial and Bill's fitness program while her associates rattled off their findings. Unfortunately, neither of them came up with anything in the way of identifying the informant (though Camille still believed it could be Victorine...or maybe Perry...or even Juno).

At the condemned lab, the party planning already started to get underway. With the invite system quickly built and a clean-up crew starting, Perry told the girls to install padding for the dance floor and prepare the sprinklers. As soon as those sprinklers went off, it would signify a more hedonistic turn for the night. No one would start the true debauchery until the water came down. Unfortunately, per one of his contractors, there was no water in the building; he suggested bringing bottles in. Even though the sprinklers might have been sweating a bit, there was no pressure in the pipes. That's why he told the others to connect them to the tanks on the ceiling. Easy as that.

Answer: CADASIL

Roderick continues to tell Dupin the story of Prospero's final days, deviating occasionally to explain his family's idiosyncrasies, while a figure sneaks into the room, coming up from the basement stairs in behind the detective and walking closer. Roderick doesn't notice until Perry's face is staring right into his own. Dupin sees nothing of the ghost.

Roderick asks the detective if he's ever heard of CADASIL and Dupin claims he hasn't. It stands for cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. The term wasn't coined until 1993, but it's a hereditary form of vascular cognitive impairment causing symptoms like dementia until it kills the victim. It can even cause hallucinations. There's no cure and there's a five-year prognosis on the outside. The only hope is preventative, say with an experimental new heart mesh. It might buy him time.

Roderick's story continues back in time again, bringing him back to Rufus Griswold, the former Fortunato CEO. Fortunately, this is relevant to Dupin as well as the grave robberies from the late 1970s link back to him as well. It all really starts there, in Griswold's office.

Answer: Pain relief

On one occasion, Roderick was brought to Mr. Griswold's office on a particularly rough day. Though the FDA was looming over the business, Griswold allowed Roderick to make his unexpected pitch, an attempt to push a new, reformulated opioid in a proprietary synthetic to slow absorption. Called Ligodone, it would have no side effects and be non-addictive. The pill would work wonders for pretty much everything-- chronic pain, cancer, headaches, and everything in between-- with only the dose changing between them. It's not pain management; it's pain erasure. And the best part was, the infrastructure was already up and running with Landor Pharma, who they could buy out.

The fascinating part was that Roderick didn't even work in the labs; he worked in communications logistics.

Fortunato had spent years developing medical equipment, not drugs, but this could be the start of that. They could change the world with it.

That night, returning home to his wife Annabel, a young Frederick and Tamerlaine, and Madeline, he let them know the news of the day over dinner. Annabel, angry that Griswold didn't immediately take the idea and run with it, reminded her brother of their goal to change the world. They would just need to force him to help so that they could move forward otherwise he'd be in pieces behind them on the road to victory.

Answer: Lenore

In her office, Madeline gathered all of Lenore's data-- a journal of her thoughts for the past four months, her online presence, a ten-thousand-question questionnaire. Their goal was to send the data into the internet to create an AI capable of replicating the young Usher. Despite Roderick's reservations about the idea, believing it to be a glorified chatbot, Madeline always intended to use the data for something bigger, chiefly the immortality of the Usher name and presence.

Arthur Pym stopped by as well, letting Madeline know what he found. Perry's accounts had slowed spending, a sign he was either slowing down on spending or simply spending in cash. Madeline also wanted to check into Juno, but with Roderick's new wife co-signed onto his accounts, it wouldn't be an easy answer.

Lenore visited Roderick as well, but the visit ended up turning into an awkward bonding session between her and Juno. Lenore asked how Juno came to meet her granddad and the explanation was that, after her car accident, Juno was placed on one of the highest-ever doses of Ligodone ever prescribed. Roderick visited her in the hospital and the rest was history.

Perry would end up visiting Frederick's house as well, dropping off some paperwork. He would end up leaving it with Morella instead, casually dropping her an invitation to his party and suggesting she join the debauchery. She told him it was insane and he responded that he could see the fiery, free-spirited goddess inside her. Though she refused, he left a burner phone for her, just in case she changed her mind.

Answer: Rue Morgue

While Bill set the table for dinner, Tamerlane went to answer the door, letting the woman she had earlier delayed in for the occasion. This time, she says, she brought a great wig. The clothes were exactly what were asked for as well. Tamerlane laid down the ground rules for the evening: Bill would start with conversation and an intimate dinner. They would get the rest out of the way later. As Bill started to chat and pour the wine, Tamerlane pulled a seat to the other room and watched.

Camilla, would be at home in the evening as well, but she would be watching Bill's workout videos. Her associates, Toby and Tina, arrived to let her know that there was news circulating at the R.U.E. labs, something about a test subject not surviving a recent trial but nothing concrete yet. They called it Rue Morgue back when they were kids, Camille said. Tina let her know that the unapproved paralytic powder was a key rumour going around, but Camille wasn't too interested in this. Instead, they'd take the angle of asking Victorine for a profile article to get their noses in where they shouldn't be. The discussion ended when Camille joined the two in bed.

Morella headed out, leaving Lenore and Frederick at home to build model ships in jars. Following Prospero's invite, she took a taxi and entered the condemned building. The party was already in swing.

Answer: The camera footage

Leaving her belongings in a locker, Morella donned a provided masquerade mask and keyed bracelet and joined the exclusive party awaiting her in the other room. Prospero, already inside watching everything he'd pulled together, spotted Morella nervously waiting at the bar. She claimed she'd been waiting for a drink for ten minutes; he recommended the dealers instead. He let her know he'd find her later.

In the command centre, Perry would check the camera feeds and find the type of clientele he'd lured in-- a congressman's daughter, a draft pick, more powerful than them. All the money he'd brought in for the event would be one thing, but the real money would come from the footage on the cameras. And best of all, Morella came, and with the footage he'd be able to trump Frederick for the rest of his life. He shared doses with the girls before returning to the party.

Out on the dance floor, as the party really started to come into its own, Perry saw a woman in a red cape enter the room, a skull mask covering her face. He chose to follow her through the crowd. The woman would pass by Morella as well, watching her while Perry tried to catch up. Perry would barely pay his sister-in-law any mind in his pursuit. He would find her alone in one of the bedrooms, waiting for him.

Answer: Acid

When Prospero finally came across the mystery woman at the party she removed her mask and congratulated him on finally catching up. He asked for her name, knowing that she wasn't on the guest list, but it took a while to pry the fact that her name was Verna. She admitted to adoring the party-- the music, the bodies, the smell of it-- and she asked if it was everything he wanted it to be. It wasn't quite where it needed to be, he said. She claimed that was always the way; the moment before perfection would always be sweeter than the moment after it was achieved. It's for the best that he understood this, Verna said, as it would be solace while he still had time to stop the proceedings. All things would have consequences.

Someone, a long time ago, made a number of decisions that led to Prospero's birth, and on that day, he was the consequence of a harmless choice. That choice defined his whole life. He was consequence and on this night he would be consequential. Knowing that Perry wouldn't change the night as it was, she let him know they could have had fun together before sneaking away. And though he pursued her out into the dance floor, he lost her almost immediately.

As Prospero joined the girls out on the dance floor, Verna whispered to the staff of the building, saying something to them one by one. She would grab Morella as well, simply telling her to leave, but Morella wouldn't listen.

It would be moments until the lever was pulled, starting the sprinkler system that would signal a turn in the night's activities. What no one knew was that the tanks on the roof didn't contain water, but acid. With the doors locked, none of the dancers escaped.

As Prospero breathed his last on the gore-slick dance floor, Verna emerged from the shadows, kissed him on the lips, and departed, leaving only her mask on the youngest Usher's corpse.