The connection of SPECTRE to Edgar Allan Poe's story MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH is tenuous, to say the least and seems to have arisen simply from the need to seek the validation of a "classic" theme and author. Story is set in an imaginary land where the threat of revolution spurs the Emperor to seek exile in one of the most distant parts of his realm. There he meets Elka, the daughter of a revolutionary who has been banished here due to his confrontational activities. Elka and the Emperor fall in love. The Emperor's wife - the Empress - however, finds out and strikes up her own relationship, this with a minister of the Emperor's court. The Emperor begins to have nightmares in which the revolutionaries storm his (central/capital) palace to kill him. Elka's banished revolutionary father learns of the coup from papers that'd been carried by the messenger, and summons the people from the surrounding territories to storm the palace. Elka aids them in their cause by distracting the guards with her dance. The revolutionaries, led by her father, successfully destroy the palace: They burn it down to the ground, and the Emperor and Elka both die in the blaze.

by Robert Skotak