Origin
Before the lair there was a chair. Before the chair there was a boy with a very bad plan for a school science fair and a very good plan for what came after. He lost the fair. He did not lose the momentum.
The MASTERMIND is not a criminal. The Mastermind is a producer — of events, of cover stories, of catastrophes carefully dressed up as accidents. Crime is the delivery mechanism. The product is a world that notices them.
The volcano
The volcano was not the first choice. The first choice was a decommissioned radar station in the North Atlantic, which was lovely until it sank. The second was a cavern under a mid-sized mountain, which was perfect until a documentary crew started filming bats there. The volcano came third and it has the advantage of being both picturesque and lethally hostile to tour buses.
Tenancy
- Primary tenant: The Mastermind
- Secondary tenants: Approximately 340 minions, rotating
- Uninvited tenants: 3–6 intelligence agencies, usually
- Rent: A modest sum paid annually to a shell company in a country that no longer exists
The minions
Minions are not henchmen. Henchmen are hired to hit things. Minions are hired to understand things, then to hit the correct things. The difference is non-trivial and it is the reason the Mastermind has lasted this long.
Every minion is a real person with a real reason for being there. Some of them have families. Some of them have grudges. A small but non-zero number of them are moles, and that is part of the fun.
The endgame
There is no endgame. There is only next week.
“The point was never to win. The point was to be the kind of person history has to write a chapter about.”
— ascribed, The Mastermind, overheard at a charity gala
This page will grow as the dossier declassifies.