Cortland Kasady was a settler from England that came to the New World in 1664 alongside his lover, Molly Ravencroft, establishing a homestead in what would centuries later be known as Westchester County.
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History
When Molly was abducted by a cannibalistic cult known to the locals as "The Others," Cortland attempted to organize a rescue party. Disgusted by the cowardice of his fellow settlers, who were terrified of the cult, he set off on his own to rescue her. Coming across a cave, Cortland was ambushed by one of the cultists, who tried to eat him before being killed by Molly - who had managed to evade capture. Telling Molly to wait while he investigated the cave that served as the cult's lair, Cortland came across a chamber full of the cannibalized remains of the cult's victims and wall-art depicting the primordial dark god Knull. Overwhelmed by the cultists, he was infected with living abyss and driven insane; going on a rampage and killing eight villagers before being subdued and imprisoned at the future site of the Ravencroft Institute.
Sometime later, Cortland broke free from his prison and killed Molly when she came to visit him. What ultimately became of him was unknown, but Molly's descendant, Jonas Ravencroft, speculated that he spent the remainder of his life among the other cultists, preying upon those who had the misfortune of crossing his path and waiting for Knull to awaken. According to Knull himself, Cortland was a loyal acolyte whose legacy of death and destruction was unmatched across the cosmos. At some point after his death, Cortland's corpse was recovered by the modern iteration of the Others and interred in a tomb hidden in the depths of the Ravencroft Institute.
MODERN TIMES
Cortland's corruption at the hands of the Others tainted his bloodline, as his distant descendant Roscoe Kasady was abusive towards his wife and son; while Roscoe's son Cletus Kasady went on to become a symbiote-augmented serial killer with an unprecedented body count, ultimately being the one to facilitate Knull's release from his prison. Following this, the cult infiltrated Ravencroft intending to resurrect Cortland when the time was right.
When Knull arrived on Earth, he reanimated Cortland as a reward for his years of loyal service, bonding him to a symbiote and dubbing him Plague. Attacking the guards who responded to the disturbance and draining their life-force, Cortland declared his intent to avenge his descendant Cletus' death by killing Eddie Brock and teleported away.
