Cartaphilus is an immortal male sorcerer-like being from The Ancient Magus' Bride whose body endlessly rots while he continues to live, making him both a feared experimentalist and a tragic figure fused from two different people, Cartaphilus and Joseph.
He is infamous among magi as a “Wandering Jew”-type existence and is regarded by Elias Ainsworth as a monster in human shape.
Cartaphilus is a man cursed with a powerful “curse of immortality” that prevents him from dying while his body continually collapses.
He has lived for such an extremely long time that he casually calls Elias Ainsworth “shorty,” implying centuries of existence.
Among magicians he is associated with the legend of the “Wandering Jew” because of his unending life, his curse, and his ceaseless wandering.
Despite his childish, playful way of speaking, he is feared for his cruelty, amorality, and grotesque experiments with living beings.
Cartaphilus speaks in an innocent, almost childlike tone, which makes his complete lack of ethics even more unsettling.
He feels no guilt about harming or killing others if it serves his research or survival.
He encourages Matthew to kill cats, treats grave robbing as trivial, and murders nearby bystanders without remorse.
He also threatens Mikhail Renfred and Alice Swayne, forcing them to collect corrupted residues from Ulthar and to retrieve Ruth.
For Cartaphilus, sacrificing others is simply “the way living creatures are.”
He genuinely believes this and never questions his viewpoint.
Elias Ainsworth judges him harshly, describing him as neither human nor beast, but a monster merely wearing a human shape.
Cartaphilus is thus characterized as a cold experimenter whose only consistent motive is to escape his own endless pain.
Cartaphilus is under a curse often described as an “immortality curse” or “curse to live on while the body is endlessly destroyed.”
Because of this, he cannot die even when shot through the head with a gun or when his arms are severed.
His body parts regenerate in a short time, but he still fully experiences “pain.”
The curse is not a blessing but a constant torment: his flesh is always decaying while being forced to persist.
To maintain some functional form, his current body is made up of various “patchwork” pieces taken from other people.
Even so, the rate of bodily collapse has been increasing, making it harder for him to maintain a stable,
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