The story takes place at the castellated abbey of the "happy and dauntless and sagacious" Prince Prospero. Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge during this walled abbey to flee the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they shall await the top of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut. Prospero holds a masked ball one night to entertain his guests in seven colored rooms of the abbey.