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 Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:54 pm
IN PROGRESS
Character name: Michael Bloodstone
Character age: 42
Nationality: English
Background/History: Michael Bloodstone was the sixth of nine children born to Gregory and Julia Bloodstone, a simple family of tailors with little hope of rising from their poverty to reattain aristocracy. The family name had been tarnished in a ravaging fire several generations ago, destroying the Bloodstone fortune and estate.
Michael was treated as nothing more than a means to get more money, running petty errands and occasionally pinching food when there was not enough to go around at home. He wanted something better than what he had, but there were no means. While the rest of his brothers were training to be laborers, the wiry Michael was teaching himself to read from bits of newspaper and his family's coveted copy of the bible.
With his limited amount of literacy, he was just barely able to secure an apprenticeship with a traveling doctor, Horace Smithson. Working as his hapless assistant, Michael would watch the procedures and make a careful study of the sorts of treatments the doctor used, and the surgeries he tried. When the doctor chose to move on to another town outside of London, Michael bid farewell to his hometown and roved with his new mentor across the countryside.
While in Bath, at the age of twenty-three, Michael was offered the opportunity to put his knowledge to the test. Halfway through the surgery, by a careless slip of the hand, he ended up gouging into his own right eye. Smithson abandoned him immediately as a failure, and Michael with nothing but his medical knowledge was meant to fend for himself. He offered his services as a practicing doctor, and with the small change he made off of his remedies and placebos, he chose to delve into the world of alcohol. In bars, one was meant to be crass, and without a pair of strong fists to do his talking he whittled his scalpel constantly in the event of a barfight. He had a penchant for what is today known as moonshine, the strong stuff, preferring it to ales. A cure-all of his own, he felt. At the ripening age of thirty-six he courted a young woman, eventually getting in too deep and concieving a child. It was too much responsibility and he fled, promising her he would return when he was able to be a fatherfigure.
Personality: Vulgar, quite vulgar. Living a rough early life opened his eyes and ears to all sorts of things unfit to speak of in the presence of women. His experience in bars has sharpened his reflexes, and if threatened he reaches into the inner pocket of his coat for his rusted old scalpel. When drunk, he seems a bit less cruel about his choice of words, though it's difficult to understand him between the slurred words and the singing.
Short physical description: Medium height and medium build, though little of it is muscle. He has stringy brown hair and beady brown eyes. He wears clothes that have seen better days years before, many times patched or scratched open in various places. He has a cheap metal flask that is usually filled with some form of alcohol.
How did they find out about Moreau and what brought them to interact with him? In six more years he'd stirred up trouble. People were becoming familiar with his name, and chased him away for the occasional mistakes he'd made on patients in the past. Poverty was striking again. He could hardly afford alcohol any more, having to improvise with his dingy bathtub. He scanned the In the newspaper was a promising ad for a scientific job working with animals.
Animals, as he recalled, would not be able to converse with others about his medical failures. Perfect patients, in other words. He wrote off to Moreau, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this could be the ticket out of the disaster he'd made of his life.
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Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:29 pm
Character name: Emily Talbot
Character age: 35
Nationality: British
Background/History: Born into a middle class family, it was hoped that Emily, with her impeccable grooming and extensive education into the qualities that would make her a good wife, would marry into an upper class family, thus bringing more honour to hers. However, it was not to be. Whilst she never begrudged her fate and quite enjoyed some of her lessons (botany and gardening), she simply wished to have more. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to be a wife of many domestic skills AND do something to give her life a little more drive? As new laws were passed during her ‘wild child’ years of young adulthood, Emily could almost feel a sense of empowerment. Not so much so as to overthrow a male, since that was improper for a young lady. But just enough for her to feel that maybe she could be a role model to other women like her. Her choices in life were hard for her family to accept, but she kept them happy by promising that she would settle with a high gentlemen AFTER she had done what she wanted to do first. Finding many doors of opportunity locked, Emily likened to the idea of being a teacher. What better way to infuse a stronger female personality and also mould young minds? She taught music, singing, cooking, literature, languages, religion, and home sciences primarily, but would sometimes dip into science with the odd interesting fact she had gleamed from books. It wasn’t until the great garden craze blossomed in Britain that Emily became totally obsessed with a more scientific view of the world. True, like many people, she appreciated the sheer brilliance of flowers, in particular the exotic ones brought from afar. But their angular yet sultry forms, the combination of male and female sex organs in one plant, and how some could trap insects fascinated Emily. With the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Emily truly admired his vision of how one thing changes to another over time, and even witnessed this in its most basic of forms when her flowers cross-bred into unusual hybrids.
Personality: Emily is very ‘prim and proper,’ and has a strong sense of what is lady-like and what isn’t. Despite her interests and greatest desires, she tries her best to stay true to her upbringing and supposed ‘nature’ to be delicate, fragile and polite. She is generally helpful and kind, and as such, finds the whole business of vivisection to be difficult to watch and clean up after. But she’s always first there with bandages. On her slightly more annoying side, she has one rule for herself and a totally different rule for others. Its alright for her, a self-promoted female icon, to get her hands dirty and work in awkward conditions, but its not alright for other women. In this, she could be described as a preener and a glory-hog. If she isn’t being noticed, she isn’t happy.
Short physical description: Of average body size and 5’ 2” in height, she is neither curvaceous nor thin but has very good posture, holding herself with an air of grace and demureness. A shapely nose and thin lips, Emily is only faintly beautiful and frankly, rather plain. Medium brown eyes to match medium brown hair, often worn short-shoulder length in the ‘bobs’ of the period. She has a slight gap in her two front teeth, which some might affectionately liken to a buck-toothed animal.
How did they find out about Moreau and what brought them to interact with him? The market for exotic flowers from afar just couldn’t satisfy Emily’s curiosity enough. Furthermore, spurred by the intensity of Darwin’s theories, she wondered if there were still primitive plants out there that she could trace back to their modern counterparts. Not to mention maybe a passing glance at these great monkeys and apes that Darwin wrote so much about. After finally gaining admittance on a ship bound for exotic places, she endured the sometimes questionable company and the many transfers between ships in order to get to the places she wanted to see. It was during these transfers that she got lost somewhere, and ended up on a ship to Moreau’s island. Still thinking she would be in a safe place and ready to collect flowers, a shock awaited her on the beach.
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