The Weirding Willows is a universe spawned from a mash-up of a hundred different well know characters from fiction all integrated into new story lines where anything can happen but for many their destiny's have already been written, we just didn't k...
Doctor Philippe Moreau is an unkempt man, unshaven and wild hair. His hair is going gray at the temples and has a few wisps of gray running through it, other wise it is a muddy brown color. He is a very tall, lean man.
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Philippe's cheeks are quite drawn as he eats only when his body won't function any longer. Bread, coffee, cheese, cold meats and raw vegetables. His assistant, Montgomery Doolittle often brings back espresso coffee beans that Philippe likes to suck on and chew like candy. That's all he tends to buy and Alice eats the same but more regularly and occasionally allows herself some eggs, milk, tea and her favorite, Orange Marmalade. The food would be ordered and then delivered to the door through the Milkman. There is a service that still runs in some places in England where the Milkman delivers milk, eggs, bread, cheese, most dairy products and some meat products like 'pork pies' and 'cornish pasties'. As Alice usually has to answer the door to him, she gets to order a few things for herself, like the marmalade.
Moreau hates to go into town, banks in particular, so he keeps money around the house in several old pots so he never has to think about it. Alice helps herself whenever she needs it.
Moreau's father worked for the East India Company who gained a lot of success as a buyer and trader of coconut meat (Copra) which was huge at the time. When the East India Company was nationalized in 1874, Philippe's father started his own company selling copra which did very well but Philippe sold the business when his father died, keeping only an island his father owned in the South China Sea. The money lasted a long time and is only now running out.
His father made sure Moreau was well educated by sending him to Oxford so he could study with Charles Darwin, who proved a huge influence on Philippe's thoughts especially on evolution. Moreau's early efforts shocked the college and lost him a friend in Darwin. Only his college friends Henry Jekyll, Donald Lambert, John Clayton, and Griffen Rains stuck by him. Lambert went 'away' so Moreau moved to Willow Weir and took over Lambert's house where he continued his work in peace and solitude, until he met the woman who would be his wife.
After 8 blissful years together, his wife, Sophia Ryborg, disappeared one night and he never heard from her again. Alice was only 6 at the time. She gave Alice an owl necklace before she left that protects her, for most know it as a symbol of the SNOW QUEEN and they fear her wrath should any harm ever come to Alice.
For the next few years, Moreau throws himself back into his work. With the disappearance of his wife and his inability to remember any of their time together, he fills the void in his mind and soul with work. He ignores not only his own health but his daughter Alice as well. Nothing he does, no success he achieves, can fill the hole in his life that his wife left. Like an invisible torturer the missing memories plage him, often teasing him with a glimpse out of the corner of his eyes or her name in a dream, that disappears when he awakes.
Moreau refuses to listen to Alice's stories of strange talking animals in Willow Weir and this new world called Wonderland and attributes them as nothing more than a young girl trying to gain her father's attention, a distraction from his work that Philippe will not stand for. Until that is a woman called Margareete Marche visits with his old college friend Doctor Henry Jekyll with an interesting proposition. To create an army of flying monkeys. However, Margareete takes interest in Alice when Moreau flippantly mentions Wonderland and is very curious to know how Alice got there, and more likely, why she is still alive.
When Philippe finally learns of the effects of the Red Crystals under Willow Weir on the wildlife there, he takes on the badger, Victor Stoker, as an assistant. The two feed off each others thirst for knowledge and Moreau's work evolves tremendously in the short time before he leaves for the South China sea. Philippe has a lot of early success by grinding down the crystal into a serum and using it during surgery on animals to create his first "Mogles."
Unfortunately the crystals power wanes when separated from the main body and needs to be replenished on a regular basis. By the time Moreau realizes this he will be on his island, but that won't stop him from continuing his research.
"The Island Of Doctor Moreau" was written by H. G. Wells and first published in 1896.
The Weirding Willows is a continuation not only of those stories but many others as part of a large interlocking story line that spans many centuries.
