Lord Leslie

"If there was but one chance for you to bring back the one you loved...what would you be willing to do?"

- Lord Leslie

Lord Leslie is the head director of the Royal Medical Society. Along with his right-hand man, Dogol, he spearheads the Society's experiments into raising the dead by having the Émigré Manuscript stolen and using it's forbidden knowledge to revive his daughter, Violet "Mary Vermont.

Background:
Leslie troubles started when his daughter, Violet, ran away with an artist when she was just 17. Though Leslie, his wife and the rest of his family tried to trace her down they didn't heard from her for two years. Leslie didn't see his daughter again until after his wife's wake, when Violet showed up she was holding a baby, her daughter Joshua. Leslie could tell his daughter was had been through a great deal of emotional pain and when he heard she didn't know who the father was he knew what had happened, that the man she had run off with had forced her into prostitution and mistreated her. But Leslie's anger was greater than his sympathies and when she tried to reach out to him he hit her. Leslie's pride was hurt that his daughter had become a whore of course but the main reason for his anger was that his wife had died worrying about Violet and she had never contacted either of them. Solemnly Violet left the wake and her father with her daughter and Leslie suspected he would never see her again.

Leslie would come to regret he greeted his daughter again with anger instead of love and life lost meaning for him. One day however he met one Mary Vermont at a ball. he recognized her as Violet and attempted to make contact however "Mary" as Violet was going by then, had sewn a reputations as a high-class prostitute. Mary's experience with her father had apparently inspired her to achieve some level dignity in her new life as a prostitute and had gained her a noble reputation in the business. Despite her clout she was still a well known prostitute and Leslie could not be seen associating with her because of his own family pride. Shortly after Leslie heard about her new life though Violet died from an unnamed STD. Leslie regretted he never got the chance to reconcile with his daughter and considered himself to be incompetent as a doctor for  not being able to recognize her condition.

The Manuscript of Exiles:
It was Leslie's right-hand man Dogol who brought the research of a man called Patrick Heyworth to his attention. Patrick Heyworth was a man who's wife Elaine had been killed by bandits and he had heard from a traveler about the Émigré Manuscript. The Émigré Manuscript was written by the great sage Roger Bacon, who was purported to have achieved immortality with the knowledge recorded in the book. The book itself was a copy Bacon had made for the Vatican of a much older druidic text that was so old it was feared to be close to disintegration at the time. After the translation Roger achieved a Revelation into the nature of the universe. The traveler knew this because he was a student of Bacon's a student that was alive and well over alive and well over three hundred years after Roger Bacon was last recorded in history! Patrick was considerably rich and an accomplished doctor and alchemist and begged the man to get the Émigré Manuscript for him, offering to pay him well. The man had his own plans for the Émigré Manuscript and intended to use Patrick's experiments as a test for his own schemes and so he happily stole the book for Patrick.

Dogol had kept in contact with Patrick as well once his research began. Once Dogol had confirmed what he had heard was true and that Patrick really did have the means to undo death he reported he whole situation to Leslie. Dogol told Leslie that if the experiment worked it was their responsibility as men of science to reproduce the results and strongly urged him to have the Royal Medical Society sponsor Patrick.