Dorothy Somerset

In the Fall of 1993, Dorothy Somerset is a 37 year old professor of archaeological anthropology at Rice University in Texas, studying and teaching in the school of the Humanities. Dorothy was raised in Connecticut by her mother, Elizabeth Somerset and father, Reginald Fairfield.

Dorothy specializes in studying and teaching about death traditions in religion and culture across time. The ancient world has always interested her most - a world where death was a common part of life, and where the imagination and necessity fueled stories and legends. It was a very different time.

Through her studies of death, she has encountered a wide variety of knowledge about the esoteric and occult, learning about magical traditions; rituals; or beliefs in spirits, angels, and monsters. She had always seen these traditions as extensions of the stories: ways for ancient peoples to rationalize their beliefs, and attempt to find agency in a cold and chaotic universe.

At the start of our journeys, in August of 1993, Dorothy is teaching a summer class on Ethnographic Anthropology, when she is contacted by Judge Jacob Morrison, who summons her to his chambers at the Federal Court House in Houston, TX. He said that it was about someone she knew: George Lewiston. She arrives to meet him for the first time, and is introduced to Fred Fontaine in an atmosphere that felt all too official. She didn’t know then how unofficial it really was.