Wilson was born to a poor family of farmers on land owned by Lord Edward Mayhew in northern Avalon. Though Wilson showed some skill at hunting [Hunter], the Mayhew estate had in place severe restrictions on the practice, making it not a very marketable skill for his family. Unfortunately, he showed no promise as a farmer, despite continually assuring his father that he 'had things under control' [Hubris: Overconfident]. In despair, his family sent him off to the Mayhew estate as a servant [Servant] in hopes that he would there find something he was both good at and could do on a regular basis.
Wilson made a servicable servant, and was efficient at his duties, but felt no great pride in doing so. His efficiency gave him plenty of spare time, however, much of which he spent wandering the overgrown and unhunted wilderness that made up the east side of the Mayhew estate. There, what began as a boyhood interest blossomed into a full-fledged obsession: Wilson loved bugs. He loved hunting them down, he loved watching them crawl, hop, and fly, and he loved studying the strange physiology that gave them the ability to do so. With his remarkable patience [Resolve 4] and sharp eyes and ears [Keen Senses] he was able to follow and track the most elusive of them, watching and following for hours until he could get close enough to study them in more detail. He started taking a sketchbook with him on his trips [Artist: Drawing] so that he could record his observations, and began to note certain commonalities and distinguishing traits between the various forms of his prey. Wilson began to dream of completing a catalog of every insect in Avalon, each entry with the same detail he was collecting. That this would be an impossible task for just one man never entered his thinking.
One day, returning late for his duties from his fields, he left his precious notebook on a table in the foyer, thinking to return to collect it later. Lord Mayhew, a fastidious man, saw it and picked it up on his way out to a meeting, so to leave his foyer pristine in his absence.
A brief digression on Lord Edward: the Mayhew family had long ago established itself, and Edward was a fairly wealthy man. Not over- ambitious, and coming from a long line of contented men, he chose to leave the estate at the same size it had been for generations, and at this point it practically ran itself. This placed Edward firmly in the category of the 'idle rich'. Not the type to laze around the manor or to spend his time wooing women, he chose instead to pursue the art of science. At the time he enters our story, he had published several articles in a variety of journals, principally concerning various chemicals and their reactions with and usefulness when combined with other chemicals. The meeting he was attending was, in fact, an assemblage of various members of the Royal Chemistry Society, where he was presenting a paper ostensibly about the reactions of camphor, but whose true purpose was to shoot down the theories presented to the society the previous year by his chief rival, one Jeremy Cook.
Glancing through the notebook on the carriage ride as a way to cure his pre-presentation jitters, Lord Mayhew was astounded by both the detail of the drawings, and the insight present in the anatomical analysis of his young servant. He handed off the notebook while at the meeting to his friend Clarence Jules, a scholar of Animal Physiology, who if anything was more impressed than Edward at its contents. Within the week, he had compiled the most important points and several representative drawings into a paper to be sent to Her Majesty's Journal of Natural Philosophy. Only one thing remained: who to credit the article to?
A search of the Mayhew estate quickly found Wilson, despondent at the loss of his notebook. There was some consternation on Sir Jules' part that Wilson had no surname, a fact that was remedied by Edward by the donation of his own. And thusly, 'Wilson Mayhew' became the youngest person to ever publish an article in a Royal Society journal [Citation].
It was clear that Wilson had great talent, and that this talent did not lie with being a servant all his life, so Edward packed him off to Carleon University [University] where he was trained in a wide variety of skills [Scholar, Courtier, Doctor, Performer]. Being somewhat of a fish out of water among the progeny of the nobility, he was often picked on by those who were there due to their parents wealth instead of their own skill. He had to learn to defend himself as best he could [Athlete, Dirty Fighting], often relying on his dexterity to get him out of scrapes [Footwork 3, Finesse 3] instead of his muscles, which hadn't had much of a chance to develop hunched over blades of grass, scratching out drawings in a notebook [Brawn 1].
Wilson had returned from the University but a scant two years, and was preparing a new paper on the morphology of insect wings when disaster struck the scientific community: Jeremy Cook was denounced by the Inquisition as a heretic for his advocation of Empiricism, was arrested, convicted, and hung. Lord Mayhew loudly decried Sir Cook as getting 'his just deserts' but was secretly appalled at the barbarity and (in his opinion) impiety of the action. Seeing scientific study grind to a halt, he decided to take action. Along with friends and other members of the (former) scientific community, he helped form a system where scientific research could continue and be disseminated, which came to be known as the 'Invisible College'. While the plan was still in its infancy, Wilson got wind of it, marched into Lord Mayhew's office, and demanded to be made a part of it. Edward agreed [Member: Invisible College], and made arrangements for Wilson to be made the offical estate painter [Patron] to enable him to have access to other parts of the country and, indeed, the world. Wilson also received training as a spy [Spy] as another useful component of his undercover role.
Most recently, Edward has sent Wilson to Vodacce, ostensibly to return with paintings of the noble ladies there. ("And these walls could use it! Nothing but landscapes and architecture. Beauty! That's what this place needs!") In truth, he is on a mission for the Invisible College: to draw and catalogue the rather unique variety of spiders that make Vodacce their home [Background: Obligation]. As it tends to be the nobility that keep these spiders as pets, it is to them he has been sent, hoping by flattery and good graces to gain the confidence of these women enough to get a close view of the insects they cohabit with.
This is, of course, nigh impossible for one man to accomplish.
But nobody told Wilson this. And he's not going to figure it out on his own.