Welcome to the Merrylin Museum, a dedicated archive of specimens and artefacts of unclassified origin. Perhaps myth, perhaps something else, the collection is maintained by curator and custodian, Alex CF.

According to modern folklore, in 2006, an abandoned townhouse and former orphanage in central London was scheduled for demolition as part of the extension of a cross-city railway line. The owners had long since passed away and the building had become structurally unstable. In the early planning stages, a cavity was found below the house itself. Further investigation revealed a hidden stairwell, which descended two storeys below the surface. At the base of the stairs was a brick wall.  When the wall was finally breached, a vast cellar was revealed that spread way beyond the footprint of the house above. The cellar was filled with a huge number of wooden shipping crates dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. The crates contained thousands of unclassified biological specimens, collected, dissected, and preserved by many forgotten scientists, professors and explorers. The collection also housed many artefacts of strange origin, fragments of forgotten civilisations, of ideas and belief systems lost to the ravages of time.

But the most curious aspect of this discovery was the man responsible for its existence – the enigmatic, mysterious gentleman who had gathered together this wealth of relics that challenged our understanding of nature, of species that had never before been witnessed by the modern world, of objects which defied physical laws —Thomas Theodore Merrylin.

Thomas Merrylin, 1832