oh i like this. this all really tickles me, christ on a bike. fuck it, time to get back into advanced. i'm out of uni in a few days anyway.

It's 3:44 AM (fuck, 5:20 AM now) in my timezone at the moment so I don't have time to um... flesh out my ideas. But here's some [i]vibe[/i] material.

[hider=The Royal Physician]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVVf-X1Q2Qw]Atmosphere[/url]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnuQE8S5TCs]More atmosphere. Go on, do it.[/url]
[hider=Image][img]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b1/cd/c5/b1cdc5beae156238a08548daa41449f3.jpg[/img][/hider]

[b]Some days ago[/b]

It wasn't the jewels that she found valuable in the dirt-covered caskets. Corpses had a certain significance when dug up under a full moon. It was a well-studied fact.

The caskets were carried down the stairs into her laboratory one-by one. The servants took care to lay them in the moonshine beneath the skylight, surrounding the centerpiece. Strips of shadow laced each casket, twisting around corners, representing a distorted version of the window she knew quite intimately. Pungent smoke clogged the air, writhing its way out of censers and into noses. Anatomical figures and star charts painted on canvas lined the walls where shelves full of vessels and glassware and books did not. Racks of apparatus hedged a maze on the main floor. Scissors, scalpels, saws, hooks, thread, cloth. 

The centerpiece was a cold stone slab. There was a body on it. Clammy and blue. Just resting. A slanted lip rose from the main surface, breaking only to create a small funnel, for pouring. 

Isylt sat on a velvet-cushioned stool in front of a dark wooden writing desk off to the side. Codices and scrolls sat in neat stacks to her left, inks and pens in small divots to her right. In front of her was her new codex. Or, rather, the cheap parchment on which she scribed relevant data. It was to be about blood. Why, how.... what?

She set down her blunt pen and picked up a wicked sharp scalpel. It was always the fine tools in medicine, the ones that blunt quickly and need repair. She plucked the latest page from the stack and hosted herself up to walk over to the slab. Scalpel met skin, connecting hand to body, tracing intricate and precise lines along limbs and flesh. It was not blood that sprung from the cuts, but stench of putrid air. The incense smothered those demons which crawled out, but that made the air no less unpleasant.

She peeled skin and severed veins all night long, laying them out side by side and drawing the results. For this, she used a brush on vellum - pens on parchment were not delicate enough. After she was done with each corpse, she sealed it back in its casket and sent it off for re-burial and moved onto the next one. She repeated this until the sun rose. Then, she went to bed.[/hider]


To clear up some possible confusion I'm not spotting because I'm drinking dumb bitch juice and being awake this early.... The basic idea I'm going for is that Isylt is an esteemed physician who does dubiously legal work with bodies to advance both scientific and magical knowledge. I'm angling for a more morbid take on the "cleric healer" trope. I want to draw on historical theories about alchemy and medicine, and combine them with a folk-tale-esque take on healing magic. I'll write herbs, minerals, and explicit magic into a full character sheet when I (eventually) wake up.