"I’m a healer not your mum, now either quit crying, or go where I can’t hear."
Name
Elsie
Race / Age
Human, 25
Personality
Elsie can be… somewhat cold. And grumpy. And pragmatic. She doesn’t like trusting people and she doesn’t like counting on them. Even when you get to know her, she doesn’t really tend to warm up to people (although she does treat members of the Virtuous Company
somewhat less disdainfully than the general populace. Occasionally. If she's in a good mood.). She generally errs on the cynical side - whilst she used to be angry and bitter, now she’s just… kinda tired. She doesn’t really have the energy anymore for righteous anger, she knows better than to hope for things to improve, although she is quite capable of getting annoyed at people for...lesser offences. She can be kinda rude sometimes (although she prefers to think of it as forwardness) even towards her patients, although some find her standoffish-ness to be oddly calming (at least she’s not flinching at the blood gushing out of your abdomen, or screaming.) She doesn’t tend to spare people’s feelings just because, but she doesn’t go out of her way to get on the wrong side of people off either.
Backstory
Elsie’s is a story that’s all too common. Born in a small village on the outskirts of Auroch, when bandits inevitably raided the small settlement it was ‘too far’ for The Ruling Council to send help. Elsie, only five years old at the time, hid from them under the floorboards of the village tavern where she occasionally helped sweep the floors to earn money to help her parents. She managed to escape detection, but she couldn’t escape the truth that she was, for better or for worse, all alone in the world. Realising that there was no way she would be able to survive alone in an empty village, she packed her bags that night, and left for the Capital City under the cover of darkness.
It was a harsh journey and an even harsher arrival seeing as as a young girl travelling alone, she was an immediate target for all kinds of unsavoury characters. Through a combination of necessity and lessons-hard-learned, she developed an ability to keep quiet and keep out of sight. As she grew to be older, she learned how to make a grown man cry like a little girl with a well placed knee, and as she grew older still and fell in with the aforementioned unsavoury characters, the knee became a poisoned knife and the grown men became anyone she was pointed at by her new ‘friends’.
By the age of fifteen, she was well and truly hardened, bitter at the world and The Ruling Council for her circumstances, and unable to truly trust anyone, even if she wanted to. She was beginning to make a name for herself as a, if not necessarily brilliant, competent and reasonably talented assassin, able to sneak into places easily, assisted by the fact that she was still young and relatively innocent-looking.
And then, lo and behold, she discovered her true calling as a healer all at once. Kinda.
She had a job to assassinate one of the court healer’s assistants - a young woman relatively new to the post who, surprise surprise, looked a little like Elsie. She carried out the job with ease, and disposed of the body, and was just about to leave to collect payment when the healer, an elderly woman with rapidly failing eyesight and early-stage dementia, mistook Elsie for the assistant. Seeing an opportunity to get cosied up to a wide assortment of nobles with an even wider assortment of targets painted on their backs, Elsie assumed the other girl’s place and name (Marcy) , and thus began the most peaceful years of her life.
Over a period of five years, Elsie learned everything she could about healing and medicine - picking up a few healing spells along the way. Gradually, she stopped actively searching for contracts, instead preferring to spend her time learning about science and the human body, how to heal instead of hurt. She told herself that her interest was purely academic - she’d discovered an enquiring mind and keen intelligence that had been left more or less un-nurtured by her previous life, but that didn’t change the fact that she was starting to enjoy her work and spending time with the old healer, and her old skills and abilities were beginning to deteriorate through a lack of use.
And then, as things are wont to do, it all came crashing down around her ears. One night, the old healer was murdered, the next, Elsie was no longer Marcy, and had run off, back to where she came from. She was uncertain whether the old healer’s death was meant as a message for her, a punishment for leaving her old life, or if it was completely unrelated, but Elsie was certain of something- she wanted revenge. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as good as she used to be. Her disappearance meant that the hole she left in the market had been filled by a dozen younger, more skillful assassins, leaving Elsie stranded and frozen out by all her old contacts, with no means of making money seeing as her job as a healer was somewhat illegitimate.
She was homeless, jobless, and prospectless, sleeping rough and just about ready to throw in the towel when a deus ex machina arrived in the form of a couple of badly injured members of the Virtuous Company. They weren’t too fussed about legitimacy, so she offered to help them in return for a small sum. She saved their lives, and in turn, they told her about the company, and finally, she was home.
So far, she has been with the Virtuous Company for a little over four years - treating wounds and illnesses both major and minor in return for room, board, and a cut of the profits. She’s improved her physical abilities somewhat during this period in order to be able to defend herself should the need arise, but she prefers working as a healer as she sees it as more intellectually stimulating.
Physical Talents
She worked as an assassin as a child - relying more on her ability to blag her way through closed doors than anything else, but she still has skills in the arena of hand to hand combat, using knives, and general sneakiness. She’s nowhere near as good as she used to be however, and whilst she can hold her own against an opponent who’s not too much bigger than she is and is of a similar skill level, she’s not exactly a one-woman army in this regard,
She is, however a pretty good healer. Ready with an arsenal of herbs, poultices, and magical plants, Elsie has a remedy for most things, presuming you haven’t pissed her off at any point in the recent past. On the inverse of that, Elsie is just as versed in poisons as she is in their antidotes, having relied upon them during her time as an assassin, and then later on developing a fascination for them.
Magical Talents
Muffling Spell - A
low-tier spell she learnt as a child, quiets her own footsteps so she can sneak into and out of places more easily.
Pain Killer Spell - Basically magic-morphine except without the being high part. Less painful for the recipient and less exhausting for Elsie than a standard heal spell, it’s useful in a wide variety of circumstances.
low-tierDrowsy Spell - A
low-tier spell that’s useful for getting patients to shut up and stop screaming/freaking out/moving whilst she’s trying to carry out more complex procedures and spells.
Calm Spell - A
low-tier spell that act to calm the immune response, which can be helpful in treating certain illnesses and injuries, and in relieving symptoms. Also helps with allergies to a certain degree.
Healing (Injuries) - A
mid-tier healing spell -> takes a while and is kinda painful for the patient and exhausting for Elsie, but will thoroughly heal any injuries sustained by the target so long as Elsie is aware of them and can direct energy towards them.
Cleanse (Illnesses) - A
mid-tier healing spell -> Purges the body of any unwanted ‘foreign bodies’ such as pathogens and toxins completely and thoroughly so long as Elsie is familiar with the thing she’s trying to cleanse (e.g. she couldn’t cure a poison unless she knew what it was). Is, again, time consuming and exhausting, and consequences for failure or misdirection can be dire, ranging from early to late stage symptoms of various autoimmune conditions that can sometimes be more devastating than the initial threat.
Equipment
In her day to day life, she carries a variety of items used in her work as a healer - ranging from commonly used herbs to clean bandages and the like. She also carries a knife, which she claims is for cutting herbs and healer-y things, but is really for self defence, and in case she happens to run into her mentor’s killer.
When travelling, she carries a backpack of standard supplies - water, cured meat in case of an emergency, a change of clothes, rope, a herbalist’s almanac, a notebook and writing implement. She carries a separate pack with a more comprehensive first aid kit as well. If there's a cart for luggage and she's going on a longer journey, she will sometimes take a more comprehensive library, containing volumes on the physiology of different races along with books about more specialist topics than she would usually encounter.
Fears
Abandonment/Betrayal - There’s a reason why she doesn’t let people in. She’s experienced this far too many times from far too many angles to trust that it won’t happen, and it’s something she’s always looking out for. When it does happen, she tries not to let it get to her, but inside, she’s devesetated every time.
Small Spaces - Hiding under the floorboards whilst everyone you ever knew gets brutally murdered will do that to a person.
Being Alone - As much as she pushes people away, being completely alone reminds her a little too much of the past for her to be comfortable with it.
Edited 08/09/17 for a few spelling/grammar mistakes I spotted and a couple of other mostly cosmetic changes, went more into detail with equipment as well.
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