A Chirurgeon of Difelin

She received a typical "farm-wife's" education, learning to spin flax and perform other domestic tasks expected of a traditional housewife, but she also received a merchant's education from her father, learning to read and write. Later in life, she went on to study nursing, physick, and magick.

Appearance

Végerdr is a mature-looking woman of thirty-three years, with light blonde hair worn in a long, thin, luxurious braid to the middle of her back, and has the common blue-grey eyes of the Yoruach. She has a ruddy complexion, and her seamed skin reflects her years of care and worry.

She dresses conservatively in the attire appropriate to her class and station, an ankle-length linen under-dress or shift, with the neck closed by a brooch, over which she wears a hangerock or an apron-skirt, a shorter length woolen dress suspended by shoulder straps fastened by brooches, constructed of two separate panels. When working as a healer and nurse, she hangs an additional fabric panel by loops from the brooches of her hangerock over the suspended dress, along the lines of an apron, and carries needed items (e.g., keys, scissors, needles, a knife, and a whetstone) suspended by cords or chains from her brooches, or from her belts. She frequently carries all of her other necessary surgical tools (knives, saws, scalpels, retractors, and such) in a black leather bag.

She often wears the ankle-length coat-like robes and mantle of a physician and scholar over her suspended dress. She often uses a tri-lobed brooch to fasten the neck opening of her clothing.

When not working, she frequently strings glass or amber beads, or other jewelry between the brooches of her hangerock.

She typically wears calf-high leather boots, with linen socks in summer and woolen socks in winter.

As a married woman (even a widow), she always wears a knotted kerchief as a head covering in public.

She also applies body paint in enough quantity to seem unusual, a popular style in Difelin these days.

Home

Végerdr lives at #4 Caorthann Lane, Vôdinaz Village District, Difelin, between Upper Mocholmoc Street and Nornir Lane, in the former two-story residence of a family of noble birth. The building has been well-worn by heavy daily use, but is now undergoing extensive repairs.

Végerdr's two-story house has a flat roof with small windows. Built of stone, it appears subtly unpleasant, with harsh, angular lines. The windows are securely latched from within and crisscrossed with metal bars.

Servants

Végerdr has three servants: a live-in manservant who handles maintenance and repairs around the property, a cook/alewife who comes in during the day to provide meals, and a domestic who comes in during the day to clean, take out trash, serve dinner and handle laundry.

The cook is a mature Aukrian woman named Gaëlle who lives in Lower City. She has a friendly, curious, inquisitive, cheerful, and soft-hearted nature, but is also a greedy, lazy spendthrift. She is immoral but brave. She is a collector of porcelain, china, and crystal. Despite her faults, she's an excellent cook, well-trained and experienced. She is treated justly and kindly, but with little discipline. She receives a bonus to her pay every two months, and Végerdr uses her own magick to benefit Gaëlle. Gaëlle has worked for Végerdr for less than 5 years and is loyal, always attempting to further the ends of Végerdr, even at great risk.

The domestic is a youthful Yoruan woman named Herildr who lives in Ifan district (above the Snarl). She has a friendly, suspicious, cautious, compassionate, sensitive and forgiving nature. She has an active intellect. She is an energetic and lustful young woman. She is mean with her money and has an interest in politics. She's an untrained peasant who is treated justly and kindly, with firm and fair discipline administered often. She receives a bonus to her pay every two months, and Végerdr uses her own magick to benefit Herildr. She has worked for Végerdr for less than a year and her loyalty is fair; she will support Végerdr's cause as long as no great risk to herself is involved.

The manservant is a middle-aged Yoruan man named Ingyarr. He is of low intelligence and such ugly appearance that he makes most people unease and desire to get away from his brutishness. He is dirty, moody, courteous but introverted, and soft-hearted. He has a dull intellect and low intelligence. He is irreligious and slothful, and miserly with his money. He has an interest in nature. He is an untrained peasant who is treated justly and kindly, with firm and fair discipline administered often. Végerdr once saved his life directly and personally. She uses her own magick to benefit Ingyarr. He has served her more than five years, and he is fanatically loyal to her. He serves unquestioningly and would lay down his own life without hesitation if necessary. He is undertaking the repairs to the house, and also performs grounds-keeping and other menial tasks. He is exceptionally strong, but also exceptionally dim-witted and foolish.

Personality and Mannerisms

She is given to absentminded humming.

Because of her frequent work with the sick, dying, and dead, she is neurotically obsessed with cleanliness.

She is a shy, friendly woman, but often of a morose disposition. The tragedies of her mother, her siblings, her husband and her own dead children have profoundly affected her. She is often covetous of the good fortunes of others, and has a clinical and hard-hearted nature, despite her kindly and helpful tendencies. She is somewhat immoral, with only an average piety toward her gods.

Her father always intended for Végerdr to become a priestess of Frijaza, wife of Vôdinaz, the father-god of the Yoruach pantheon, and she studied for some time as a healer and midwife in the goddess's service.

However—although she is amply qualified to join the priestesses—she is too free-spirited and immoral to abide by the strict obedience and ethics required of the goddess's cult. Nevertheless, her concern for the health and lives of children and mothers drives her to volunteer as a nurse at the goddess's shrines throughout the city, where her skill at healing rivals that of many physicians and priests.

She believes that the "faith-healing" and herbal medicines of the priestesses are better served by empirical studies of human anatomy, and are limited by their superstitious taboos and stigmas associated with the priesthoods' public belief in divine or supernatural retribution for the mutilation of the dead.

Végerdr is profoundly fascinated by the seemingly infinite mysteries of the human form, and is devoting her career as a healer to the scientific study of the body.

She believes that freedom and independence are important to life and happiness. She views this freedom as the only means by which each person can achieve true satisfaction and happiness. Law, order, social forms, and anything else that tends to restrict or abridge individual freedom is (in her opinion) wrong, as she believes that each individual is capable of achieving self-realization and prosperity through his or her own agency.

Although she uses her specialized knowledge for the good of humanity, serving as a skilled nurse, midwife, and healer, she must keep her experiments secret from her clientele. Thus, she fosters the appearance of being an "ordinary" physician who gains her knowledge from ancient texts and academic lectures. However, despite the public opprobrium, she has no desire to flee society. Indeed, her entire profession is based on her close proximity to civilization. It would prove impossible to practice her calling in the desolate wilderness, for she needs a constant supply of fresh cadavers on which to experiment, and these can only be safely secured in a large town or city. She frequently has need to hire willing assistants to help her secure new supplies of corpses for study, or thwart official investigations by the local authorities. In exchange, she can effectively treat her assistants' (and their loved ones') wounds and mend their broken bones.

Although she rarely practices such skills on the living, Végerdr is a mistress of small edged cutting weapons, particularly the surgical knife, and has a particularly high-quality example of such a tool that could inflict a considerable amount of damage in self-defense.

She is skilled in the typical healing practices of a nurse and midwife, but her studies have improved her abilities beyond those of a typical midwife. In addition, she's quite skilled at performing autopsies and fixing time and cause of death, if she's allowed to practice on the corpse of the deceased. To maintain her skills, however, she needs to dissect a corpse at least once a month.

She's often been involved in murder investigations by local authorities, who find her insights invaluable to murder investigations even if they won't let her "desecrate" corpses by cutting into them.

She has an idiosyncratic knack for research projects, and a natural affinity for anatomy. She is currently researching magickal methods of embalming her subjects.

She has little interest in the nætherworld or the undead, except as a scientific curiosity.

Family

Végerdr "Holy-Field" is a daughter of Arnverdr "Eagle-Keeper." Her father was an adventuresome middle-class merchant sea-captain who also served as a priest of Hlér the Yoruach sea-god.

Her family settled in Difelin four generations ago. She is one of nine children. Her mother and five siblings died when she was young, and she has three living siblings, an older brother and sister, and a younger sister. Her father still lives, an aging sea-captain still often away from Difelin in search of trade.

Végerdr is popular in her family, liked by most of her relatives and enjoying the special favor of some of them. The head of her clan is an uncle, her father's brother. She has a more loving regard for her family than is typical in Yoruach culture, and grew up in a wealthy household by the standards of Difelin's middle-class.

Végerdr is a widow with two living children of her own, one adopted and the other legitimate, both now grown to adulthood. She has lost four children, two of them legitimate. As a result of some ill-fated romances in her youth, she bore two illegitimate children who were given up for adoption. One was raised by charity until his death, while the other died in fosterage.

Her husband, also a sea-merchant, was lost at sea several years ago.

Connections

As a life-long resident of Difelin from a wealthy middle-class background, Végerdr has a large number of friends, acquaintances and foes in Difelin. She can call on contacts for information and help but must also watch out for enemies.

Allies

Doctor Ragngautr

Through a special connection with a like-minded physician named Ragngautr in the Ifan District, she gained access to a number of "forbidden" medical journals and texts, and has obtained a formidable knowledge of human anatomy through years of extensive research. Ragngautr is a very good physician, but has been outcast from the profession particularly because of his "blasphemous" medical practices and studies. Ragngautr owns a stall in the Snarl where he continues to practice medicine and study anatomy as a hobby, and provides medical aid to the poor residents of the district while training two apprentices, whom he treats with warmth and consideration. The Snarl being what it is, there is seldom a shortage of cadavers to study, and Ragngautr has two apprentices whom he treats warmly and considerately.

Végerdr herself is a former pupil of Doctor Ragngautr, but she has (unbeknownst to him) surpassed her master by discovering amid his "forbidden" texts magickal means to aid and inform her research. She has increasingly turned to the dissection of cadavers to improve her medical expertise. She must resort to unsavory grave robbers to supply her with fresh corpses for study, because of laws prohibiting exhumation and mutilation of the dead and of the public beliefs in divine or supernatural retribution for mutilating the dead. She carries out her dissections in the most secret confines of her home, reinforcing the notion that she takes part in arcane, cabalistic practices.

Mistress Hjôrvôr

Végerdr has always had a fascination with magick, and received her initial magickal training from Mistress Hjôrvôr.

Apprentices

Végerdr has been a practicing physician for three years now, and is known for her superior workmanship. She has attracted two apprentices, a mature man named Alrík and a young woman named Eyhild.

Apprentices require a lot of Végerdr's time. She must surrender the opportunity to work on one patient a day for every apprentice she has. This relationship cannot be neglected except in the most dire of emergencies. Of course, apprentices can help Végerdr as well. While in her service, they are each nearly proficient in healing and herbalism. In addition, they can attend up to four patients per day (their studies take up the rest of their time).

Alrík

Alrík is proud and haughty, a member of the noble class. He looks down on Végerdr for being "base-born," but respects her abilities as a healer. He is a mature man of twenty-nine years old with an active intellect and helpful and kind tendencies. He has an unkempt appearance, but is as neurotic about cleanliness as Végerdr herself. He has a somewhat better-than-middling talent for healing, but thinks himself better than he is. He is nearly ready to graduate from Végerdr's service and become a journeyman healer in his own right. He has an interest in horticulture and is a better herbalist than Végerdr.

Eyhild

Eyhild is a young woman of just fifteen years old, but she already has more natural talent for healing than Alrík. She is curious and inquisitive, modest, easygoing, and soft-hearted. She is foolhardily brave, and is also greedy. She comes from a middle-class background of less affluence than Végerdr. She is a driven young woman, determined to be a full-fledged doctor and not simply a nursing priestess. Végerdr is particularly fond of her; she reminds Végerdr of herself.

Enemies

The Priestess Farvé

Her former administrator at the Temple of Frijaza, the priestess Farvé. Farvé is a peon and has no real pull in the temple, being still no more than a postulant with little talent for temple administration. But she used to oversee the cohort of acolytes of which Végerdr was a member during her five years as an acolyte to the temple. Farvé is a fanatic worshipper of Frijaza and a law-abiding servant of the temple. She and Végerdr clashed over the differences between faith healing and empirical medicine, and Farvé is jealous of Végerdr's wealth and subsequent success at becoming a physician. Despite the seventeen years that have passed since Végerdr left the novitiate, Farvé continues to be bothered by Végerdr and can't restrain from quips and put-downs when she is around Végerdr. For her own part, Végerdr is annoyed by Farvé, but "colors within the lines" whenever she and Farvé have to work together at the temple clinic.

Possessions

Végerdr's family has no significant ancestral claims. However, she has amassed a personal fortune valued at 5687 silver ôra. She also receives a monthly allowance of 462 silver ôra from her father and from various investments made with several trading concerns throughout Difelin. She also possesses valuable jewelry (or artwork) worth 880 silver ôra. When her father passes, she stands to inherit 275 silver ôra from her father's estate.

Laboratory

Végerdr maintains a small lantern-lit laboratory in the basement of her house behind an impressive, armored door with a unique lock. The door is otherwise impossible to move or budge.

The laboratory itself contains a cool room for anatomical samples and the preservation of other items, in which jars containing the dissected remains of body parts are kept on ice. The samples in the cool room are mostly from human sources, though some are unusual: fused limbs, adult-sized body parts with infantile characteristics, completely new skin, flexible bone, and so on.

A collection of otherworldly, strange devices and an array of surgical tools are stored in a cabinet. More medical paraphernalia litter the small tables and floor of the laboratory.

Végerdr has produced a number of lifeless chimerae of various shapes and sizes, made of components from mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and, on rare occasions, human subjects. Some of these chimerae are as bizarre as human hands with rats' eyes grafted onto the fingertips and lizards' legs for providing locomotion, but most are more mundane.

Dark Gift

As a consequence of her studies and experimentations, Végerdr can cause her hands to glow with a blue, flickering aura. This frigid radiance can both drain and (eventually) paralyze Végerdr's victims. Any living creature touched by her icy hands is affected as if by frostbite. Végerdr can activate or deactivate this power at will. It never interferes with her spellcasting. Also, the cold blue aura provides light like a dim torch (certainly enough light to walk or read by).