“So, the plan as such is for you to provide day to day healing support for the town while I provide combat healing support, talking to Sula usually the town healers who did that work for the guards directly, however here I am also a town healer. You're mostly just after the ability to start bringing apprentices in? What about levelling runs to help your primary class grow, or are there any resources you specifically would prefer? I know this is a bit but it's hard to get a solid plan for what your needs are over like two vague letters before you arrived”
Sitting on some of the treatment beds we were chatting about the next plan, and I was trying to get a good feel for what Artis wanted or would like from being part of this settlement. While officially he had accepted pay for the job from Mircha, I was realising the risk of a new settlement was greater than anyone really had warned me. Not like my parents actually spoke to me much, but it seems most people I dealt with either didn’t really understand the risk factors or intentionally down played them in conversation until I moved here.
“Honestly the apprentice roles are the main goal, and most extra’s I get I will be trading towards that. Not to speak poorly of the city lords, but most of them are focused on consolidating enough power to give humanity a seat at the table politically on a global scale while also focusing on defence as they are terrified that one day a wild blood clan or something is going to try to wipe them out. But this means a lot of people in the larger cities are under educated and under cared for unless they develop a desired core. Helping those younger people earlier is really my focus, although it would be good to level more if possible simply healing here should help. I am sort of curious how many diseases people's levels are barely keeping at bay here, honestly only just getting houses properly set up now and no real bathing facilities that aren’t a river? So far luck and average levels over ten is all that has kept gastrointestinal influenza off your doorstep”
Looking over he must have seen the horror on my face, as he quickly jumped up and started reassuring me “It’s fine, you can just treat it with hydration, most things that would impact a small community these days in a few settlements can be managed with common sense. Healers, thanks usually to their mana types or skills, get sick a lot less often. Then it is really just common sense, you would have been fine”
“No doubt Mircha had a plan for this, I hope, but at least that shouldn’t be an issue with you here now as much. So, you're an entirely different kind of healer with much more in depth schooling then I have on this. No holds, share your thoughts and what you would do if you could here. Our goals are reducing any health risks, being available to heal emergency issues, provide general treatments, improve quality of life in the settlement and then grow the personal strength of each of us” Pulling out my notebook I hoped Artis had some good ideas, as my own goal list was fairly personal and didn’t have a lot of specific clear action points we could use to improve things around the settlement.
“Okay, so I will share my class details with you in a moment as that might help. But I think first things will be myself going around and purifying as many places as I can. If you join me and watch what my mana does with this skill you might have enough mana to learn the skill or something related to it which could be helpful. After that we need to work out our schedule. I want at least two days off per eight, just by the way. Otherwise I have a few ideas that might help with improving quality of life but those are mostly focused on a bit later down the track by either helping crafters create things or finding good resources for things. One point might be if possible to create or find more of the mana gems in here? I can feel they are definitely having a very minor restorative effect, its almost negligible by itself, but if you used these throughout the town for renewable lighting it might help reduce disease along with boosting natural recovery for minor effects like stress or nutritional shortages in diet though no doubt the cooks have skills that help with that”
Steadily I stopped writing as he spoke, realising how little thought I had put into actually being a good healer and founder for this settlement, compared to someone barely a year or two older then I was who had been actually planning what he would do to help a new settlement instead of flying by a wings edge like I was.
“Alright, yeah, definitely those are great ideas. For schedule I am happy for you to pick two days each eight to have off and I will let my hunting team know I have to be here in case I am needed on those days. Otherwise Ember here will triage anyone injured and let us know if someone arrives, so you can work in the store room or read in your bedroom, or anything else close by really, and he will act as our reception” On hearing his name and job Ember jumped up onto the bed next to me and bulged out as large as he could, which was adorable even if I couldn’t tell if he actually thought it was an important job or just wanted some attention. “That’s right buddy, you are the cornerstone of this healing operation for sure”.
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Turning back to Artis I took a moment to remember where I was at thought process wise before starting up again. “So, two days off no problem, just take your pick and if for any reason you have to cover those days if an emergency happens you can take the make-up day the next day you are meant to work. Otherwise I believe Mircha has your pay sorted right?” As his nod I continued “Great, otherwise I definitely agree on your other points. The next thing I would love to do is get some of your class information and go around checking out the town to sterilise things, it gives us a good excuse to introduce you to some people as well. Beyond this I can definitely make more of those gems, I actually have a device for it and its my own personal mana affinity and its related to the mana in the cave so they should grow fairly quickly, so we can add that to the list for sure. Anyway, are you happy to share your class info? Even just class and skills I should know about would be great”
“Yeah of course, let me pull my status up though, I can’t remember it all perfectly and don’t want to misinform by accident”
(Author note: The information below is what Artis is sharing, so it isn’t an actual system message and parts read like dialog, but it is the easiest way to condense this information and be readable)
Class: Recovery Specialist Healer Mana affinity: Regenerating Spring (Rare water/air mana sub-type) Skills:
- Sanitise: Uses mana to clear an area for any diseases and toxins that are considered harmful to any living being considered friendly to caster. Costs 15 mana per cubic metre of material destroyed.
- Regenerative pulse: Sends a pulse of mana out, with improved effectiveness if the targeted patient is being touched by the caster. Pulse will travel through the body repairing all damage found starting from point of contact or point spell hits target.
- Create Regenerative water: Create water imbued with regenerative mana. Cost is variable, if high quality water is provided cost is reduced. Water will self maintain if healing aspected mana is available ambiently, but this skill can also be used to restore capacity to water.
- Focused healing: Caster can focus on a specific injury and expend mana to heal the area. This skill uses the body's natural processes, and cannot regrow anything the target cannot regrow naturally.
- Disease recovery: Caster can expend mana to directly augment a target's immune system against a targeted illness. If the target recovers from this illness the enhanced antibodies may be passed down family lines as if they were natural developments.
“A few notes, Sanitise is actually a lot more mana efficient then it sounds, I only pay an initial casting ‘deposit’ of sorts then it only really costs anything if it finds anything to cleanse. This also makes it easy to gauge if it finds anything which helps locate sources of outbreaks, at least according to the reading I did, it is a really common skill for healers in larger cities to take where outbreaks could rapidly spread. Otherwise Disease recovery is my most potent skill, it actually is the skill that came from my core, and is why I have such a specialised rare class already. I also have some general skills like rank 2 mend, and camping”.
Sitting back and looking over the notes I realised just how fateful Artis joining our settlement was, I specialised in immediate injury and could even regrow limbs wherever needed but I was functionally useless when it came to illness, although I could handle it by just repairing what it damaged it would be a slow and expensive process. Artis had the opposite problem, so both being moderately specialised like this while both being able to handle general healing as needed was going to be a massive boon. Already I was thinking of how we could work out some kind of healing hot bath as well, combining healing flames and water.
“So, first we should go and start cleaning up the settlement a bit with your skill, see if there are any areas of concern, and introduce you to some people. Secondly, looking at your skills and mine, plus this cave, I think I have an idea to solve some of your hygiene concerns. We should build a bathhouse, so when we find him we might need to grab Bren to convince him to do some building for us. He is the earth mage who helped build this caves rooms to". Artis looked to be in thought as he got up to leave the cave with me, but judging from his dancing around Ember was on board, which was great because I was hoping he would be helpful to keep it clean as I imagined a dirty bath house was almost as bad as no bath house for hygiene of a settlement.