Example Character: Altanan, the Medikari

Whoever told you I was bound to "do no harm" was seriously misinformed.

— Altanan, the Medikari

In a world with many dangers, Altana is one of the few with any real understanding of how the human body is put together. She is a Medikari, and though her path to learning has not been easy, Altana has become an expert at patching people up. Medicine can be a profitable venture in Araea, but Altana is driven by a burning desire to understand.

Personality

Cheerful and friendly, Altana has the manners and wit to put her patients at ease and defuse volatile situations. As someone who knows what happens when blade tears through flesh, her first approach is usually diplomatic. Even so, Altana does not take gruff lightly and never hesitates to let people know when they have crossed her. To her friends, she is warm and affectionate, fond of assigning pet names to those she cherishes. Good food, strong drink, and close friends are the way Altanan prefers to spend her evenings.

Altana knows that her charm makes her easy to underestimate, but few repeat that mistake. When the situation calls for action, she is precise and efficient with quick hands and quick feet. She knows when it is time to smile, and when it is time to act. Her own close brush with death has left her starkly aware that disease and accident can claim anyone at any time, so she intends to make the most of every moment. This behavior can make her quick to move on to the next thrill, much to the dismay of whatever lover she just left behind.

Appearance

Altana is of average height and build, fit but not particularly muscular. She has brown hair and keeps the sides of her head shaved, leaving a shoulder-length strip from the middle of her head. When she is tending to patients or out in the world, she keeps it tied into a bun. With warm eyes and a ready smile, most consider her to be pretty. Her left arm has a long scar from elbow to shoulder and again from the shoulder down to the small of her back. There's another scar on her right arm, the only remaining hint of the Mutation she once suffered and removed by her own hand.

Like many Medikari, Altana usually dress in clothes she is not afraid to get bloody. Some still wear the marks of her past work, from faded reddish splotches to scratch-marks. She carries her tools with her at nearly all time tucked into a small backpack, including a heavy chopping blade known as Shrike's Talon. It has served her as both weapon and surgical instrument, removing limbs from both patients and foes. When expecting trouble, she carries what she fondly refers to as her 'stick': a haft of hattick that reaches her shoulder and tipped with three decimeters long claw of some Far Deep monster.

Skills & Abilities

Unlike the typically hide-bound and traditional doctors, Altana has proven willing to cross the lines between Atma and Deva. Her work and research takes both schools of medical thought and attempts to combine them for the best results. Early results have been mixed, but Altana remains undaunted, and her academic aptitude is formidable. While this has left both sides suspicious of her, some of the Deva have been willing to entertain her ideas. The Kaia, always looking for an edge, have also supported her research.

Beyond her considerable surgical and medical skill, Altana possesses knowledge of a wide range of hazardous phenomena from Blight to the dangerous Heza, as well as of fungi and mushroom with medical properties. She is proficient with both her Talon and her 'stick' and does not hesitate to use them when necessary. The plague that scarred her body has left other marks, and Altana doesn't have the endurance she used to. Like any other affliction, she believed this too can be cured.

The Atma and the Deva

The two primary schools of medical thought in Araea are the Atma and the Deva. These two have wildly divergent thoughts and theories of what it is that causes disease and how best to treat it. Altana is one of the few who has good schooling in both.
Atma believes all illness comes from internal imbalance and seek to correct it.
Read more about Atma - the Science of the Balanced Body
Deva thinks of the human body as a complicated, intricate machine. Disease and injury cause malfunction and they seek to restore things to the way it should be.
Read more about Deva - the Art of Healing

by Spiritus Arcanum

Current Residence

Mharaji

Aligned Organization

The Seekers

by Coltelleria Collini knives

Bite down. This is going to hurt. A lot.

— Altanan

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