Healer and Caregiver Characters

Healers and caregivers fit this campaign extremely well.

The campaign begins aboard the Azure Aviary, a ship traveling through Maritheli waters. Ships create injury, illness, fear, thirst, exhaustion, infection, panic, childbirth, grief, and close-quarters tension. Marithel’s freeports create refugee clinics, temple houses, Low Lantern aid kitchens, quarantine disputes, mercy petitions, legal delays, and people who need care before a court decides what they are.

A healer character does not need to be gentle.

They may be kind, strict, tired, devout, angry, clinical, suspicious, funny, impatient, disciplined, experimental, political, practical, or haunted by past triage.

A caregiver character does not need to be magical.

They may be a surgeon, herbalist, field medic, midwife, ship’s cook, temple aide, battlefield nurse, patient escort, scribe of the dead, Ilyrian medicine keeper, Suthrani mercy worker, Low Lantern clinic runner, Veyrskoldic winter-care specialist, Caerlonian battlefield healer, Maritheli ship medic, or someone who learned care because no one else was available.

In this campaign, healing is not only about restoring hit points.

Healing is about who receives care, who is delayed, who is named, who is believed, who is quarantined, who is hidden, who is too useful to rest, who is too poor to be treated, and what mercy costs when law moves slowly.

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Player Summary

A healer or caregiver character is someone who responds to injury, illness, suffering, exhaustion, grief, birth, death, trauma, or vulnerability.

They may use magic, medicine, faith, herbs, surgery, fieldcraft, ritual, food, water discipline, counseling, practical labor, or community care.

Strong Healer Character Elements

Element	Question
Training	Who taught you to care for others?
Method	Do you heal through magic, medicine, ritual, herbs, surgery, food, rest, or discipline?
Calling	Why do you heal? Duty, faith, guilt, coin, love, law, oath, habit, or necessity?
Limit	What kind of care is hardest for you to give?
Boundary	Who would you refuse to heal, if anyone?
Failure	Who could you not save?
Patient	Is someone aboard the Azure Aviary under your care?
Destination	Why do you need Windrider Freeport, Low Lantern, or Marithel’s clinics?
Supplies	What medicine, tools, water, papers, or rituals do you need?
Risk	What happens if your care is delayed?

A healer character should have something to do before combat starts and after combat ends.

They should care about the body of the ship, the body of the party, and the wounded body of the world.

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Why Healers Fit the Campaign

This campaign is full of places where care becomes urgent.

Campaign Element	Healer Connection
Shipboard life	Seasickness, rope burns, falls, bad water, panic, and injury are common.
Refugee movement	Displaced people need food, shelter, records, and medical care.
Low Lantern	Clinics, aid kitchens, water lines, child care, fever, and trauma matter.
Blue Lantern law	Legal delay can endanger patients, witnesses, and protected travelers.
Sea law	Quarantine, ship command, cargo access, and passenger care can conflict.
Suthrane	Temple healing, sacred water, mercy, and procedure are major themes.
Ilyr	Living medicine, ecological consent, and careful harvest shape healing.
Caerlon	Battlefield wounds, burned records, veterans, and reconstruction trauma linger.
Veyrskold	Winter survival, practical care, and oathbound hospitality matter.
Vorrak	Defectors, captives, court-marked people, and feared bodies need care without prejudice.
Marithel	Ship clinics, sea rites, drowned names, freeport medicine, and refugee care are central.

A healer may be the first person to notice something is wrong.

A fever pattern.
A missing medicine packet.
A forged quarantine mark.
A wound that does not match the story.
A passenger hiding symptoms.
A child too quiet.
A patient with a court-mark.
A dead person whose name was changed.
A living cargo that is being treated as ordinary goods.

Care creates investigation.

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Healer Types

Use one of these broad types or combine several.

Healer Type	Description
Ship Medic	Used to cramped spaces, sudden injury, infection, seasickness, and limited supplies.
Temple Healer	Trained through faith, mercy law, ritual, prayer, and sacred obligation.
Field Medic	Learned in war, disaster, raids, or harsh travel.
Herbalist	Uses plants, roots, oils, teas, poultices, and local remedies.
Ilyrian Medicine Keeper	Understands living remedies, harvest consent, and ecological relationships.
Suthrani Mercy Worker	Treats healing as sacred duty shaped by water, procedure, and law.
Low Lantern Clinic Runner	Knows refugee illness, triage, translation, missing names, and scarcity.
Midwife or Birth Worker	Focuses on childbirth, family care, women’s health, infants, and community survival.
Surgeon	Practical, skilled with tools, injury, amputation, stitching, and hard choices.
Care Cook	Feeds people, manages nutrition, notices illness, and controls morale.
Trauma Caregiver	Helps people survive fear, grief, panic, and memory.
Death Tender	Names the dead, prepares bodies, comforts survivors, and preserves dignity.
Quarantine Officer	Protects public health, sometimes at painful social cost.
Battle Cleric	Combines combat, triage, prayer, and battlefield mercy.
Experimental Healer	Studies unusual magic, rare medicine, or dangerous cures.

A healer can be gentle or severe. What matters is how they respond when someone needs them and time is short.

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Reasons to Be Aboard the Azure Aviary

A healer or caregiver may be aboard for practical, personal, or urgent reasons.

Reason	Character Hook
Ship medic	You were hired or accepted aboard to provide care during passage.
Patient escort	Someone aboard needs your continued treatment.
Medicine delivery	You carry medicine to Windrider Freeport, Low Lantern, a temple, or a clinic.
Mercy errand	A healer, priest, or advocate sent you to help someone before procedure catches up.
Refugee care	You travel with displaced people who need protection and support.
Quarantine concern	You are monitoring a possible illness, contamination, or exposure.
Hidden patient	Someone aboard is ill and hiding it for legal, personal, or political reasons.
Field transfer	You are leaving a war zone, disaster site, or overcrowded clinic.
Research	You study sea illness, living medicine, trauma, resurrection, or strange wounds.
Exile	You broke healing law, temple procedure, or professional code.
Debt	Your training, supplies, or patient’s treatment created obligation.
Pilgrimage	Your care work is tied to vow, penance, or sacred route.
Work passage	You heal in exchange for fare.
Family care	You accompany a sick, elderly, pregnant, injured, or frightened loved one.
Suspicion	You boarded because someone’s symptoms, medicine, or death did not make sense.

A healer’s reason aboard should create urgency.

What happens if you do not reach Windrider Freeport?

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Care Under Shipboard Conditions

Healing aboard a ship is different from healing on land.

Space is limited. Supplies are limited. Privacy is limited. People are tired, damp, crowded, and frightened. The ship moves. The deck is slippery. The galley fire is both comfort and danger. A patient cannot always be isolated. A body cannot always be kept long. A serious injury may require decisions before anyone reaches harbor.

Shipboard Medical Problems

Problem	Story Use
Seasickness	Dehydration, embarrassment, weakness, hidden illness.
Rope burn	Ordinary injury that can become infected.
Fall injury	Storm, sabotage, clumsiness, or violence.
Bad water	Sickness, panic, ration conflict, investigation.
Food spoilage	Poison, negligence, sabotage, or scarcity.
Fever	Quarantine fear and social pressure.
Pregnancy complication	Urgency and care under poor conditions.
Panic	Storm, boarding, fire, memory, or claustrophobia.
Old wound reopening	Backstory and present danger intersect.
Hidden injury	Passenger fears being removed, exposed, or billed.
Smoke inhalation	Fire or galley accident.
Drowning or near drowning	Rescue, shock, infection, trauma.
Strange mark	Curse, court-mark, disease, tattoo, magic, or injury.
Exhaustion	Crew, refugees, guards, and healers all break down.

A healer character may be the first to discover the ship’s social truth because patients talk when frightened and bodies reveal what people hide.

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Care in Low Lantern

Low Lantern is Windrider Freeport’s refugee moorings and aid district.

Healers there face crowding, scarcity, translation problems, missing records, legal fear, hidden names, trauma, fever, pregnancy, malnutrition, untreated wounds, child safety issues, water contamination, and patients afraid that official attention will get them seized or separated.

Low Lantern Care Scenes

Scene	Meaning
Fever line	Is the illness contagious, environmental, poisoned, or rumor-driven?
Hidden patient	A refugee avoids clinic records because a claimant may find them.
Child triage	Children need care, protection, and identity review.
Water dispute	Medical need collides with scarcity and anger.
Aid kitchen injury	The people feeding others are breaking down.
Translation failure	A patient’s symptoms are misunderstood.
Medicine shortage	The cure exists, but not enough for everyone.
Quarantine threat	Public safety may separate families.
Trauma response	Survival does not end when a ship reaches harbor.
Burial delay	A body cannot be released until legal identity is settled.
False healer	Someone sells bad medicine to desperate people.
Overworked clinic	The healers need protection, rest, or help.

A healer tied to Low Lantern should decide whether they trust official medicine, temple care, community care, or some mix of all three.

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Suthrani Healers

Suthrane is one of the strongest origins for healer characters.

Suthrani healing is often tied to sacred water, temple law, river courts, mercy, burial, procedure, pilgrimage, and the belief that care must be both practical and accountable.

A Suthrani healer may believe that healing requires proper record, witness, water discipline, ritual cleanliness, and moral seriousness. They may also have seen procedure used to delay mercy until it became cruelty.

Suthrani Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Mercy Before Permission	You saved someone before the temple approved care.
Water-Blessed Physician	Sacred water and practical medicine are both part of your work.
River-Court Medic	You understand how healing and law overlap.
Burial Healer	You treat the dying and ensure names are preserved.
Pilgrim Physician	Your healing is tied to vow or journey.
Temple Exile	You disagreed with temple authority over mercy, resurrection, or triage.
Floodplain Doctor	You know scarcity, disease, and class difference.
Patient Escort	You carry someone to a Maritheli clinic or legal hearing.
Sacred Medicine Courier	Your supplies must not be wasted, stolen, or profaned.
Procedure Critic	You still believe in law but know delay can kill.

Suthrani Questions

1. What does healing require besides skill?
2. What does sacred water mean to you?
3. Have you ever broken procedure for mercy?
4. Did you regret it?
5. What patient, letter, or medicine brought you aboard?

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Ilyrian Healers

Ilyr is another strong origin for healer characters.

Ilyrian medicine may involve plants, fungi, animals, waters, living relationships, careful harvest, consent, ecological obligation, hidden routes, and knowledge that outsiders often reduce to “rare herbs.”

An Ilyrian healer may treat medicine as a living relationship rather than a commodity.

Ilyrian Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Seed-Cord Keeper	You certify whether medicine was harvested properly.
Living Remedy Guardian	The cure must remain alive, fed, sung to, watered, or protected.
Wetland Fever Healer	You know how to read waterborne illness.
Canopy Herbalist	Your remedies come from living systems outsiders do not understand.
Stolen Medicine Seeker	You track a remedy taken without consent.
Mist-Touched Caregiver	You treat injuries of memory, fear, and change.
Patient of the Green	You were healed by something living and owe it care.
Ecological Triage Worker	You decide between human urgency and living-law limits.
Marithel Clinic Envoy	You travel to teach proper use of Ilyrian medicine.
Living-Cargo Investigator	You suspect something aboard or ahead should not be cargo.

Ilyrian Questions

1. What medicine do outsiders misuse?
2. What living thing do you refuse to treat as property?
3. What does ethical harvest require?
4. What would make you destroy medicine rather than let it be sold?
5. What living sign would alarm you aboard ship?

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Caerlonian Healers

Caerlonian healer characters are often shaped by war, burned towns, battlefield triage, refugee movement, reconstruction, veteran care, and mistrust of institutions that failed when needed.

They may be practical, fast, emotionally guarded, or fiercely protective of the wounded because they have seen what happens when care arrives too late.

Caerlonian Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Battlefield Medic	You learned care in the Scoured Marches or invasion aftermath.
Veteran Caregiver	You treat wounds others call old but never healed.
Burned-Record Doctor	You know patients whose identities vanished with their papers.
Refugee Camp Healer	You worked where supplies, names, and hope were scarce.
Reconstruction Surgeon	You travel seeking tools, medicine, or funding for home.
Monster-Born Patient Advocate	You treat people others fear or blame.
War Orphan Midwife	You care for children born into displacement.
Ash Fever Witness	You saw an illness, poison, or wound pattern no one recorded properly.

Caerlonian Questions

1. What war wound do you see too often?
2. Who could you not save?
3. Do you trust official medical records?
4. What does reconstruction mean to your healing work?
5. What kind of patient are you most protective of?

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Veyrskoldic Healers

Veyrskoldic healer characters often emphasize survival, cold injury, hospitality, craft honesty, oath, endurance, practical care, and memory.

A Veyrskoldic caregiver may be less sentimental and more reliable than warm. They may believe care is a promise: if someone is under your roof, ship, fire, or blanket, they are your responsibility.

Veyrskoldic Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Winter Caretaker	You know frostbite, hunger, exposure, and ration discipline.
Oath-Healer	You swore to protect a patient, family, or ship.
Hold Midwife	You delivered children during storms, sieges, or winter isolation.
Craft Physician	You treat shipwrights, miners, ropeworkers, and labor injuries.
Memory Tender	You record the names of those who died under your care.
Hospitality Defender	You believe denying shelter to the desperate is a grave wrong.
Ruin-Sickness Scholar	You treat strange ailments tied to old places.
Storm Survivor Medic	You learned care when no help could arrive.

Veyrskoldic Questions

1. What does hospitality require of a healer?
2. What promise binds you to care?
3. What do you waste least willingly?
4. What cold lesson applies even in Marithel?
5. Whose name do you remember because no one else does?

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Vorrakian Healers

A healer from Vorrak can be a powerful and complex character.

They may have served a Monster Court, treated subject peoples, cared for captives, worked under coercive law, learned harsh battlefield medicine, defected after refusing cruelty, or carried knowledge others fear.

A Vorrakian healer may face suspicion in Marithel, especially if they bear court-marks, unusual ancestry, or training associated with feared powers.

Vorrakian Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Court Medic Defector	You served a court and fled after refusing an order.
Subject-Town Bone Setter	You treated people harmed by tribute law and raids.
Captive Caregiver	You cared for prisoners because no one else would.
Monster-Born Physician	People fear your appearance before seeing your work.
Harsh Triage Survivor	You learned to save lives under brutal priorities.
Court-Mark Remover	You know how marks work, though removing them may be dangerous.
Blood-Price Healer	Your care created debt under Vorrakian law.
Witness to Cruelty	You know what a court demanded of bodies and refuse to repeat it.

Vorrakian Questions

1. Who did your healing serve before?
2. Did you choose that service?
3. What treatment do people fear you know?
4. What patient changed your loyalty?
5. What mark, scar, or method might expose your past?

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Maritheli Healers

Maritheli healer characters often know ship medicine, dock injuries, sea fever, Low Lantern clinics, shrine rites, drowning, salvage trauma, privateer wounds, and the practical reality that care must happen in cramped spaces with wet floors and little time.

Maritheli Healer Hooks

Hook	Character Setup
Ship Medic	You treat crew and passengers under bad conditions.
Low Lantern Clinic Runner	You work among refugees, hidden names, and scarcity.
Drowned-Name Tender	You care for survivors and help name the dead.
Dock Surgeon	You treat rope burns, crushed hands, falls, and knife wounds.
Privateer Veteran Medic	You know legal violence and what it does to bodies.
Salvage Healer	You treat divers, wreck survivors, and those who recover the dead.
Cook-Caregiver	Food, water, morale, and sickness are your medicine.
Freeport Mercy Worker	You navigate Blue Lantern law and patients who cannot wait.
Quarantine Hand	You know disease fear and public panic.
Sea-Saint Devotee	Your healing is tied to local rites and safe-passage prayers.

Maritheli Questions

1. What shipboard injury do you treat most often?
2. Do you trust Blue Lantern law to protect patients?
3. What district of Windrider Freeport knows your work?
4. What sea rite do you perform for the dying or recovered dead?
5. What would make you hide a patient from authorities?

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Healing and Law

In this campaign, healing often intersects with law.

A patient’s identity may matter. A wound may be evidence. A fever may trigger quarantine. A body may affect inheritance. A confession may endanger others. A resurrection may disrupt marriage, debt, guilt, or property. A hidden patient may be a refugee, witness, criminal, child, defector, or someone being hunted.

Legal Healing Conflicts

Conflict	Question
Hidden illness	Protect patient privacy or protect the ship?
Quarantine	Is isolation medical necessity or political excuse?
Wound evidence	Treat quickly or preserve proof?
Body identification	Who names the dead?
Patient under false name	Is concealment protection or fraud?
Confession during treatment	What do you owe privacy and public safety?
Illegal medicine	Is the cure stolen, sacred, living, or necessary?
Healing debt	Does treatment create obligation?
Resurrection petition	Who has the right to return, refuse, or claim the dead?
Claimant demands patient	Does law, mercy, or safety come first?

A healer character should decide where they stand on confidentiality, mercy, public safety, and law.

The answer may change in play.

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Healing and Death

Healers are often close to death.

In Thesalon, death, burial, resurrection, drowned names, legal identity, family claims, and spiritual duty can overlap. A healer may be asked to certify death, preserve a body, speak to a family, record last words, prepare remains, delay burial, support resurrection review, or refuse to treat a body as evidence alone.

Death-Related Healer Roles

Role	Purpose
Death witness	Confirms final words, identity, cause, or circumstances.
Body keeper	Preserves remains for burial, family, court, or temple.
Drowned-name recorder	Ensures those lost at sea are remembered.
Mercy companion	Stays with the dying when cure is impossible.
Resurrection petitioner	Helps decide whether return is possible, lawful, or desired.
Grief worker	Supports survivors after death.
Forensic healer	Reads wounds, poison, disease, or magic as evidence.
Burial advocate	Ensures the dead are not reduced to property or proof.

A healer character may be defined as much by how they treat the dead as how they treat the living.

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Supplies and Tools

Healer characters should decide what they carry.

Supply or Tool	Story Use
Healer’s kit	Practical treatment, bandages, splints, salves.
Herbal pouch	Local or foreign remedies, identifiable origin.
Sacred water	Suthrani rite, healing, blessing, scarcity.
Seed cord	Ilyrian proof of lawful harvest.
Surgical tools	Skill, fear, precision, social reaction.
Prayer book or cord	Faith, ritual, oath, comfort.
Patient ledger	Records, names, symptoms, legal risk.
Mortuary tags	Naming the dead, preserving identity.
Fever cloths	Quarantine, care, and practical experience.
Birth tools	Midwifery, family care, life amid crisis.
Dried citrus or salts	Shipboard health and prevention.
Pain draught	Mercy, dependency, scarcity, theft.
Translation cards	Medical communication across languages.
Protective gloves or mask	Disease fear or professional discipline.
Personal failure token	Reminder of someone not saved.

A healer’s supplies can become plot objects.

A stolen medicine packet may matter as much as a stolen sword.

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Healer Character Hooks

Use one of these for a quick concept.

Hook	Character Setup
The Hidden Patient	Someone aboard is under your care and must not be exposed.
The Mercy Exile	You broke healing procedure and now travel under pressure.
The Low Lantern Doctor	A refugee clinic expects you, but your supplies are incomplete.
The Living Medicine Keeper	Your cure must be kept alive and lawful.
The Battlefield Triage Survivor	You saved some and chose others to die, and the memory follows you.
The False Quarantine Witness	You know a quarantine was used to hide something else.
The Drowned-Name Tender	You preserve names of those recovered from the sea.
The Court-Mark Surgeon	You know how to treat or identify marks others fear.
The Birth-Ship Midwife	You have delivered children in storms and refugee holds.
The Ship Cook Caregiver	You heal through food, water, rest, and knowing who is not eating.
The Resurrection Skeptic	You have seen return from death cause as much harm as relief.
The Fever Investigator	Symptoms tell you a story others missed.
The Temple Medic	You serve a god, saint, shrine, or mercy law.
The Unlicensed Healer	You learned outside official training and are better than officials admit.
The Patient in Disguise	You are both healer and someone who needs care.

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Healer Party Connections

A healer can connect to other party members before Session One.

Connection	Example
Healer and patient	Another PC is under your care.
Healer and guard	Another PC protects you or your supplies.
Healer and courier	Another PC carries medicine or records for you.
Healer and refugee	You helped them survive before boarding.
Healer and scholar	You need their records, translation, or research.
Healer and sailor	They keep the ship moving while you keep bodies functioning.
Healer and faction agent	Their patron funds your work or pressures you.
Healer and exile	You know why they fled because you treated the wound.
Healer and cleric	You debate where medicine ends and miracle begins.
Healer and rogue	They can get medicine no official channel will provide.

A healer is an easy character to tie to others because everyone eventually needs care.

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Healer Rumors

These rumors are player-safe. They may be true, false, exaggerated, or misunderstood.

1. A Low Lantern clinic is treating a fever that only appears after legal notices arrive.
2. A Suthrani healer was exiled for saving a patient before a temple clerk approved the rite.
3. An Ilyrian medicine packet in Saltmarket still had roots moving.
4. A Maritheli ship medic can identify a privateer crew by the wounds they leave.
5. A Caerlonian battlefield healer carries a list of names no court recorded.
6. A Vorrakian defector knows how to remove a court-mark but refuses to explain the cost.
7. A Veyrskoldic caregiver says a patient must be warmed by oath before medicine works.
8. A temple house and a merchant factor are arguing over whether medicine can be owned.
9. A hidden patient aboard a ship once started a quarantine that saved the harbor.
10. A false healer in Nightwater Lanes sells pain relief that creates debt.
11. A drowned person was declared dead by three witnesses and seen alive by a healer.
12. A refugee child refused medicine until the healer used the correct name.
13. A ship cook noticed an outbreak before the physician did because the crew stopped asking for second helpings.
14. A resurrection petition in Windrider Freeport was delayed because the dead person’s papers listed another name.
15. A pilot refuses to sail with a certain healer because every ship they board reaches harbor full of secrets.
16. A death tender at Shrine Row remembers names the registry lost.
17. Someone is stealing clean bandages from aid kitchens but leaving coin behind.
18. A healer says one cargo crate smells like fever.
19. A patient under Blue Lantern protection vanished after asking for water.
20. The best healers in Marithel know when not to ask why a patient is using a false name.

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Character Questions

Answer at least five.

1. Who taught you to heal or care for others?
2. Do you use magic, medicine, ritual, herbs, surgery, food, rest, or some combination?
3. Why do you heal?
4. Who could you not save?
5. What patient do you remember most clearly?
6. What condition frightens you?
7. What kind of patient do you find hardest to treat?
8. Would you heal an enemy?
9. Would you hide a patient from lawful authorities?
10. Would you reveal a patient’s secret to protect others?
11. What medicine, tool, or ritual do you carry?
12. What supply are you most afraid of running out of?
13. What do you need from Windrider Freeport?
14. Is someone aboard the Azure Aviary under your care?
15. What law, temple, clinic, or teacher might challenge your methods?
16. What rumor about illness, medicine, or mercy brought you aboard?
17. What does death require of you?
18. What does mercy require when time is short?

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Using Healer and Caregiver Characters in Play

A healer character should make the party more connected to the world.

They notice suffering.
They hear private truths.
They understand scarcity.
They know who is eating, sleeping, limping, lying, grieving, hiding pain, or too proud to ask.
They see when law is too slow and when mercy without caution becomes dangerous.

In this campaign, healing can be action, investigation, faith, politics, and moral choice.

A healer aboard the Azure Aviary is not waiting for someone to lose hit points.

They are already in the story.

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Related Pages

• Character Creation Overview
• Character Origins by Continent
• Character Ties to the Azure Aviary
• Refugee and Exile Characters
• Scholar and Scribe Characters
• Sailor, Privateer, and Shipborn Characters
• Faction-Tied Characters
• Campaign Start Overview
• The Azure Aviary
• Low Lantern Refugee Moorings
• Blue Lantern Law
• Ships and Shipboard Life
• Religion Overview
• Death, Burial, and Resurrection