dr_skeller | Skeller's History the Looong Way (Reply)

A Complete History of Dr. Skeller
(Go no further if you prefer not to metagame)

Dr. Henrik Skeller is just that- a doctor hailing from the middle of nowhere in his home country of Archus. He lives in the midst of several small villages and often sees patients with serious or mysterious enough ailments to warrant coming all the way out (sometimes several miles) to his cottage for help. The rumors are that he’s a Reaper- a practitioner of a long-forgotten magic capable of summoning ghosts and devils, and that no one has ever seen his face. Still, he is as good as they say at his profession and so most who rely on him for care don’t seem to mind, even if their animal companions do not share the same sentiment. He has recently taken on an apprentice, a young Victor Fennis who carries a dark secret or two of his own.

He’s a softspoken man, a bit shy and very private about his personal life. He enjoys gardening and a good nap.

Yes, Dr. Skeller does dress in typical plague doctor attire but it does have a purpose within his world. And now we get into the meat and potatoes of it.

Skeller was born and raised in one of these small nearby villages. He had two sisters, Helene and Seren and his mother. His father died when he was young of a mysterious illness, and the confusion and frustration watching the local doctors give up because they had no answers led him headfirst into a career in medicine. He balanced his studies with helping raise his two sisters, eventually heading off to a clinic miles away to complete his training. When he returned, things were… different. He’d always had a stubbornness in him, but something sparkled in those eyes that could only mean trouble. While away, a colleague gave him a taste of what was believed in many regions to be a lost practice- lost because of its taboo nature. Reaper magic- a combination of necromancy and medicine said to be able to heal beyond what was thought possible. The Reapers were thought to have been wiped out alongside the traditional necromancers long ago, when mortal men saw fit to reach beyond the veil and bend the dead to their will to cause chaos and destruction. For the time being it lurked in the back of his mind…

Until the same illness came for his sister.

Nothing he did could save her, and so he turned to what he’d learned in that boyish exploration of the forbidden during his studies abroad. But he didn’t have all of the pieces, nor did he understand where the magic comes from. But he would do anything to save Seren, and so in the dead of night he set up a ritual in her bedroom while she slept, listening to her struggle to breathe while he carefully painted his body and the room with sigils, laid out every ingredient he could remember…

Once the door was open- a door he never wanted to breach, all hell broke loose. Something came through the veil that night. Or maybe it was something further than the veil. A force he can neither describe nor fully remember. But it wreaked havoc on the landscape, for miles and miles it stretched out and devoured any warm body it could get its countless talons on.

Except for Skeller. Somehow, he’d protected himself with the ritual circle he’d put himself in. But as he awoke to absolute silence, with nothing left but the roaming *Corvon picking at the few bodies left behind, it slowly dawned on him what he’d done. He was surrounded by feathers, dark and sleek and flickering in and out of existence. As he wandered in shock he came upon a woman lurking in the thick fog who he initially mistook for one of the scavenging creatures because of her beaked mask and dark clothing. He had nowhere to go now and she knew what he’d done by the strange shimmering in the atmosphere. Maybe it was fate that they met. Skeller isn’t sure he believes in fate.

She took him in, bringing him to her cottage where he nearly died over the course of three months- the consequences of his actions were apparent once the pin feathers started sprouting and a new set of teeth grew in where his human ones had all fallen out. Still the woman was patient, using the very magic he’d sought and failed to wield to keep him alive. She agreed to teach him Reaper Magic properly, and he vowed that if he survived, he would use it only to help others. Between bouts of being violently ill, he studied and once he’d recovered enough, he studied harder. But he never seemed to fully recover. After each practiced ritual and procedure, he would find himself feverish, always with a few more feathers or a part of his body shaped differently from how it was before. The magic was changing him. He reached beyond the veil for his power and the veil reached back, and they pulled at eachother a little more every time. Still, he was not swayed.

He stayed the woman’s (platonic) companion for many years. Protection and conduit sigils and circles were inscribed on his body, like hers, so he would not summon something by accident like before. He got better at it and once she deemed him ready, she sent him away and forbade him to return, saying something along the lines of “go be useful.”

But living among normal people wasn’t going to be possible, so he settled down in an area only a few short miles away from a handful of small villages and fell into his current routine. It’s one he knows will kill him someday (or so he thinks, in reality he may just be turning into an eldritch bird monster), but he’ll work until he can’t any longer. Eventually, he gained a surprise apprentice in the form of Victor Fennis, a fully-fledged doctor on corrective probation after what he claims was a “nervous breakdown”, which resulted in the death of a patient. Sensing something supernatural was afoot, he was sent to Skeller to “sort himself out”. It took time for the pair to accept their situation but since then they’ve grown fond of one another. Victor knows Skeller’s ugly and Skeller knows Victor has visions and episodes for a reason they cannot yet deduce. And that’s about where it ends in terms of relevancy for the game!

*Corvon are an original species of mine- they resemble large birds (think ostrich sized) with skull-like faces that follow the scent of death and are frequently seen where mass casualties have occurred. They are the cleanup crew of the country. Reapers sometimes follow these flocks to see if there are any survivors, wearing white beaked masks and dark clothing to blend in. Generally the Corvon don’t see living beings as food and have poor vision (the eyes are small and sunken into the face to protect them from bright light), but it’s better to be on the safe side since a normal living person may make them nervous and drive them away from their desired target.