Completed In Tribute to the Past [Quill's Rest]

[Tsaba]

41st Summer, 513AV Tsaba sat alone at a table, kelp tea slowly cooling beside her. She couldn't drink it, of course; she'd ordered it largely to justify her presence in the cafe, although the smell was soothing, and she found herself breathing more often in its presence. The small handbook Basic Medical Theory was open just to her left. In front of her was a blank sheet of parchment. Tsaba dipped her quill, and began to copy out the text. There are many avenues and methods in medical practice. Some healers are magicians who have turned their abilities to helping others, in a diagnostic or healing capacity. Others are religious followers who consider the act to be a divine calling; they may or may not have divine gifts to utilise toward this end. Herbalists or philterers often turn their skills to influencing one's state of health, and biologists act to repair what they understand. But all of these people,no matter the avenue they take or their personal obsessions with an individual facet of the art, are, at their core, healers. They are people who see damage in a living creature and act to repair it. And no matter the disagreements on effectiveness of methods or moral basis, we, as healers, all share the same goal. The ultimate goal of any healer is, of course, to heal; to leave their patients in better condition than they arrived. Generally, healers will take this into every aspect of their lives, and vow to do no harm. Many healers are pacifists, or find ways of fighting that do not cause permanent injury. While there will always be those who draw a distinction between their patients and 'others' -- or even harm and heal the same person, drawing a line between their art and their lifestyle -- these people are uncommon. It is difficult to violate a core tenet of one's own life for long. This handbook is designed to help all practitioners of the art of healing, regardless of philosophy or discipline. It includes several basic techniques on bonesetting, first aid, general medical practice, and basic medicine creation and administration. For more advanced works in your field, please consult a specialist or specialist text. Tsaba glanced between the book and her parchment, wondering if she'd chosen the right book. It had seemed like a good choice at the time, being very general and not having too many diagrams (her drawing abilities were still sub-par), but might it be too basic for a temple of Rak'keli? Well. She could always add more later. Bought1 cup Kelp tea -- 2SM

[Tsaba]

The book was quite basic. It had techniques for setting bones; for treating dehydration, heatstroke and hypothermia; for diagnosing internal bleeding and identifying different fevers. And for every technique that Tsaba copied out, the image of a long-dead patient rose in her memory. Setting bones: one of Tsaba's first patients had been a brawny kid who liked to hit younger, thinner kids. Tsaa had won immunity from his attentions for weeks by setting his arm. Fever: one year, a particularly bad sickness had swept through the area. Tsaba hadn't seen the outside for half a season; she'd been too busy brewing medicines. She hadn't been near the actual patients; Craun had said that she could catch the fever, and had dealt with them himself. he, of course, had been fine, and she hadn't thought to question why. She hadn't known then that he was already dead. Internal bleeding: Tsaba's own father, a barely-recogniseable mess of pulpy flesh and shattered bones, had held on as long as he could, until the building internal pressure had simply shut his body down. He had been wrapped in a sheet, so that she couldn't see him being carried out. Hypothermia: his foster sister's mother, and his first proper patient. Craun had tried to raise her body temperature, without success. Tsaba had used the same techniques to raise her foster sister's temperature to fake a fever, to force Craun to let the girl stay by convincing him that she was a patient. They'd felt so clever for outsmarting him at the time, but in retrospect, the strategy had been ridiculously transparent. Craun had to have seen through it. And yet, he'd let her stay. Tsaba became aware that she'd been staring at the page, unmoving. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd stopped writing. Slowly, deliberately, she inked the quill and put it back to paper. She wrote out the symptoms for Shepherds' Fever. She deliberately didn't think about the time she'd come home with those symptoms, and her sister had panicked, and it was three days before they had told Craun and learned that it was just an allergy to a new tincture, and not remotely dangerous.

[Tsaba]

Besic Medical Theory was barely more than a very thick pamphlet, and Tsaba had half of it done within the day. It was a rushed, rough job -- perfectly legible, but enough to irritate Tsaba's professional pride a little -- but that wasn't so important for a widely-spread, general book, especially since the library's copy was in perfectly good condition. She went to work. She copied books. Important books, books that had been damaged and needed saving by careful transcription to new parchment, not some pointless copymaking venture that she didn't even really understand the reason behind. Then she went back to she Quill's Rest, and kept working. She kept working until she had the whole thing copied out, which she bound into a book, and took it to Bree's Bivouac. She placed it inside the little chest, where nobody merely sticking their head in the door could see and take it, but where somebody actually using the cottage would easily discover it. Tsaba had never met the author of Basic Medical Practice. She had only a nostalgic interest in their passion. But their words had reached her, and through her, would reach the people who used the cottage, who she probably wouldn't meet much as the author had never met her. And the author's words would reach those people, people who shared that passion, through at least two degrees of separation; quite possibly through a chain of several scribes who had transcribed a copy of the book, from a copy of he book, back to the original. Many of whom would never have met each other. Tsaba didn't know how many times the book had been reproduced, and she didn't care. She was a courier of the author's words, carrying them safely from author to reader without saying a word to either. And tomorrow, she would choose a another simple, accessible medical book, and do it again. That was the power, the duty, of a scribe.

[Abstract]

Tsaba

[/b]

Skills

+ Copying - 1
+ Observation - 1


Lores

+ Healers: The basic mentality
+ Medicine brings back memories

Other:

N/A

Notes

Not much to give here. I would highly recommend adding more detail to your solos if you want more xp, as they're getting very vague now. Also, once you reach a certain level, I wont be able to give you xp unless you add a lot more detail!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about this grade, please PM me and we can work it out!