Healing Arts Abstract

Summary

Health as a concept is simple to talk about but vast in the mechanisms that drive it. Not only is a single human a considerable enigma to decipher, the various monsterkind peoples add in their own mysteries. What works for one species may not work for another; one person's essential vitamins is another's deadly toxins. However, as the many peoples moved together from the Great Convergence so long ago, medicine took on an altogether newer, simplified form. While some differences in species were maintained, few were exorbitantly deadly in nature.   One of magic's most common usages is that of healthcare. To do what cannot be seen; to handle what is impossible, driven by dreams and hopes. Some of the oldest recorded examples can still be traced to medicinal application. All sorts from the hopefully young to the desperately ill fell upon its doorstep, one life after another. Each success turned heavy with the blood of those who'd failed. A rare thing that, despite any one culture, became a unifying middle ground for the many peoples of Veltrona. Some of the first evidences of world wide trade, upon the backs of wyverns and harpies, were medical texts and healing techniques.   Over the eons, as people learned more, so too did the nature of healing magics change. In an academic sense, there is no singular type of healing 'school'. All kinds of magical theories have variants for healing techniques, some better suited to one approach than others. The net result of this is the rather biased perception of healing arts as a whole. In an overarching, general view: Fire magic is quite a potent force, such that its great power can become a deadly burden upon the ill. Water magic can cleanse and vitalize the body, but its serenity can induce a death torpor. Veltron magic engenders stability against change, but can choke a person beneath stagnation. Wind magic can vitalize a person to an almost healthy state, yet greviously aggravate their conditions.   Furthermore, exotic forms of magic can produce even wilder results. Combined magical arts represent a truly limitless field. Altogether, to be an effective magical healer is to understand the condition's of the patient, and translate that into something one's magic can handle. It is this unending battleground that vast tomes, books, and scrolls of knowledge are created.   Some libraries are literally priceless from what they keep within their vaults as a consequence. Entire guilds, sects, secretive companies, and other organizations come together to research, dispense their medicinal wares, and hoard such coveted knowledge. On the doorstep of illness and death, even empresses will come to bow before them.   So it is the medical world is a vast and terrifying apparatus, thinly out of sight until one has need of it.   The results of their various healing arts can be broken down into a few core, underlying approaches. Fundamentally still being magic, mana is required to fuel it. All healers, then, tend to be either mages, cultivators, or those adjacent to mana-based work. This is the first half of the healer's paradigm.   The other half is the available strength of their patient. Many forms of practical healing magic also end up consuming or manipulating the patient's inherent mana. As the body naturally heals and requires fuel to do so, so does magically motivated healing. While this can be off-set somewhat with various aides and techniques, it is a precarious battleground.   It is also why interspecies healing can be further complicated. Many humans do not have the mana capacity to stimulate a dragon's, so those healers would be worthless. Similarly, someone with immense mana capacity that hasn't trained to control its flow rate is incredibly dangerous to those with low capacities. The parallels to the romantic requirements of many species isn't lost upon people, either.   Skillful translation of magical ability to medical need being what it is, there are rarer forms of 'supreme' healing magic. These arts transcend the limitations of specialized forms, able to suffuse mana directly into healing a body without catastrophic stress. The burden of doing so, and the aptitude to realize it, is both immense and profoundly rare. Xipilli, the Wandering Savior is perhaps one of the most well-known modern examples, commanding healing magic bordering on divinity itself almost. Some of the most aged and well-practiced of healers can begin to do it themselves, and it is always highly coveted.   Furthermore, the vampyr of Etzli Cuauhtla hold onto strange and unusually powerful healing arts of their own, the so called 'Blood Magic'. It may yet provide an unfathomable breakthrough in magical healing, something covetous eyes setted upon. With how valuable health is, it can come as no surprise that foreign invaders have attacked the vampyr time and again.