A physician’s day is spent making rounds to patients’ homes (and sometimes places of business). Physicians are often the first Rafa that a patient calls on when sick.
Physicians diagnose whether illness seems to be of spirit or ordinary origins and help alleviate general symptoms. One of their key tools for this task is the wax ceremony, where they pour melted wax in a bowl filled with water. By reading the cooled wax, they can determine if a spirit is causing havoc to the body.Physicians treat everyday illnesses and coordinate with other Rafa for more specialized care. They focus on preventive care, whether by providing dietary advice or crafting amulets to protect against spirits and other spiritual forces.
Specialty Boon #
Once per game session, players of this specialty can freely take advantage of the Physician’s Specialty Boon:
The Generalist Practitioner #
A Physician tends to a range of issues that is as broad as an entire community, which has gifted you with much diverse knowledge. Use one of the starting skills from a different Specialty as though it is one you have already learned.
Describe which useful skill you saw performed in a similar situation, so that you can use the Skill on your current patient.
Rafa Bag Supplies #
- Wooden stethoscope
- Hunk of wax
- Small metal pitcher
- Carved wooden bowl
- Supplies for known amulet crafting skills
- Myrrh & juniper for incense
- 1 hand pie of choice
- 5 silver dollars
Herbal Remedies #
-
Digestive Oil
Recipe
Make an oil of lemon balm, orange peel, ginger, and honey.
Instructions
Serve in warm water after meals.
+1 to life energy if taken after food.
-
Cough Syrup
Recipe
Make a syrup by heating marshmallow root, honey, thyme, orange peel, and water.
Instructions
Serve in warm water.
Soothes the throat and greatly reduces coughs and hacking. May help clear breathing.
Recommended Starter Skills #
-
Ailment’s Origin
A humble lump of wax can shed the humble light of a candle or divine the true origin of illnesses. Certainly this betrays something essential about the Light.
This skill divines whether an ailment is originates from spirits or bodily illness by pouring wax into a bowl of water where it hardens. Tell the Rafa what form their wax takes: shape, consistency, color, etc.
Side Effects
-
Ease Pain
A wise Rafa once said that pain leaves marks on the body and the mind. A deeply unserious Rafa once said that pain is weakness leaving the body, and they were made to retake their ethics courses twice.
This skill lowers a patient’s pain. Tell the Rafa how the pain makes itself known as it departs the patient.
Side Effects
-
Energy Boost
While boosting the energy of a patient, some Rafa emit a gentle light, while others bring a crisp sea breeze with them. Rafa Yohanan, blessed be her memory, shortly after Freka fell to the ocean, was rumored to cause her patients to twinkle in the darkness of the night.
This skill revives and boosts a patient’s energy. Tell the Rafa about their patient’s energy and how it hums.
Side Effects
-
Promote Flow
The body is a mirror of the world. As people tend to their homes through the seasons, Rafa tend to the ebbs and flows of their patients. These two calendars are not so different.
This skill helps necessary fluids to keep flowing through the body. Tell the Rafa what season their patient’s body is in and how they know.
Side Effects
-
Staunch Bleeding
Scholar Asher, blessed be his memory, wrote that, “as the blood of life flows within us, so does the Light flow through all the spaces in this world. Even the most full, and especially the most empty.”
This skill stops a patent’s bleeding. Tell the Rafa about the qualities of their patient’s light.
Side Effects
-
Understand Human Languages
Rafa using their skills to casually transcend the barriers of language is of great interest and concern to the New Avodai Society. Most Rafa who wield this power do so humbly, to avoid drawing attention.
This skill allows you to speak and understand any language language. Reveal to the Rafa if this language has a unique, relevant word that conveys nuance about the given situation.
Side Effects
Advanced Skills #
-
Block Pain
“Pain is information. Of the world around us, and inside us. I just wish it would stop announcing itself when we’ve already welcomed it inside.” – Reba Mitrad, blessed be their memory, who lived with chronic pain.
This skill blocks pain in a specific area specified by the Rafa. Tell the Rafa what complimentary feeling blossoms in the corresponding area of their own body.
-
Breathe
Breath is life. All Rafa learn different types of controlled breathing to activate different conscious states, and in turn they become conscious of how emotions and breath dance with each other.
This skill helps a patient breathe. Tell the Rafa what is carried on the wind, like breath, that rises up around them?
Side Effects
-
Clear Blood
I am unsure how one cleans something like wine stains from a garment. However, Rafa Physicians know when such contamination occurs in the blood and can perform the subtle art of removing it without disruption.
This skill removes toxins from the blood. Tell the Rafa how the world around them stands ready to devour the impurities.
-
Heal Infection
While they are our siblings under the Light, followers of the Lumdai faith have a tendency to ascribe malice to that which inconveniences them. What does that have to do with infections? Good question. Infection and symbiosis demonstrate two sides of the Light’s infinite complexity.
This skill cures a patient’s infection. Tell the Rafa what emotion is radiating from the infection.
Side Effects
-
Make Shielding Amulet
Writings so old they are authorless say amulets were originally given only to the dead for protection in the World to Come. Shielding the living from hauntings is equally vital, and many Avodai wear amulets to ward off supernatural threats.
This skill allows the Rafa to craft an amulet that shields from either the Evil Eye, malevolent external spirits, or possession.
Side Effects
-
Mind Speak
Some twins share supernatural connections, but when Rafa Kula’s twin Luka died she went mute in grief. Only after she learned to project telepathically into her surviving siblings’ minds did she speak again.
This skill allows the Rafa to communicate with a willing participant in their vicinity. Tell the Rafa how their perspective subtly shifts to mirror their target.
Side Effects
-
Remove
The village is a macrocosm of the body, for within the body many codependent beings live. We call the healthful spirits symbiotic and the harmful ones parasitic. Be careful what you excise.
This skill removes a foreign or harmful object from the body. Tell the Rafa how this process occurs in their patient.
-
Sedate
“Hypnosis is excellent at lulling someone to sleep when you don’t have medicine to spare, but it always leaves patients in a groggy stupor afterward. So, don’t prescribe it if they have to work the next day.” – Rafa training manual.
This skill helps a patient fall asleep. Tell the Rafa what soothing thing from the patient’s past fills their mind.
-
Telekinesis
From a pamphlet by the New Avodai Society: “Who wouldn’t want a second set of hands? For those denied a first set by accident or fate, why shouldn’t they learn telekinesis? Instead we ask our disabled colleagues to metaphorically sit on their hands unless they become Rafa.”
Using telekinesis requires unbroken concentration, yet costs nothing if used to overcome a disability.
Side Effects
-
Temperature Control
Outside Houses of Healing, it’s not well known just how few degrees stand between life and death. Rafa Physician Nuri believes in erring on the side of warmth for destroying infection, though they are not known for their bedside manner.
This skill raises or lowers the temperature of a patient’s body. Tell the Rafa how the heat or cold leaving their patient appears.
Side Effects