un: Bachelor | text

[thantagonist]

Attention Fellow People of Etraya,

I am Doctor Daniil Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine. As I understand it, few of you have seen a doctor lately. That simply won’t do! Please, don’t wait to get sick to establish care. I am situated in the hospital, ready to take consent forms and make updated medical histories. At least a few of you have unaddressed concerns, I just know it. The average person comes to see the doctor when it’s too late! Though we cannot die here, there is no reason to suffer unduly.

And if you are otherwise healthy, perhaps think of it as helping me out. In the event of an outbreak, it is far more helpful to have complete clinical pictures of the inhabitants. Especially, as I understand it, there are many biological differences in this population.

Please come visit me during my clinic hours, every day from 10am to 6pm.


[What Daniil really wants is to meet more of the unusual inhabitants of Etraya more quickly as well as conduct casual interviews of the sort of people who are slated to save the universe. But he can’t just say that completely outright.]

Comments

[badlydisarmed]

Did he tell you about the magic poison?

[ He's visibly wired now. He genuinely never thought Jayce would agree to surgery. ]

[thantagonist]

No. What is this about magic poison? Do you mean the infection in his leg? I saw it, but I didn’t know what to make of it.

[The change in Robert’s state is obvious, and worthy of paying attention.]

[badlydisarmed]

It's some kind of corrupted magic. I wanted to treat that before attempting surgery— I suppose we could do surgery and worry about that after, but doing an invasive procedure on a compromised leg didn't seem like the best possible course of action, especially with a reluctant patient.

[ He stands up and digs into a file cabinet. ]

I have x-rays.

[thantagonist]

Let’s see them.

[Now that’s the good shit. He never had access to an x-ray machine personally, so he gets genuinely excited.]

It may be possible to keep the corruption at bay, whatever it is. We could do some extensive testing, or perhaps enlist the assistance of one of those elves with the purification magic. I honestly can’t believe I’m even talking about magic, but I’ve seen it for myself recently.

[badlydisarmed]

[ Robert hands him the envelope with the x-rays. Jayce's leg is all sorts of fucked up, lots of bone fragments. ]

I don't know how to test when it comes to magic I'm not familiar with.

[thantagonist]

Something tells me you weren’t familiar at all with magic-

[Daniil’s mouth hangs open as he sees the damage.]

How is he walking at all? How is he not passing out with every step? Even with that contraption on his leg, there’s no way it’s providing enough stabilization.

[Daniil holds his fingers loosely over his mouth, just takin’ it all in.]

I’ll figure out what it is. It’s bound to have some sort of match with something that someone knows about.

…Have you met Emet-Selch?

[badlydisarmed]

[ He has no idea of how Jayce is walking. But it doesn't matter, he focuses on the last question. ]

I've met him. He's some kind of "superior" being? You think he can help?

[ Robert doesn't, but he also didn't think it was possible to talk Jayce into surgery, clearly Daniil has some people skills he lacks. ]

[thantagonist]

He treated me like a fool earlier today. But he’s clearly an academic and capable of incredible magic.

Did you take any photographs to document the infection?

[Daniil has an effect on certain people.]

[badlydisarmed]

No, I noted it on a chart. I have a drawing.

[ Maybe he can hook up Jayce to one of the magic machines before the next mission. ]

I have a whole wing of magic machines I don't understand. Jayce was supposed to look into them.

[thantagonist]

That’s a good start. It was so bizarre looking, I should have made a diagram as well… but we should take some photographs and samples, if possible.

[Daniil makes some mental notes.]

A whole wing of them? Without any instruction manuals? Still, that’s as good of an excuse as any to bring him back to the hospital.

[badlydisarmed]

There are manuals, I'm just lazy.

[ He hadn't had cause to read them, but he supposes he does now. ]

[thantagonist]

[Daniil sighs.]

Laziness is no good, Doctor Romano. Knowledge, just there to be taken. For shame. [His admonishment has no teeth.] Like letting fruit rot on the vine.

Show me the manuals. I’ll study them.

[badlydisarmed]

I deserve laziness.

[ He's not sure if bringing Daniil here was a good idea or not. ]

And they're downstairs. I wasn't sure I'd know which manual belonged to which machine if I moved them.

[thantagonist]

[ What, is Daniil cramping Robert’s style already? ]

I’ll go look in the morning.

[Daniil raises a brow at Romano and laughs.]

Oh? Trying to retire, are you?

[badlydisarmed]

Absolutely. Once we get you caught up with modern medicine, I'm out.

[ He does enjoy medicine, but ideally he'd be leaving all the boring stuff and just get involved in surgeries. ]

[thantagonist]

[He chuckles. Fine. He’d met plenty of people who wanted to be left to just one very specific thing. Daniil was one of those men.]

So how did you earn your early retirement? You’re not just giving up because of your arm, are you?

[badlydisarmed]

Being trapped in a dystopian hellhole before this slightly better dystopian hellhole should be enough.

[ Has he not painted a depressing enough picture of his life before the dystopias? ]

Daniil trauma dump & P3 spoilers incoming 🚨

[thantagonist]

Is this a hellhole to you? Somewhere with no scarcity, no violence, no inquisition, no infectious disease? With running water and electricity everywhere you go? You said you were from America, 2003? It must have been nice. The last hospital I was in was converted from a theater and had to have water carted from the steppe and put into a gallon jug suspended over a temporary sink for hand washing.

Right before I got here I had to watch them hang my other doctor. Well. Not a doctor. He was a drop out, but still. He was a good man.

[And there’s nothing I can do from here.]

this man needs so much therapy

[badlydisarmed]

You haven't seen the stupid murder games yet. But yes, the hospital I worked in had running water and electricity. Sometimes someone brought a gun or a knife, or there's an explosion, but I'm sure it was much better than a small town in the 20s.

Anything else you'd like to get off your chest?

[ He's gone back to sitting down and sipping wine, but he is listening. ]

Minor patho 3 spoilers

[thantagonist]

Yes! And they’re closing down my laboratory just because I had “insufficient findings”, even though I was in that town for an incredible discovery anyway. We were only open for three years!

And I think I’m going insane. I can’t explain it. My head’s all muddled. Ever since I went to that plague town… I can’t describe it. I feel less in control.

[Daniil polishes off his glass of wine.]

Murder games?

[badlydisarmed]

In one of them you needed to appeal to an unseen audience in order to survive. There's also been monsters at night and in the other bubble city I saw kill or die games.

[ Which is whatever, he's fine.

He digs a piece of paper from his bunch of books and hands it over. ]

Try filling this in, count the plague as a natural disaster.

[thantagonist]

Great. So we’re well kept between periods of torture, then?

[Daniil frowns at it, but it was presented so plainly and without judgement that he does actually sit down on his couch and pull out his pen.]

[It hovers over many of them, though Daniil doesn’t actually mark anything. Maybe that’s a layer of vulnerability he can’t cross.]

[It is only the respect he has for Robert and the knowledge he has over him that allows him to even sort of be psychoanalyzed. And it was complicated. Was it PTSD… or something stranger.]

[He hands the paper back.]

What can even be done about it? Especially with these apparent murder games awaiting us?

[badlydisarmed]

Good question.

[ Robert huffs, looking at his collection of books. ]

I can give you something for the nightmares, but the rest of it is very much outside my scope.

[thantagonist]

I take strycchanine in small doses mixed with morphine. I used to just take valerian extract for my nerves, but it doesn’t really work anymore.

[He follows Robert’s gaze]

What do you recommend?

[badlydisarmed]

Well. Not that.

[ This guy is addicted to morphine for sure. ]

What symptoms do you want treated?