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The Caladrius

The Caladrius, created by t3isukone, is the Third Hour of the Fansus. Their aspects are Heart and Lantern in decreasing order of importance.

Caladrius
TheCaladrius.jpeg
Origin Light
Titles The Good Doctor
Names The Fallen Soldier
Aspects Heart Lantern
Date of arrival Unknown
Owner(s) FNORD

The Caladrius is a being of the Glory and one that fundamentally does not understand life as a creature on the world outsides its skin. It carries a great interest in that life, however, and cares for it deeply. It is a creature with one purpose above all-to safeguard life, whatever that entails. Most creatures touched by its power do not come out as they were, but they are certainly cured.

Its tarot card is The High Priestess.

Contents

Appearance

The Caladrius appears mostly as a painfully thin man or woman-it takes both forms, and is often depicted in both bodies at once joined at the neck-in loose robes with the head of a crane.

Principles

Healing above all and the continuation of life with it. A limb may be amputated-in fact, many limbs may be amputated-but a patient must be always prevented from passing away. The Caladrius smiles upon advancements in medicine, and for all the atrocities they commit, many of the most influential doctors in a given era may well be worshippers of it. The Caladrius does truly love what lives, though it’s attempts at aid often hurt more than they heal-it will do nothing that it considers to be harm.

Worship

It is common for followers of the Caladrius to garb themselves as plague doctors. They are worshipped by scientists, doctors, altruists, animal activists, environmentalists, and thanatophobes.

Cults

Mark

Names

The Spiderscare "No, I do not scare spiders. That's irrelevant. But let me see your minds-" Principles: Lantern 12, Moth 12, Teacher: Fucine
Temptation: Lantern 10, Winter 4, Knock 2
Rebellion: Deceiver
Summoning Text: Summon a sharp and cunning name of the Gracious Crane: Not all servants of the Caladrius heal the bland ills of the body. One has turned inwards, towards the brilliant radiance of the glory in the human mind. He will need the Lantern of knowledge, but death as well will convince him to take an interest.
Summoned Text: The feathers first, a mass of them falling like snow around the flesh-cloth stuffed with them. The Spiderscare can be mistaken for some messy idol, save for his sharp, very human eyes. Before he speaks, he looks to each of us in a way that seems to be cataloging all that we are.

Servants

Gharaniq: Principles: Moth 10, Heart 10 These sharp dancers move throughout all the histories, healing the ills of the powerful and guiding them with whisper-soft feathers. This one is so beautiful it is hard to look at.
Temptation: Heart 8, Secret Histories 2, Knock 2
Rebellion: Deceiver
Summoning Text: Summon a crane-dancer of the Healer of Ills: Not all healers work among the huddled masses. Some work upon the elite, and as they heal their ills, weave paths for them to work to their own. This one may add its manipulations to our service, but I will need the Heart to which it dances and the Histories it influences.
Summoned Text: It emerges in a dance-a great sweeping of snow-white wings, a performance for our benefit-before it bows, watching us with black eyes that gleam bright.

The Cured: Principles: Heart 6, Edge 6
Temptation: Heart 4, Winter 2, Knock 2
Rebellion: Devourer
Summoning Text: Summon one of the lesser servants of the Caladrius: The Caladrius gives its charity freely, and some take it. This is one of its rank and file-it will come to Heart for its new life, Winter for its old.
Summoned Text: And here it is-naked, with no mouth or any features besides what is necessary to life, and yet bursting with vim and vigor, with muscles like boulders.
Description Text: The Cured is a docile creature, if not ordered. When left alone, it tends to organize my headquarters. It does laundry surprisingly well.

Locations

The Fansus

The Great Lake-a deep, wide lake with opalescent water beyond the Silver Door, brimming with strange creatures created through the Caladrius's experiments-plants and animals that can be found nowhere outside the House and some of the stranger Histories. On a swampy island in the center, the Caladrius dwells in a hospital-laboratory. 

In my dreams tonight, I walked past the White Door into the deep, peaceful lake. There are marshlands surrounding it, rife with alien life, and in those I saw a white-robed servant of the Caladrius, in a bird-mask of leather, surrounded by those Dead that feel that rebirth in servitude is preferable to their condition. They gathered around them like mist, desperate, and they touched each one with their gloved hands, making them into the Cured that serve the Caladrius and its Names for menial tasks. The newly-Cured did not weep, for their eyes had no means to produce tears.

Gives: Trembling Airs
This time in the swampy wilds around the great lake behind the White Door, I saw the creatures the Caladrius makes, trying to create animals and plants that can understand the miracle of life. There were creatures that ate meat that grew in great tumors on their paws that they then chewed off, creatures covered in barbed armor, creatures who looked like plants and absorbed the blue light of the Mansus but walked on two legs. When I felt a nearby vine's brambles starting to push under my skin of their own accord, I decided to retreat. Gives: A Rattling In The Soul
I was in a different place in that great lake this time. The water was a frozen sheet, and beneath it, like a mounted display in a glass case, I saw creatures from strange Histories, that I never knew to exist to go extinct, frozen beneath that ice-some mammoth, some tiny. It was a suspension, for those who could not yet be treated-to freeze them until they can be. They moved slightly, for ice under the power of Heart is not truly ice, and feels the currents and the beat that water might though it still freezes. Gives: A Chilly Atmosphere

The Histories

The Caladrius often tries to interfere with the Histories, but any direct interference tends to be catastrophic.

Items

Tools

Ingredients

Influences

Books

On The Four Humours and Their Associations In The Invisible Arts-A 15th century text combining pseudo-medicine and the occult. The author, a Lawrence Stylle, wrote this as a description of what aspects of the human body the Hours hold sway over.
Start Text: The Aged Crone, in her great ambition and the positions her followers take in the Church, holds dominion over Yellow Bile, while the Peacock takes the Sanguine Humour to a dangerous excess. It is paramount to keep these in mind, for while the Peacock is generous, it is an overgenerosity that must be monitored, while the Crone...
End Text: The old yearning of the Watcher is associated with black bile, and-and this is paramount-the phlegm, in temperature and its work with breath, is of the great Caladrius, who guides a doctor in his work. A healthy amount of phlegm must thereby be cultivated in all patients... Gives: Words That Walk

The Grateful Crane-An unusual version of the folktale, in which a poor man living with his ailing parents finds an injured crane and nurses it back to health. The next day, he meets a hooded woman who offers to help him.
Start Text: The woman gifts the man and his family with three fine robes before she vanishes and tells them that they are magic and they must not sell them. The years go on, and his parents become sicker and sicker.
End Text: The man’s parents are a hundred years old and in misery. He has no idea what to do, and finally turns to the robes in desperation. Nothing comes of it until he tears at one of the robes in frustration. It and both others turn from fine silk to hundreds of crane feathers, and the man and his family drop dead on the spot.
Gives: A Waking Chant

Rites

Relationships

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