[open] Whatever is prepared for never occurs.

[amberdrake]

Who: Benevenuta Crispo, Amberdrake
What: The meeting arranged here.
Where: Valhalla Inn
When: An hour after Drake showed up in the game.
Warnings: Doubtful, but will update if so.

And as promised, here was Amberdrake. He found a chair somewhere in the lobby and sat down, most of his visible attention on the device in his hands that he'd been writing back and forth with various people on.

At least I remember what cellphones are, he thought wryly, keeping an Empathic 'eye' on the room for his expected company. I would be far more lost, elsewise.

Comments

[asklepios]

Desperation creates all sorts of situations, Benevenuta has found - and this is a city with a great deal of desperation. But he's been here less than hours, and has time ahead of him to learn the needs of this city for himself; from their conversation so far, she's confident that he will, and usefully. It's good, she thinks, to know already that he takes care with himself as well; somewhere like this, it's so easy to burn out.

“At Madrasati we keep records of our patients' particular needs, to best learn what it is we need to know. I do a lot of private research in my spare time- it helps.” Just being qualified isn't enough; there are too many variables in play not to be constantly improving, learning, adapting. It's one of the most appealing parts of staying in this profession while she's here, which she'll admit she initially hewed to because of the high demand for qualified surgeons and the kind of pay involved in that work.

At the time, it was the most practical choice to make in order to quickly and efficiently get her feet under her. Now, it's- less practical, but she knows what she's doing. She can make it work.

[amberdrake]

"Medical records are useful even on a world where you already know the six sentient races literally inside and out," Amberdrake smiles faintly at that, "I can imagine their use only goes up exponentially in a place like this."

He never writes down the things he knows as a kestra'chern, of course, but those are different needs, and the main need of most clients is being able to trust their kestra'chern with their secrets and their privacy. But as a Healer? Oh yes. Records are glorious. And on a world like this, he imagines they're mandatory.

They hadn't had time for records during the war, but at least they'd known that treating a gryphon with these herbs and with that Gift was going to be effective, and not detrimental.

"I also know a bit of herbalism, though I imagine the plants here are... different." More for him to read up on, but he's nothing if not a thorough researcher. No one had taught him hertasi bone structure, after all.

[asklepios]

Some of Benevenuta's patients prefer that she not keep records, but those also tend to be the ones who pay her in diamond necklaces and discretion, and that's a very different conversation.

“Likely,” she acknowledges. “But if you know what you need it to do, then it is not so much difficult to find suitable alternatives- I have done a lot of work, for example, in sourcing and trialling alternate medications for patients who rely on something they no longer have ready access to. It is a little bit trial and error, here and there- but medical science can be an inexact process to begin with, no? So it goes.”

[amberdrake]

"Nothing major," Amberdrake chuckles, "but as one example, there are teas that help with Gift over-extension that I prefer to have on hand, for obvious reasons. Especially without my assistant around to pour it down my throat if I end up face-down in the dirt. I also tend to make my own massage oils, so that I know everything that goes into them."

And teas that were natural painkillers, muscle relaxants, and so on and so forth. He was normally well-stocked, and had been even during the war when there hadn't been as much chance to restock. "I arrived with a cache of herbs from my world, so I have time enough to find alternatives before they run out."

[asklepios]

“I can recommend an alchemist,” she says, thoughtful; it's funny how many things in Baedal are familiar to Benevenuta that shouldn't be familiar to Vanessza. Coming and going in horse-drawn cabs, relying on a herbalist...

It's an interesting place to be.

“I work with potions, occasionally, but I like to fully understand them before I use them with a patient. It's a great deal of extra study.”

[amberdrake]

"Naturally," Drake chuckles at that, "otherwise you may poison them and make things ten times more complicated. And speaking to an alchemist would undoubtedly be helpful," he adds, "we don't have much of the craft on my world, mostly just basic herbalism. But I've encountered the term elsewhere, before."

At least he's skipping the whole 'I'm on another WORLD?! That's un-possible!' stage of these things, with his previous experience in being yanked out of his universe and into another. The ring on his finger is solid proof, whenever he wonders if he dreamed Haven and its occupants up.

It isn't from his world. No one decorates anything with lotuses on Velgarth. He's not even sure they have lotuses.

[asklepios]

They all come with directions, naturally, but she's a physician - she's supposed to understand what she's doing, she's supposed to be able to adapt if the treatment needs to be adjusted somehow. The first alchemist she dealt with, the wizard, she suspects he was a little surprised by the level of research she expected to do on what she was purchasing, and he didn't even know just how much she actually did.

(Dying repeatedly for science is not actually her idea of a good time, but it gives her a good baseline for dosages and learning the signs of complications ahead of time. It isn't as if poisoning will permanently damage her, after all.)

“It's interesting, those of us who are familiar with similar phenomena to this city. What it suggests.” 'Us', yes, although Xanadu never held her prisoner. Or at least not very long at a stretch, and certainly not without compensation in the form of experiences.

[amberdrake]

"This isn't your first time being hauled onto another world, either?" Amberdrake quirks an eyebrow, but he's privately a little relieved. If he's not the only repeat traveler, maybe he didn't muck things up entirely on his own with his moment of weakness and despair on this tenth anniversary.

He's had to learn, over his time as a ruler, to not blame himself completely for everything. But it's still a lesson he's teaching himself, and the timing had been... unfortunate in that regard.

[asklepios]

“No, indeed. Xanadu is different- not a trap city, more of sort of...city intersection.” Where people come and go; like Baedal, she doubts that anyone who did live there was from there originally, but for the most part, they could come and go more or less at will. She'd been trapped there a couple of times, but never for even a full day - she visited because she was curious, mostly.

After that first time, with the robot war, well. Anyone would be curious.

(To be fair, 'anyone' might not have gone back to see what happens next.)

“I know it only a little, but I've heard on the network of other places, too.”

[amberdrake]

"I am... relieved to not be the only one who has experienced it," Amberdrake admits, "I suppose one would consider Haven a 'trap city', especially early on in its history, although we were eventually able to travel to ours and other worlds to visit. It was a strange place, and I admit I grew fond of it despite all its considerable dangers."

It was no more alien than what the mage-storms were doing to his world, after all. And once he'd assured himself that no one was suffering for his absence, Haven hadn't been so bad.

"It was nowhere near this large, however," he gestures a little at their surroundings, meaning the whole city. Drake knew that just because he'd been to other worlds before didn't mean he didn't have a hell of an adjustment to deal with. But the Chief of Clan k'Leshya and the leader of White Gryphon -- effectively a Haighlei King in his own right -- wasn't going to start off by freaking out.

If he wasn't the sort to keep his cool, White Gryphon would be at war with the Haighlei right now, not recognized as an esteemed neighbor.

[asklepios]

“What I have heard, I think there is perhaps no 'norm' where these experiences are concerned.” It's a big multiverse, and there are times that even Benevenuta finds a moment in which she can feel very, very small.

(Not often, though. As mild-mannered as she tends to come across, if arrogance equated with height, she'd be the fifty foot woman.)

“So perhaps Baedal will always be an unusual one. But not, in all forms, objectionable.” She's aware not everyone is so sanguine as she is about the place, and she's equally aware that that's a little odd of her- but a little healthy optimism can't hurt to offer.

[amberdrake]

"When everything is strange," Drake notes, "strange becomes normal."

There's not much he feels comfortable about saying when it comes to finding a place objectionable or not. If his fate is to be separated from everyone he has ever cared about on a personal level (or more importantly, cared about him on a personal level -- as that is far more rare for a kestra'chern), he will probably never find this place less than objectionable.

But he hasn't been here long enough to know what the nature of his fate will be, and he knows that. So he's doing his best to keep his cool even underneath the kestra'chern mask of calm and serenity, because there's literally no use in melting down just yet.

Although the cigarette smoke isn't helping.