#i think she might also drink to mask all the existential dread and loneliness

[bam-monsterhospital]

just. just gonna write a big ol info dump. don’t mind me, just wanna blab about my dumb fantasy doctor ;u; nbd

so. ethel. ethel montressor. doctor montressor. yup. 

her kind of, driving force, the root of everything she’s learned and become invested in, i wanted it to stem from this -actually prob really unhealthy- fear of death.  fear of death and mortality and finiteness. existence is nice, and no one REALLY really has a handle on the nothingness of death, and even in fantasy-land people aren’t living with their family’s ghosts like it’s some happy sitcom... at least not often. 

so, she got into healing at an early age, got into medicine since religion = no. she went at it with a more scholarly scientific approach, and through that and looking for reliable alternatives that could have enough potency to compete with light-based priestly standard healing magics, she found out about blood and people using blood to power spells and whatever it is blood mages do in fantasy-land where mages use fire/frost/lightning magic rather than cooler shit.  so since her approach to medicine was so very bodily-focused, why hasn’t blood magic been used like that before? 

i dunno, i seriously doubt she’s innovating anything totally new out of the void -bound to have been people coming to these ‘hay wouldn’t it be cool if we could just magically effect the blood directly to keep it from running out of frank’s gaping chest wound?’ conclusions before her- but in fantasy-land with fire/frost/lightning wizards, and tree-druids, and light-religious peoples and that being like... your standard magic users............ it doesn’t seem to be very common. 

so like. death. tackling death. she gets really invested in this newage blood-is-the-answer! i’m-totally-redefining-the-medical-world research, but like, she’s hit 40, and is human.. not a lotta time to continue research. sooooooooooooooo vampirism.

yup vampirism. it’s a quick fix for time, pluuuuus vampires deal in blood, maybe greater knowledge can be gained from that sort of perspective. 

anyway, so she botches turning, and has gnarly scars from it, and like, yeah she’s a vamp, but i dunno i don’t see her having any transformative mist/bat abilities. just all the weaknesses. but hay, more time right? plus better blood awareness. yay. 

so research continues, and yeah she likes healing people, that’s a big part of the interest in all this in the first place.  and since she started to dabble in plague doctoryness before she turned and before she went deep down the blood magic hole, she keeps that title and uses the garb to ward away the sun.  she doesn’t subscribe to the miasma ‘oh no the vapors are evil’ theories of disease and instead vehemently pushes that it is instead liquids; liquids! droplets contain contagions! that’s what spreads sickness! it’s all the liquids! oh noooo! (because, y’know. blood. and also it’s fantasy-land so no cell theory or virus knowledge like for us. duh). so like that’s her excuse for all the protective plaguedoctor garb. 

plus like, even though she’s undead and can’t get infected, she does actually believe in her whole liquids=disease theories and likes to keep things clean for her patients/anyone she comes in contact with -sterility being impossible in fantasyland buuuuuuuuut shhhh- suuuuuper clean.with soap. and washing. 

so yeah. i always saw her as like, semi-nomadish. sticking to smaller towns to try and heal sick and make money doing so.... so she can continue on with her research and not arouse too much suspicion. well, suspicion for the wrong thing.  and like, it’s all about death and stopping it, right? negating the problem of death. moreso negating the problem of nothingness, of the void, of non-existence. and undeath gives more time, but you’re not invincible, PLUS the sun/light weakness is something she’d like to find a workaround to as well because duh.

and the blood problem is awesome because it also works into her research and shit. so she collects samples form anywhere and anything she can get at.  patients who can afford to lose some, wild animals, etc etc.  she’ll even stoop to suggesting bleeding techniques -despite considering them a waste of blood... buuuut they’re practical for her needs-, again for patients that can afford to lose the blood. ye. 

i could go ooooooon and ooooooon and on and on about ethel ;u;  she combines my favourite things all together at once.