Iluvia Wunderplat
Iluvia Wunderplat was a doctor, magical researcher, and proprietor of the Wunderplat Hospital at Racos Palma. She inherited the hospital from her family and expanded upon its emphasis on the anonymity of its patients, typically pirates and smugglers. Under her stewardship, she introduced a blend of magical and surgical techniques that changed bodily and facial features of her patients to help them hide their identity from authorities.
History 🔗
Early Years 🔗
Born in the 12th day of the 7th month of 1185 as the only daughter and heir to parents Gallen Wunderplat and Ermingarde Wunderplat neé von Weinstein. Erminegarde had two prior miscarriages before Iluvia was born, and had almost lost her life during labor. Because of this, she was no longer deemed capable of rearing another child. As such, Iluvia was always poised to take over Wunderplat Hospital from a very young age.
Her primary education was addressed by her mother who homeschooled her until age 12. Beyond her foundation in reading, writing and arithmetic, she was free to learn on her own, as long as it was within the confines of the Wunderplat estate. In that time, she devoured her father's tomes on medicine, herbology and surgery. Her father would always allow her free rein in their hospital, and would be allowed to observe in various routine procedures. Aside from the hospital and their estate on Racos Palma, however, she was not to leave a chaperone's sight at all times.
Soon, she would not be satisfied with simply reading theoretical treatises on surgical techniques. She would sneak away from their estate to collect herbs that are said to have anaesthetic effects, and would experiment on small animals, like pets or captured rats. She would then dissect the creatures, then she would to but the parts back together in an attempt to revive them.
Her curiosity would soon escalate, and she would operate on the son of one of the Wunderplat's servants who complained of a stomachache. She correctly diagnosed that the boy suffered from appendicitis, and then coerced the boy to allow her to operate on him. Initially, the operation seemed to be a success. However, since the operation was done in secret, the boy could not be kept in bedrest, and was forced to be physically active soon after the operation. This caused internal bleeding, and soon led to sepsis, then death. The matter was kept quiet by her family, paying off the servant's family and moved them to a Wunderplat estate in the Freeholds.
Internship in the Wunderplat Hospital 🔗
In 1199, at age 14, in an effort to curb their daughter's more morbid curiosities, and to encourage her talent, her father decided to train her as surgical aide. To everyone, the effort seems to have borne fruit. She became more sociable with others, and her curiosity seemed to have been directed into more mainstream medical and surgical procedures. In reality, she just learned to hide her more radical projects better. She used the money that she received as salary from her official duties in the hospital to rent a small shed near Racos Palma's famous Tapestry Hills. There she practiced on her more controversial methods on hapless pirates who were easily tempted by a much cheaper rate, and the allure of the young Iluvia.
Univerity of Sanery Medical Program 🔗
As she reached the age of 17, her father had enrolled her at the University of Sanery's Medical Program. During those years, she carefully refined some techniques she learned by herself in her small shed, and melded them with the state-of-the-art that she learned in university. During her training, she learned to be much more meticulous and nuanced in her experimentation--always ensuring that the public eye believed her work to be within the ethical guidelines. Her final thesis, On the Reconstruction of Cartilagenous Material of Lacerated Nasal Passageways was considered groundbreaking and earned her offers of fellowships in various medical institutions around Apgar and abroad. Of all of these, she was drawn to Unibersidad de la Gonzales, a teaching hospital in Mehicania under the tutelage of one of its founders, Paz Gonzales, one of the pioneers of the field of reconstructive surgery. Many tried to dissuade her from studying under the man, citing a history of questionable ethics, which, to Iluvia, was one of his most attractive traits. She believed that she would be allowed to further her research without having to constrain herself with problems of ethics, as she had when she was working in her little shed near the dye workshops in the Tapestry Hiils.
Apprenticeship in the Unibersidad de la Gonzales 🔗
As soon as she graduated and received her Apgarian Medical and Surgical licenses in 1207, Iluvia took a sea voyage to Mehicania's Tordesillas region in order to begin her apprenticeship to Señor Gonzales. There, she was able to develop new techniques in facial reconstruction. She and Paz perfected a practical technique for nasal reconstruction, which was the subject of her doctorate thesis. They went on to jawline modification and earlobe reconstruction. One particular matter of some obsession for her during her residency, was her failed research into iris pigmentation and attempts at permanently altering them.
Much of their work, however, was marred with controversy, following accusations of grave robbery and illegal coercion to gather test subjects. The institution was shielded, however by the Mehicanian [Ejercito del Tierro], which had sought out their surgical techniques to disguise their spies, which were deployed against insurgents of the Hermanos de la Libertad and their rumored agitators backed by the Apgarian Army.
Return to Wunderplat Hospital 🔗
In 1216, nine years after her arrival at Mehicania, Iluvia's father contracted a strange illness that attacked his liver. Her mother regularly sent her updates about her father's declining condition. It seemed that physicians at the Wunderplat Hospital, as well as specialists from Sanery were not able to diagnose the source of the illness and were only treating the symptoms. While this eased his condition somewhat, his health was still deteriorating at a rapid pace. Before the year's end, Iluvia asked for permission to see to her father's health. Señor Gonzales not only allowed it, but declared that she is free of his apprenticeship, and can be considered a master in her own right.
By the time that she had arrived in Racos Palma, her father was already in the late stages of his illness, which was declared a form of cancer that seemed to have unusual properties. Despite her efforts, her father died in the first week of 1218, nearly two years after he started showing symptoms. This disease became her new obsession. She tried to find people with similar symptoms and a similar progression, using Wunderplat's many contacts in the criminal underworld of Apgar and Senera. She also made use of resources she'd gathered over the years in the Mehicanian military. She found nine subjects that she researched extensively for the next seven years of her life.
Illness and the Occult 🔗
Along with scientific research, her fruitless efforts had brought her into the realm of the occult and the study of Old Kalassarian texts on alchemical medicine. This had led her to a group of people who claimed to study the Ritma--a lost art practiced by the Kalassarians during the Empire's Age of Bloom. They called themselves the Phantasmagoria. They claimed to have access to documents and records sealed by the Divine Masochist Primacy of Bastion that might allow her not only to cure the ailment that afflicted her father, but might even grant her the ability to revive him.
Initially, she was dismissive of Phantasmagoria's claims, but her desperation in solving the problem had brought her to the Alsatian Mountains, where she was told to meet one of Phantasmagoria's higher ranking members. In 1223, she arrived at Karst Fortress, a long forgotten castle a couple of miles away from the town of Mont Alys, high in the Alsatian permafrost.
In Karst Fortress, she met with one of the founders of Phantasmagoria. A man who donned the clerical robes of the Society of Nature and claimed himself to be a vampire. Styling himself as the Marquis of Karst, he convinced Iluvia of the veracity of his claims by allowing her to cut his hand off. After 24 hours, he takes the severed hand and reattaches it back to his arm without any surgery--he merely placed the hand back, and it seemed to have stitched itself onto his arm without intervention.
He told her that Phantasmagoria was formed in order to, in part, replicate the kind of longevity he had, as well as revive the Kalassarian art of Ritma. That he saw her research about her father's ailment, and believed that she could be instrumental in its return.
The Nature of the Ailment 🔗
By 1224, Iluvia herself had translated complex medical treatises that seemed to point to clues about her father's illness. In fact, she also found that children whose parents perished from the same disease had similar nodules in their liver, but did not suffer from the same fate. In 1225, her research had led her to the conclusion that people with such livers made them capable of using Ritma somehow, but did not know the mechanism to do so.
She would travel back to Racos Palma to attend to her mother's funeral who died of natural causes. During her absence in Karst Fortress, one of the members of Phantasmagoria, Souveran Rothschild returned from an expedition to Ahuria carrying a purple-black orb, claiming not to know of its significance, but he had taken it from a strange creature who tried to rob his caravan.
Upon her return to Karst Fortress, the Marquis mentioned the object in passing, saying that the blood of the person who brought it to him seemed especially appetizing. As she touched the strange object, she immediately burst forth with energy that blew out all the candles within a 30 foot radius. Afterwards the orb's purple hue faded to a deep black, losing its previous luster. This seemed to be the catalyst that they needed to use Ritma. Of particular note to Iluvia due to her previous research, her eye color changed from a pale blue to a golden yellow.
The Marquis called for a Conclave, calling for the upper echelon of the Phantasmagoria to Karst. They were shown the strange orb, and were tasked to find information about them.
Return to Racos Palma 🔗
Information on sources of these orbs, thus any kind of research into them were slow, but since the Fall of Bastion, rumors of people from the east performing feats only recorded in fairy tales and discredited history books. Eventually, Iluvia was able to replicate a spell called thunderwave from an ancient spellbook. She theorized, incorrectly, that since she had come in contact with the orb, she became able to draw upon the elements. It was much later that news of the Fall of Bastion reached Karst Fortress, including the orb that gradually consumed the Burtian capital, and the connection to the reappearance of magic was made.
By then, Illuvia decided that her time would be better served back in Racos Palma, where she would be able to do research on her own, with the resources at her disposal there. The loose association that Phantasmagoria provided, she deemed unreliable as a source of consistent information, especially as the Marquis himself frequently travelled away from Karst Fortress. She took many spellbooks and grimoires when she left in the spring of 1228.
During her absence, Wunderplat Hospital continued to provide medical and surgical services to smugglers and pirates using the same operating procedures her parents have extolled. Corruption by some of the managerial staff she left behind, however, had dwindled the hospital's coffers and left many of the facilities in disrepair.
When she saw the state of the hospital upon her return, she was furious. Managerial staff rumored to be behind Wunderplat Hospital's rapid decline disappeared, their bodies found flayed and disemboweled in the Mermaid Forest a month later. Apgarian naval officers were tasked to investigate this matter, along with Iluvia's potential connection to the Mehicanian military, but no evidence was found implicating her to the matter. A mute deckhand from a Mehicanian schooner was soon found to be the culprit and was beheaded for the crime.
She had made connections with Sanerian finacier Louis Vega in an effort to refinance the hospital, mortgaging family holdings in the Freeholds of Tamar and Rigatona. Within a year, Wunderplat Hospital saw an expansion of its facilities, including her purchase and rehabilitation of the Racos Palma Lighthouse.
For the next twenty years, she had grown in her ability to cast magic, and her understanding of some of its fundamentals. She incorporated the practice of magic with her medical practice as well, offering more radical changes in a person's body and facial structure, making them undiscernible to even trained observers. She had contracted with the Parvese in order to find individuals with yellow eyes and hair, to train them to be part of her magically-literate medical staff. She had also begun to reconnect with her acquaintances in the intelligence divisions of the Mehicanian Ejercito del Tierro to establish a deal with them regarding
Poasan-Apgarian Conflict 🔗
Mehicanian Ties 🔗
Soul Gem 🔗
Death 🔗
| Organizations | |
| Wunderplat Hospital | |
| Phantasmagoria | |