So Healing magic is an interesting topic to me, because I hate when healing magic smoothes over everything. You know what? having your leg cut off should be hellish and traumatic, dying shouldn’t be a planned part of battle (Cough D&D 5e), and no healing magic should wipe away the ability for characters to get cool arse scars, and life changing injuries. Disabled people exist in Heartblood, and healing magic won’t change that. The current twitter ttrpg discussion on this topic began this thought process yes.
So what DOES healing magic look like?
Healing magic is the most common form of magic in Corim, it is the fundamental art of magic after all as all magic comes from life force. So why can’t it cure a disability? Healing magic is an art that is very dependent on timing. An injury from an hour ago can be easily healed, one ten hours ago? more difficult, a few days ago though is impossible. Healing needs to be done swiftly to be effective, so having a healer with you or close proximity to one is VITAL for anyone in an occupation likely to bring injury, such as monster hunting. Healing is also limited, it is combining the threads of life around the caster with those of the target, weaving them together to repair the damage. This means it takes time to settle, once someone is healed with magic they can’t be healed again for some time, usually about a day. The healing process is also incredibly painful, it is the act of flesh mending and bone reforming, it will usually hurt twice as much as the original injury, more if it has been a while between the injury and the healing.
Healing magic visually is fairly simple, the flesh writhes and the blood bubbles and boils as the flesh and bones rebinds, there is little light, and usually a scar is left except by the most skilled healers. Healing magic also has one of the higher costs, after serious healing an area might be barren of life, or the healer will look frail and drained, their body will be weak and aching from the sapping of their own life force. They need to eat a lot of food to restore their system as the toll the magic takes can burn away fat and energy like strenuous exercise would, meaning mages might lose a lot of weight after intensive healing. All magic has some level of cost but nothing as much as healing magic.
So Healing magic is like advanced first aid more than medicine, it can fix a broken leg or a deep cut, reattach a limb or return sight to an eye blinded by an attack. But against most disease or long term injuries healing magic is useless, that is where medicine, alchemy, and herbalism rule. Witches and wise women are the cornerstone of medicine in Heartblood, they are the ones who will make the poultice for an infected cut, or the potion for a sick child. A lot of the herbalism in Heartblood is based off a book I have, The Herbalist Primer by Anna Urbanek. It has the magical, medicinal, and culinary uses of 100 different herbs.
The witch Mira is a master of herb lore and medicine, but even with those skills she still struggles with her chronic pain and fatigue. Why? Cause I have Fibromyalgia and I wanted to write a character that deals with the same pain as I do. I wanted to show that having a disability whilst disabling and making many aspects of life harder, doesn’t destroy your life or make your life any less worth living. Mira is a disabled woman who is respected by her community, struggles with pain, has a bitchy lizard, and is a little insane in the best way.
Heartblood is a world with witches, wizards, knights, monsters, and magic. It has disabled people, including disabled adventurers. There are chairs with enchanted legs that walk for their user, there are mechanical spider like mobility aids. Some mages staffs are their cane, some fighters struggle with chronic pain and take medication for it. Disabilities exist, and to say they don’t makes a far less realistic and far less interesting world. At it’s core Heartblood is a story of two alienated, disabled women finding a way to love each other and themselves.
I want people to be able to see themselves in characters they make with the eventual TTRPG system, I want to SUPPORT players who want to make disabled characters, mechanically and lore wise. So I will make rules for wheel chair use, canes as weapons and arcane focuses, crutches, braces, and medications. Because these things matter to people, they matter to me.
A Note After Delicious In Dungeon Episode 12
Okay I just watched the scene after the find Falin and oh my fucking god this is how I want healing magic and ressurection to look in heartblood, this dark magic is what heartblood magic is meant to look like. I am going to be referencing this episode to people when talking about the magic in heartblood so much because the blood, the sacrifice, the caloric requirements, the ritual circle. This is what the magic in heartblood is meant to be like! there are fast and loose spells yes but everything with power is complex and messy and gory!
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