RP: Practice Anatomy for Budding Necromancers (And One Paladin)

This is a Devout's Guild RP.

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

Synopsis: Joan and Ernest study the anatomy of a recent diseased individual. Zahrani joins in to watch.

Chapel of Rest, Cenril

Joan spent a couple hours of this morning speaking with the chapel owner and both funeral director and attendant, making sure it was alright for her and Ernest to come in and watch how they prepared a body before service, she had showed them her badge from the Healers guild and the letter of reference the dryad Rhaevyn Ashlyren wrote, letting to those to whom it concern that Joan Blackheart was a credited Novus Morior within the Necromancers guild. She had all rights to ask to obverse and participate if those did so agree, and they in turn had all rights to report her conduct, and actions back to her respected guilds. She had also asked if she and Ernest could help prepare the next deceased body that needed to be presented. As it would help them along. At first the chapel owner and funeral director seemed hesitant to let Necromancers near their deceased customers...but Joan also was a novice healer with the Healers guild and had her badge as proof, and she had a ace up her sleeve. She informed them she could have a paladin come and watch over her and Ernest as they worked. This seemed the ease the chapel owner and funeral director, more so when she told them that it was Zahrani. When it was all done and agreed to, Joan stepped outside the chapel to summon the closest child runner, pressing a copper coin in the child’s small hand, Joan gave the small girl the message to be delivered to the panther paladin, the girl smiled before running off to inform the woman. Next, Joan would send a message to Ernest...wait they plan to meet up here...right?!

Zahrani || The young girl make her way down the streets, spying a pair of young felines her age and hailing them as friends. With their assistance, she ascends to a nearby rooftop to survey the market, spotting a familiar armored cat woman browsing the stalls. She waves to Zahrani when the panther's cyan gaze reaches her, before returning to the street and rendezvousing with the paladin. Rani reads the note requesting assistance at the funeral chapel, before pressing a couple silver coins into the girl's hand. Upon treading her way out of the crowded market, the feline is at the chapel in mere minutes. She offers a polite handshake to the funeral director who comes to greet her, who presents her with the death certificate and the news regarding the deceased and the fledgling necromancers who would be observing the preparation process. One name she recognizes, and the other is unknown to her. The panther turns her gaze upon seeing Joan, offering a soft smile before saying, "It's been awhile since I've seen you, my friend."

Ernest was outside of town, looking around the ruins of whatever castle had been there, trying to get a sense of whatever curse had blasted that place. Alas, its effects were beyond his grasp of the art and so he'd headed back into town when a young courier found him. "Come quick," the kid said. "Joan is ready for you at the funeral place," the kid said. At first, Ernest was confused. What funeral place? What the heck was Joan up to there? Then he remembered something about how she'd wanted to arrange a trip there, something about making bodies prettier? Weird. He couldn't even remember if he'd actually agreed. Probably had, absently, a sort of "sure, whatever" while he was busy with something else. Shucks. Well, it'd be impolite not to show up, but he wasn't gonna run there, either. The vultures and crows circled overhead and landed on the roofs of nearby buildings as the undead approached. Dramatically, as always. Long black duster fluttering in the wind behind him, spurs echoing--clink, clink, clink on the flagstones of the street--hat curiously immobile atop his head. In retrospect, there hadn't really been much of a breeze before he showed up. Was this guy -really- using low-level aeromancy just to make himself look cool? The mummy looked like he could have used an undertaker himself, back in the day. Skin as dry as tanned leather, salt-bleached-grey eyeballs hidden behind a frozen Eastwood squint. Zahrani's presence was noted and the wispy remains of an eyebrow quirked at her. "Y'ain't said nothin' t'me 'bout the -law- bein' here," he said to Joan, then flashed a grotesque grin that might have been charming if his jerkyesque face didn't contort it into a sneer. "Ernest, sheriff."

Joan blinked those voided eyes as she turned to face Zahrani and then Ernest as they entered, the furry one holding the death certificate the other in his always cool western gitup. “Oh hey ‘Rani! Thanks for coming, and yeah it’s been a minute.” She cheerfully greets the other woman, to the mummy-fied cowboy the vampire merchant grins towards as she excitedly points towards the back of the chapel, there be a large room where the funeral director and attendant tended to the deceased. “Her name is Zahrani, she is here to make sure we don’t do anything to necromancy to the corpse. *she shrugs* It was the only way I could get them to agree to let us observe as then...practice on a customer. The fellow we get to practice on was nice enough to donate his body to science slash nercomany slash healing.” The woman is about bouncing in place with excitement as she looks between the two of her friends, clapping her half gloves hands together, rubbing them against each other as she waits for their comments.

Zahrani finishes looking over the last piece of paper as she walks with the other two, verifying the man's last will and his wish for his body to be donated to study. She hands off the parchment to the funeral director, before flashing a charming grin to the stylish mummy, "Pleasure to meet you, Ernest. Rest assured, I am not en enforcer of mundane law for a Lord or King. I'm here for the spirit of Freedom and consent, and the departed has consented to his body being used for physical and magical study. I look forward to learning alongside you and Joan." Well, the feline doesn't ~seem~ facetious, though a more cynical person might suspect she is. Her tone is mid-tenor, with a faint feline accent (think Turkish, in her case). The paladin turns her grin towards Joan, a soft laugh emanating from her throat at the vampire's very obvious excitement.

Ernest squinted, rather confused by the new information he was being given. "So lemme get this here straightened out." He pointed to Joan. "You got us into a place full o' fresh stiffs, for th' purposes of learnin' us some new corpse magic, on the grounds that -we don't do any corpse magic-." Next, to Zahrani. "An' yer a -law-woman- who serves Do What Ya Wanna, The Show, The Person, an' don't care much fer the actual -law-." Well, Joan seemed happy about it, anyhow. And having a happy-go-lucky paladin instead of a slap-you-with-a-fine-for-wearing-the-wrong-socks paladin seemed like it was definitely better than the alternative. He shrugged and gestured into the building, though he clearly wasn't as excited about the endeavor as Joan. "Since we're here, I guess. Might as well see if they have some vulture repellent in there." He eyed one of the vultures, which eyed him right back. The debate rages to this day whether they follow him because they find him appetizing, or because vultures following an undead cowboy is just too thematically-appropriate for the universe to not go along with.

Joan cants her head to one side as she thinks, following into the large mortuary room behind the male attendant, her index finger taps against her cheek as she turns to address the mummy cowboy once she moves off to the side away from the steel tables where two bodies sit covered under thin white sheets. “More like, we can’t raise them as zombies...we can try to close wounds magically or by stitching, make the bodies seem whole and presentable for viewing, learn about washing them, combing their hair, putting makeup on them, clothing them...we can collect the water we used to wash them, bits of their hair we combed out, toe and finger nail clippings, skin cells scraping, capture any gasses and such and take them away for our private research afterwords. We might even get to have his blood once it is extracted...even the brain, kidney, liver, entrails, gallbladder...” Joan shoots a look towards Zahrani to make sure the paladin is alright with Joan speaking so openly about the organs of a body that the budding Necromancer was hoping to harvest, her pupiless eyes widen slightly as she places a hand over her mouth in a ‘oops, too much?’ manner. She shoots a look towards Ernest and then the funeral director, the older man shrugs as he moves to wash his hands and goes about putting on a clean leather apron, gloves, shoe booties, hair net, sleeve guards, and finally gloves, his attendant following suit. Puttering around the first steel table once he is properly outfitted.

Zahrani also shrugs at Joan's suggestions. The panther has a strong stomach, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to her. The panther stands behind Joan and Ernest, the feline watching the chapel workers begin the task of examining the body. She looks over the various tools the mortician would use to dress the bodies. The smell of death is palpable. With a wry grin, the feline asks, "Could you get them to dress themselves?" A morbid sight, to be sure, but it would surely save the attendants some awkward and difficult labor.

Ernest took a swing from his flask right as Zahrani made her suggestion and, had his throat system not been as much of a mess, his spit-take and subsequent laughter might have been messier than it was. (Or maybe less messy, who knows?) Once he'd collected himself, he grinned and jerked a thumb at the paladin. "I like her. I bet I could get a stiff to dress itself. Been workin' on control recently. That book I borrowed from th' library says th' part I really wanna learn needs a lotta focus." As for things like organ extraction or various fluids and scrapings, Ernest didn't see the point at all, but decided to stay quiet about that. The makeup thing, though? "But yer crazy iffin' y'think I'm fixin' ta play dolls an' tea party with a body."

Joan made a face as she wanders over to the extra aprons and coverings, getting busy putting on the protective coverings like the others did. There was even face mask, which she opted for, even as a vampire...there was things even she could catch from the dead. She was not some super uber elder vampire that was all powerful...yet! After she was fully covered she moved to the opposite side of the table where the feet of the dead where, it give her a full unrestricted view and she’d be mostly out of the way. She’d dig into the back pocket of her pants for her small leather journal and a pencil, flipping it open to a clean page, pencil held at ready to sketch once the funeral director started.

Zahrani elects to put on a face mask, hair covering, and apron. The feline, being among the living, is also careful not to touch anything unless asked to assist. She watches the men and women prepare the corpse, cleaning every inch of the skin before proceeding with incisions to remove organs and drain blood. It's thorough, methodical, calculated, and many of the steps make sense for funeral preparation. The panther herself paces along the periphery, a faint amber glow wafting from her muscular form. Should the necromancers have an opportunity to use their talents of re-animation, with or without consent from the director, her Sunfire would be ready in case the situation gets out of control.

Ernest didn't bother putting on any scrubs. When asked why, he grinned and dripped a bit of water over his longcoat, showing how the liquid just rolled off without soaking the fabric. "Got the coat made special. Nothin' sticks to it. Bet'cha I'm safer in this'n you are in that." Watching the process was... honestly not something Ernest took much of an interest in, instead looking into the various cabinets and things where they kept their chemicals and reagents. "What's this one do?" he'd ask, of one or another, usually at inconvenient times and content to go without an answer. When one was being used on the body, he'd pay attention, but otherwise he was just browsing. As fun as it would be to suddenly have the body wake up and scream something like "WAIT I NEED THAT", as they were removing an organ or some such, it'd be a quick way to get himself kicked out of the building before he'd figured out where the bird-B-gone was.