#hc:essentials

“Go big or go home” essentially sums it up. 

Ultimately, Brethyn’s first experience with death is the experience which has defined every other turn of his life since. Had Dralras lived, Brethyn would be an entirely different person to whom he is today.

I headcanon that an initially peaceful protest regarding the Void Nights erupted into a violent riot when the Jarl’s magician told everyone to just shut up and go home. His rude manner agitated the crowd, which started to press into the palace. An unfortunate misplaced gout of flame from the elven side of the crowd enraged the Nords, who turned their anger on the Dunmer. The event soon spiraled out of control and led to much of the Snow Quarter being destroyed in unbalanced retribution. It was after that event that it gained the moniker of the ‘Grey Quarter’ and the reputation for being an absolute slum full of dangerous immigrants.

Brethyn’s father was found critically injured after the event, while his aunt and uncle were already dead. Rather than admitting him for treatment, the Temple of Talos turned Dralras away and sent him to rot to death in the Hall of the Dead. It was there that the 14 year old Brethyn found him dying of infection. Dralras passed after three days of pain, leaving Brethyn orphaned and under the care of his older cousin Ulvisa. This forced Brethyn to abandon his apprenticeship with Granny Folsi ( onceawitch ) and take on full-time work, and eventually led him to be captured by the Cronvangr coven en route to Riften.

This sparked Brethyn’s intense hatred of Nords and eventually led to him being the perfect target for Egil (the master vampire of Cronvangr coven) to mold into the compliant bait he needed. To this day, Brethyn holds little but rage for the Temple of Talos and all of its priests. They are the one order Brethyn will refuse to aid in any way, as he holds the cult’s beliefs just as culpable for his father’s death as the actual persons who refused him treatment. 

Priests of Arkary, inversely, elicit nothing but deep respect and sadness from him. It was the kindness of the Priest of Arkay in Windhelm that allowed Dralras to be medicated for his pain while he waited for death. He was the one who provided clean water to wash Dralras’ brow, even though he lacked the training needed to heal him. The old Breton even located a Dunmeri priest to inter Dralras by the proper customs of his people, an act that Brethyn remains grateful for. 

Given that Dralras was Brethyn’s only parent and best friend, he would experience separation anxiety just from Dralras leaving for work in the morning. His sudden death was truly a BSOD moment for his son and Brethyn still hasn’t shaken the loneliness of losing him. He nurtures the pain by allowing his mind to fixate on memories of the event, growing his wounds like vines to wrap around his heart. Through his efforts to memorialize Dralras, Brethyn does little but worsen his mental condition and prevent himself from coping effectively. 

Modern AU - Bharat Revankar is a well-renowned surgeon at a hospital in a small Canadian city. Having come to the country illegally as a child, he barely remembers anything from his familial home in India’s Maharashtra province. Still, he’s a dutiful nephew and sends money to his aunt and uncle every month. He’s very active in volunteering, and will often have mini-clinic days in the farther-flung towns and villages for those who can’t make the long drive into town themselves. And on the weekends where he isn’t doing that, he gets out his skinniest skinny jeans and hits up the one gay bar in town.

Dragon Age AU - Berith hails from an unknown origin in the Tevinter Imperium, which his parents fled for a life of freedom in Antiva. There he came under the tutelage of several difficult tradesmen before finally finding his niche in the medical practice of a wizened old human. He eventually fell under the umbrella of Antiva’s unsavory circles and is now employed by them under threat of death. Death that would come, naturally, from the hands of a Crow.

Tristan learned both his first and second languages from a non-native speaker. In the case of Bretic, his accent, grammar and intonation were corrected by the other members of the small logging community he was raised in, as the town primarily relied on Bretic for daily communication. 

When learning Common, he had no such benefit. There was exactly one crotchety old Imperial living in their village, and she would just as soon sic a hound on you as talk. 

Thus, not only is his Common heavily accented with a mountain-dialect of Bretic, he also uses several pronunciations that are only prevalent in Bosmeri expatriate communities. His overall communication pattern has also been influenced by Guilarin’s Bosmeri heritage, as outlined below. 

1. The order of his fluency goes as follows: Bretic -> Common -> Yoku. Though he’s fluent in both Bretic and Imperial, he’s much more in-tune with connotations and nuances in the former.

  2. He uses basic words to have a much wider range of meanings, implications, and connotations, which leads to frustration when miscommunication occurs. 

    Example: “Am I weird?”, as used in the Foxy Mama drabble, is an instance where ‘weird’ was the closest thing Tristan knew to the meaning he wanted to convey, so he used it. The word he meant was ‘possessed’, since many people in town accused him of such. This substitution common in children, but Tristan’s poor literary education means he has continued this habit into adulthood.

3. Silence has as much importance and meaning as speech. Oftentimes, Tristan is silent because he means for the silence to be interpreted as contextually meaningful. This can lead him to over-analyzing it when others do it, and is one of the methods inherited from Guilarin.

4. He’ll use several rude means of communicating orders - clucking his tongue, tsk-king, whistling, and short barks for example - that are typically reserved for speaking to children or animals. Unlike some of his other habits, he does realize this is considered socially unacceptable. Isn’t going to stop him from doing it, though.

Brethyn generally handles aggravating situations well – he’s had a lot of practice, after all. You don’t spend 80 years of your life being bitten, thrown up on, defecated on, and et cetera without gaining a deep well of patience. But there are some things that Brethyn just can’t deal with. Deep beneath all the patience, facades, and lies there are berserk buttons. What happens if you push one?

I’m going to unfortunately have to defer from answering the first question, simply because I’m still working out the practical bits of how and what kinds of offensive spells Brethyn knows. He’s certainly good at repel undead spells because of his experiences with necromancy, and Restoration spells that sever flesh have medical applications so he’d likely have learned those as well.

As for in healing, Brethyn always uses magic as a supplement rather than a modus operandi. This is a matter of practicality for several reasons:

Brethyn’s main clientele (Nords) are heavily suspicious of magic and its users

He has limited magicka, so it has to be conserved as much as possible to last for long procedures

I headcanon that magical healing isn’t exactly that magical - it comes with its own unique advantages and drawbacks. One of these being that an excessive, sudden flood of healing magic can cause cells to malfunction. This could lead to anything from cell death to mutations, so it’s advised that a healer use multiple methods to rehabilitate a patient

People need to learn the consequences of being fucking stupid. Brethyn doesn’t like for people to get the idea in their heads that magic can fix everything, as it encourages reckless behavior. Despite stupid accidents accounting for a large part of his revenue, he doesn’t want to see people hurt when it could be avoided with a little forethought.

You cannot have had sex with his father 

You cannot be a necromancer

You cannot mention a wholly positive opinion of Ulfric Stormcloak

You must be taller than him

Gifts in general will be met with confusion, do not attempt unless your approval rating is over 60%

Alchemical reagents are the only exception to rule #5

You cannot be Ioannes 

Dunmer are preferred, but this is a malleable rule

You cannot be a current patient 

Do not try to tell him how to live his life

Part I - Dunmeri Decoration

We all need our getaway spot. Somewhere that’s completely yours, whether it be for living in, getting away from overbearing housemates, or storing your unquestionably illegal Kagrenac/Vivec porn collection.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more concerned with personal hygiene than Brethyn. This stems from a very practical reason, as he’s aware that other supernatural beings would theoretically be able to smell that he’s been around vampires recently after he visits the coven. In order to avoid getting flak from this oversight, Brethyn follows a strict cleansing procedure after every visit. 

The first, and for him the most stressful, step is to walk through the caldera near the coven for at least an hour. Immersing himself and his pack in the sulfuric mists is the best way to bleach off the vampire stank. The biggest difficulties with this step are trying to ignore his thalassophobia around the deeper pools and fighting off the various beasts that hang around. He’s been living in and traveling through the caldera for so long that he has a very accurate mental map of it, so avoiding soft spots in the mud is easy for him. A couple spiders usually accompany him for protection (and games with the alpha yisss). 

After that, he’ll wash both himself and as much of his gear as he can in the slightly-cleaner Darkwater River. The drawback to this is that he uses a LOT of soap, and there are several instruments in his medical kit (along with the physical kit box itself) that can’t be washed with plain water and soap. He goes to Darkwater Crossing to do this, since he’s fairly certain no one in that settlement is hyperaware in any way. Plus, bathing in the open is an invitation for disaster. If he has the time and supplies, he’ll oil as much of this special gear as possible along with the wooden case they live in. Clothes also get washed if he has time, but if not then he’ll make that a priority at his destination.

For an additional scent mask, Brethyn uses his own cologne from spearmint, watercress, and frost miriam. This also goes in his pack to help hide scents on things he can’t clean properly, like his pack itself and  The method he uses has been utilized by Dunmeri alchemists since before they even became Dunmer. After steaming ingredients to derive their oils, you distill this oil in a wood base and age it for however long you like (minimum 1 year) before bottling. 

Since all of this takes a good chunk of time, Brethyn always plans to leave the coven two days earlier than he needs to to reach his destination. This is to account for the washing as well as for any mishaps he might encounter on the road.