#lightning headcanons

What if plague magic can be used in a healing process? Not gently, no, but plague dragons can seek out and destroy infections, cancer cells, whatever disease or illness. They make the best quarantine workers, with their natural immunity, and often they work in pairs with nature dragon; one to seek out and destroy the infection, the other to heal it. The plague healing is brutal, and it takes years and years of dedication and training to work up a fine enough ability to kill as few benevolent cells as possible.

Lightning runs clinics to treat patients, and while many are honest-to-goodness miracle workers in regards to medical treatment, but not all are. A few less reputable clinics exist; they do might do more blood tests than necessary, or perhaps they ask dragons to sign a waiver allowing the clinic use of their bodies if they don’t survive. Not to mention those who use experimental treatments that don’t ask for signed forms or even a smidgen of informed consent.

Lightning clans who are also anatomy schools that teach future medical students. But not all obtain cadavers in a legal manner, or can obtain cadavers in a legal way. But the schooling must go on, and so there is a business in grave-robbing. Of particular note is how these clans learn Imperial anatomy; some say that desperate clans who have lost multiple Imperial members may get rid of the bodies by selling them to these schools.

Lightning researchers work with Plague and Arcane scholars to discover how draconic anatomy functions. They research decay, how magic is connected to the dragon’s physical form. It might even be so that the less scrupulous researchers kill and then quickly open up bodies to find the source of magic before it dies.