Lesson: Magical Healing

[Head Moderator]

MAGICAL HEALING
_{Class written originally by Pamela for OCS, changed to fit OH - tesarikone.}

Reward for Completing the Full Lesson: 12 Healing Points

What is the Source for Your Magical Healing?

When it comes to magical healing, there are numerous sources to consider. Divine casters call upon various gods, shamanic spirits, and nature affinity. Magical healing is not so much medical treatment, it's always a miracle. Sometimes you may find priests/paladins/druids/shamans who may be reluctant to use such a precious gift to cure minor injuries, and prefer to reserve it for true emergencies. Many may consider calling upon Divine Sources or Nature to mend your cut thumb or bruised knee plain disrespectful.

Healing can come from arcane sources as well. Using one's arcane energies to mend wounds can be done in various ways as well, using the exchange of positive energy. Just about every spellbook worth it's salt will have a basic "Heal" spell within it. Undead, on the other hand, are healed by negative energy. Necromancers regularly use negative energy to heal their undead minions and creations.

How Does One Heal Magically?

There are as many ways to heal as there are healers. Everyone has their own special way to heal, though when it comes down to it there are some common ways to heal. One way is energy transfer. This is just basic arcane/divine usage of positive energy to heal wounds. Basic heal spells are available to just about every mage, though higher level and more powerful heal spells, and regrowth spells are available to mages that specialize in such things.

Other ways that can be used to heal are empathically, and sympathetically. Empathic healing can be very dangerous as a person takes the wounds and sickness upon their own body, and uses their own self-healing ability to heal themselves. Empathic healers must be keenly aware of how much their body can take, or they can succumb to serious illness, grave wounds and even death. Sympathetic healers go by the adage, "like heals like". So, for a broken bone to be healed a sympathetic healer might use the bone of an animal and snap it to work their magical healing. They may pour water over the forehead of someone with a fever, in order to break that fever.

Blood mages use either their own blood, or blood obtained from other creatures to do blood healing. Some blood healers will cut themselves and rub their own blood over the wound, in order to heal. Bards who know how to do magical healing often use varied rhythms, or different lyrics in order to heal various types of wounds. There are even mages that use tantric sex in order to heal, they are often called 'blue mages'.


ASSIGNMENT ONE: What is the source of your magical healing? What allows you the ability to heal magically; where do you draw your power? Explain in at least 150 words how you heal, and please be as detailed as possible. You can include how it was taught to you, and any background for learning your particular type of magical healing.

When completed, send your clearly labeled assignment to tesarikone.

[Head Moderator]

Where do Potions and Alchemy Come In?

Using herbal remedies has been around as long as there has been plant life for our ancestors to use in their potions and 'old wives remedies'. Magical healing potions come in all sorts, many mages have their own signature recipe for a typical healing potion. Of course, to make it magical it must have positive energy infused into it at some point during the potion creation, or magical ingredients added to the recipe.

Here is a list of the some of the herbs that can be used in healing:

1. Angelica: Useful for respiratory issues, and plague.
2. Arnica (crushed root & flowers): Wound healing, bruises.
3. Basil: Stomach issues.
4. Caraway: Snake bites, digestive and stomach issues.
5. Chamomile: Fatigue, fever.
6. Chervil: Burns, bad dreams.
7. Comfrey: Pain killer.
8. Rue: All-heal, powerful healing herb.
9. Garlic: All-heal.
10. Henbane: Pain killer, anesthetic.
11. Horehound: Antidote against poison.
12. Mallow: All-heal.
13. Saffron: Pains of labor and depression.
14. Valerian: All-heal.

There are plenty of alchemical creations that are useful for healing, but some have proved so useful that they can be found and used in most areas of the world.

Burn Salve - The boiled leaves from the musk muddle plant (swamp, marsh), form an integral part of burn salve, an excellent remedy for even severe burns. As its name implies, the salve mitigates some of the effects of fire damage. The white salve can heal burns from fire, but not burns from other sources (acid, etc).

Dragon Brew - Spotty dragonfire (rare, only grows around red dragon lairs) is used in making dragon brew, which increases stamina and numbs pain for one hour.

Elf Hazel - The sap of the elven willow (tree by river, common) is the main component in a fluid called elf hazel. If elf hazel is applied to any scar from a healed wound, the scar slowly vanishes. It takes a week of application for the scar to vanish completely.

Frost Lotion - The silvery edges of tyrant's sword (tundra, rare) can be boiled and used to make a porridge-like substance called frost lotion. The pleasant smelling topical heals injuries caused by extreme cold.

Gash Glue - Old Man's Friend (common, in temperate, sunlit areas) can be crushed and mixed with other substances to produce a thick, gray glue called gash glue. Soldiers often carry around gash glue to seal a fallen companion's wounds quickly. One application of gash glue stabilizes a dying creature.


ASSIGNMENT TWO: Come up with a 'recipe' for a healing potion or alchemical healing salve of your choice. Your 'recipe' should include at least 4 ingredients that foster healing. Explain why you have used each ingredient, and where those ingredients can be found. The guide below will help you with this assignment, but you are welcome to use other library (net) resources.

Resource: www.herbsguide.net/

When completed, send your clearly labeled assignment to tesarikone.


_{OOCPlease remember, this is for the game. Though many of these herbs are known for healing, they are being used in a fictional setting.}

[Head Moderator]

What are some types of Magical Healers?

1. The Combat Healer
The Combat Healer is a healer who specializes in mending wounds almost instantaneously in the heat of battle, but has a significantly harder time once the injury/poison/disease/curse has set in for a few minutes or hours. A combat healer's goal is to keeping patients battle-worthy, not scar-free or feeling happy and healthy.

2. The CPR Healer
These think of healing magic as CPR. You can almost certainly prevent people dying by reattaching limbs or pouring their guts back in and magically stitching them up, but they'll still be badly injured and that you can't do much about. You'll help them properly, when you've got the patient out of the combat zone.

3. The Hospital Healer
This style is seen in hospital or recovery settings. The idea here is to accelerate the body's own healing processes, and let the wounded get back into the thick of action in hours or days, not weeks. This style lets you both take your time to heal an injury and its treatment consequences. It also lets a healer add their own flair to how their character treats injuries: do they use herbal remedies? Surgery? A magic, laying-on-hands version of medicines that would treat inflammation and stimulate healing? How does it feel when the magic works -- does it hurt or itch because new tissue is growing faster than it's supposed to, does it feel warm and nice because it's benevolent magic, is there a whispering in the air because ancestor spirits are gathering to see their descendant does well?

4. The Miracle Healer
This is the type of healer that is called for major and dramatic stuff like regrowing limbs or eyes, patients on the brink of death, saving children or removing handicaps that have been part of a person's life for a long time. Sometimes they need special items or herbs that require heroic effort to get such as a special scroll, or plants from a faraway and dangerous forest, or a trinket in a hidden temple.


ASSIGNMENT THREE: Give a situation or scenario for each of the four types of healers mentioned and where they would be most useful. Which type of healer are you?

When completed, send your clearly labeled assignment to tesarikone.

[Head Moderator]

Getting the Most out of Magical Healing

Though it is very popular to do quick-fix healing, there are several ways that one can get the most out of magical healing. It is logical to think that healing is not always a quick, instant fix. For example, while a healer could quickly close an arrow wound, that could leave the arrowhead in the wound where it can do a lot of damage (if it's made of certain metals, it would be poisonous, etc.). There's more interaction to be had in removing the arrowhead first and then trying to heal it, than there is in just calling a magical healer to do a quick heal and saying "There, is that better?".

Healing wounds magically may take the wound or illness away, but it still leaves the body in a weakened state. The worse the wounds are, the more severe the illness, the more time it will take for the person to recover fully. In some cases, even if the wound has been healed, the broken bone mended, or the illness removed the pain still remains for quite some time. There are some cases where magic is NOT an instant fix, in fact healing only speeds up one's natural healing. So something that might take a month to heal naturally, might only take 3 days if you get magical healing. In some cases, magical healing will only work as well as the patient is willing.

For example, a limb that was magically re-attached could still need training to work properly again, or a magically treated wound may still be weak and achy for a few days after while the body catches up with how fast it was fixed. As a rule of thumb, the more dramatic the wound, disease or other condition you're fixing is, the more time the treatment should take.


ASSIGNMENT FOUR: Do you think that magical healing should be a quick fix, or should there be more to it than an instantaneous healing? Give at least two examples of ways magical healing can be used, that are not quick fixes.

When completed, send your clearly labeled assignment to tesarikone.