Prologue

Some of these ideas have been heavily reciprocated into my Lore, however, I may decide to continue Asclepius on its own merits if someone convinces me to. Many apologies for typos, but I use Wordpad.

"The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs."



    The sun rose up over the Wastes, cutting deep gashes of maroon and crimson froth across the barren deserts.  A warm breeze blew from the East, blanketing the shifting sands with an ethereal haze of tranquility.  The purple sky shifted restlessly in its cloudy bed.  Richard sat, staring for a long moment, lost in an endless string of conscience.  No sounds were to be heard penetrating through the early-morning fog, but even still, Richard couldn't seem to focus on any one thought in particular.  His mind had so often proved more of a prism and less of a portal lately.  Thoughts no longer came and went at any sort of reasonable speed.  They instead entered his mind at a pace that might be generously described as laborious, then stopped somewhere near his cerebral cortex before being refracted and shattered into hundreds, if not thousands of subcategories and double-standards.  So often had he found himself giving up on strategic thought completely, instead routing in favor of impulsive and erratic behavior.  This was, however, a sly bit of negligence on his part - as Richard was the last of an important breed.  And it was such a breed that could not hope to survive on caprice alone, if at all.  Called a Shaman, or a Witch Doctor by the Waste-dwellers, Richard Vanguard Delacroix was ostensibly the last living physician; or at least as far as he or any other Waste-dwellers knew.
    Richard had been trained in the mystic arts of medicinal science from a young age by his father, Bernard, just as Bernard had been trained by his father, Edgar.  The training began at age 4, after Richard had learned to walk and read.  Simple remedies, such as making pastes out of dead leaves and irradiated water in order to heal minor cuts and lacerations, were studied first.  When he reached age 7, it was expected that he be able to concoct over 300 different salves and pastes.  He was then introduced into the Order, under a secret and arcane rite, as a Journeyman Alchemist.  After the ceremony was over, however, Richard's training doubled in intensity and focus immediately.  He was given several medicinal tomes (often times called "textbooks" by his father) and required to read them several times, cover to cover, and commit all of their information to memory.  It was then at age 14 that Richard was directed to perform his virgin operation.  A simple appendectomy, which was performed with the fluid ease and confidence of a trained surgeon.  By age 16, Richard's operations and treatments had become much more intensive.  Stemming the poisonous flow of radiation sickness, amputating defective or excessive (depending on which part of the Wastes you came from) limbs and mixing his own, unique potions and cure-alls became monotonous daily events.  And finally, at age 18, Richard was re-inducted into the Order of the Red Spirit as a Master Shaman.  The grande ceremony, called the Exsanguis Caritas Regalis, had been carried out by his own grandfather, Edgar.
    It was this same Edgar Delacroix who formed the Order of the Red Spirit so many decades ago.  Edgar's brainchild would essentially be a group of like-minded intellectuals who set out with the intent of making the Wastes a somewhat more inhabitable environment.  The Order shortly entered an age of prosperity, and the Wastes began to slowly flourish once again beneath the Order's benevolence.  But as time wore on, it became painfully clear that the Order could do little to nothing to stem the true tides of chaos that washed and waned over the barren Wastes - and soon the Order began to collapse under the weight of its own ambitions.  Simultaneously, as is that eventual fate of all benevolent entities, it began to feel the cold, corrupting fingers of graft and greed.  Favoritism, rather than skill or knowledge, rapidly began to control the higher ranks within the Order.  Just as the icy grip of corruption tightened around the neck of the Order, two new factions rose up within the Order's inner-workings.  The corpulent and greedy became known as the Spiritus Asper, while those who wished to remain dignified and charity and honor became known as the Nephesh.
    As the Spiritus Asper and the Nephesh fought for control of the Order, the Wastes began to slip back into the downward spiral of hopeless decay.  It was on Richard's 22nd birthday that he first saw blood spilled for reasons not entirely medicinal.
    Soon, Richard snapped back to what little of his senses had been spared in the wake of his sudden and unexplainable deluge of nostalgia.  He couldn't simply sit around all morning trying to catch his thoughts as they flitted about before his eyes.  After all, he had work to do - like the contract he would be leaving shortly in order to fulfill.  A man in the far off settlement of Gehanna, it seems, had suddenly and quite unexpectedly sprout a wing...