Sahri

Faction: Wildborn Age: 34 Origin: Elarion native Role: Blood shaman and healer

Overview

Sahri was a field medic before the Aetherfall. After, she became something more-a blood shaman who trades wounds for healing, injuries for power. She doesn’t fully understand her abilities, but she can draw Aether from wounds, accelerate healing by taking pain upon herself, and read a person’s health by tasting their blood. She operates a medical station at the Remembrance, treating any who come regardless of faction.

Sahri grew up in the shadow of the Aetherfall’s aftermath. Her mother was a doctor, her father a nurse-both trained in the old ways but forced to adapt to post-Aetherfall medicine. They died when she was twelve, caught in a Sprawl surge while treating civilians. Sahri survived and inherited their calling-heal the wounded, no matter the cost.

She trained as field medic during her teenage years and into adulthood, working through the later faction wars (Years 60-80), patching soldiers and civilians alike. During one particularly bloody battle when she was in her early twenties, she was treating wounded when her supplies ran out. Desperate, she tried something impossible: drawing Aether from wounds to close them, taking pain into herself to ease suffering. It worked.

Over a decade later, she’s perfected techniques her medical school training never covered. She can taste blood and diagnose illness, draw Aether from injuries, transfer pain between bodies. She believes the city has veins, that Aether flows like blood, and that all living things are connected through red threads only she can see. Her medical station at the Remembrance is neutral ground-anyone can receive treatment. Her price is always the same: information, a favor owed, or a wound freely given. She collects scars like others collect currency.

Personality

Compassionate: She will treat anyone who comes to her, even sworn enemies of the Wildborn, because she believes healing transcends faction boundaries.
Pragmatic: She understands that healing requires resources, so she has developed a system of collecting payment in information, favors, and wounds to sustain her practice.
Mysterious: Her blood-based abilities unsettle even those she saves, and she makes no effort to explain or justify powers she doesn’t fully understand herself.
Principled: Despite operating outside any formal institution, she maintains strict medical ethics adapted for post-Aetherfall reality, treating neutrality as sacred.
Philosophical: She perceives connections between living things that others cannot see, viewing Aether, blood, and pain as threads in a greater pattern she is still learning to read.

Abilities & Aether Use

Sahri’s relationship with Aether is visceral and embodied-she draws power from the life force that flows through blood, believing that wounds are doorways and pain is a currency that can be exchanged. She views Aether not as an external force to be manipulated but as the connective tissue between all living things, visible to her as red threads that bind the injured to the healer. Her philosophy is that true healing requires sacrifice, that nothing can be gained without something given in return.

Blood Shamanism

Aether Drawing: Pull Aether directly from open wounds to accelerate the body’s natural healing process.
Pain Transfer: Take a patient’s pain into herself, allowing them relief while she bears the burden.
Blood Reading: Taste blood to instantly diagnose illness, detect poison, or assess a person’s overall condition.
Wound Trading: Transfer injuries between willing participants, moving damage from one body to another.
Red Threads: Perceive invisible connections between living things that reveal health, relationships, and life force.
Scar Collection: Each scar she bears represents payment for healing given-a physical record of lives saved.

Limitations

Sahri’s abilities exact a physical toll on her body. Every pain she transfers, she must endure. Every wound she trades, she must heal from. Her collection of scars is not merely symbolic-it represents the accumulated cost of her healing practice. She cannot heal herself as effectively as she heals others, and prolonged use of her blood magic leaves her weakened and vulnerable.

The Price of Healing

Sahri doesn’t heal for free. Her prices:

Information: Tell me something true
Favor: You owe me, to be collected later
Wound: Give me pain freely-a cut, a burn, a sacrifice

She collects scars from traded wounds. Each represents a life saved, a debt honored, a connection forged. Her body is map of her work.

Relationships

Varrin (Nocturne)

Varrin once spared Sahri a collection-likely a debt or favor she owed to dangerous parties-in exchange for medical treatment. The debt remains unpaid, and Varrin has yet to call it in. This creates an uncomfortable tension whenever they cross paths. Sahri knows that when Varrin finally asks for repayment, it will likely force her to compromise her principles or put her in an impossible position.

Edda Brann (Ironheart)

Sahri and Edda worked together to establish medical stations in contested zones where faction conflict made civilian casualties inevitable. They share mutual respect born from protecting the vulnerable when no one else would. Edda appreciates Sahri’s commitment to neutrality, while Sahri admires Edda’s ability to carve safe spaces from hostile territory.

Thorn Stalker (Wildborn)

The massive predator has allowed Sahri to treat its injuries on multiple occasions, recognizing her as a healer rather than a threat. This unusual trust suggests that even creatures of pure instinct can sense her role in the ecosystem of the Sprawl. She approaches it without fear, and it permits her touch.

Neriah (Veilwalkers)

The Veilwalker archivist is fascinated by Sahri’s blood magic, seeing parallels between their work-both deal with life essence in different forms. They study each other’s techniques when opportunities arise, sharing knowledge across faction lines. Neriah’s academic approach complements Sahri’s intuitive practice.

Nyra (Wildborn)

Sahri and Nyra engage in heated philosophical debates about what “natural” mutation truly means. Sahri argues that her blood magic abilities are as natural as Nyra’s voice-both emerged from the Aetherfall’s transformation of Elarion. Despite their disagreements, they maintain respect for each other’s work and dedication to the Wildborn cause.

Ossian Graves (Nocturne)

Sahri’s healing work and Ossian’s forensic analysis occasionally intersect at violent scenes—she stabilizes survivors while he documents evidence. An unspoken protocol has emerged: Sahri treats the living, Ossian examines the dying, and neither interferes with the other’s work. They’ve never had a proper conversation, but their efficiency together suggests mutual professional respect. Sahri finds him peculiar—a man more comfortable with corpses than patients—while Ossian appreciates that she never disturbs evidence in her urgency to save lives.

Mira Dewfall (Wildborn)

Two healers with complementary callings—Sahri mends the wounded while Mira guides the changing. They refer patients to each other constantly, recognizing that transformation trauma and physical wounds often require different expertise. Mira’s sanctuary receives those Sahri cannot help with blood magic alone, while Sahri treats the injured who emerge from Mira’s care. They share herbal knowledge, medical supplies, and the particular exhaustion of those who carry others’ pain. Their friendship has deepened over years of collaboration into something Sahri values deeply—Mira is one of the few who truly understands the burden of healing.

Carn Hollow (Wildborn)

Sahri and Carn represent two ends of the same thread—she fights to preserve life, he welcomes death as transformation. There is no failure when Sahri sends someone to Carn for proper interment; both understand it as the natural completion of a journey she could not extend. Sahri sometimes visits the Bone Garden to sit among the growing memorials, finding unexpected peace in the knowledge that those she couldn’t save have become something beautiful rather than simply ending. Carn appreciates her work precisely because it gives his meaning—death carries weight only because life fights so fiercely to preserve itself.

Spore (Fleshbound - Escaped)

Kor Emmer asked Sahri to examine the strange creature sheltering at the Sprawl’s edge, and she has visited four times over three years. What she found challenged everything she understood about the boundary between natural and surgical mutation. Spore represents an intersection her blood magic had never encountered: forced transformation that created genuine symbiosis, artificial integration that achieved what the Sprawl grants naturally. She cannot cure them—the fungal network is not infection but identity now—but she has learned to read their biological state, to understand what maintains their stability. More importantly, she treats Spore as a person rather than a specimen. She brings news, speaks of the outside world, offers the simple gift of conversation to someone who cannot safely converse with anyone else. For Sahri, these visits are opportunities to learn and to provide comfort. She sees in Spore the ultimate cost of healing denied—proof that transformation without choice creates only suffering.