First appearance: Pieces of a King Ep 2: The War Council · watch it on YouTube
The Physician is an illithid, “one of the last of my kind,” and the master of The Nightingales in war-torn Dämmerung. He helped build The Warmind, the thinking war machine that holds twenty million minds and threatens to spill out across The Void, and he spent the rest of the story trying to tear down his own creation. He is polite, curious to a fault and unsettling. Behind his vows lurked a question he could never quite stop asking: what would happen if he let it out?
Story
Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL
The Physician met the champions in Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL, and the first meeting was tense. He read Nehebka’s mind and was rebuffed by her God-King. Then he locked his helmet back into place and introduced himself: “My name is a mouthful, but you may know me as The Physician.”
When Muffy asked who would name someone that, he explained that it had been a trend: “My mother just wanted to have a very long, important sounding name.” Muffy offered a comparison: “Mine just called me Muffy.” The Physician said he hoped the party had received a warm welcome from the rest of his companions, told them he would see them in the morning and bid them good night. He left with his four Nightingales filing out behind him two by two.
Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead
In Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead, the party found the Physician at a breakfast meeting with Trissavin, Gund and Grim, his full mask off for once. Grimnar had already sensed the psionic resistance about him. It felt otherworldly and alien, and next to it a Nightingale’s trained defenses were “a puddle” beside a lake. When Nehebka asked what would happen if the plan failed, the Physician laid it out. The Warmind would march on the Last City and on Dämmerung Prime, reach the Planar Gate and spread across the Void. Then he added that he was “so curious to see what the response would be” from The Dread Fortress.
Grimnar noticed. “You almost seem curious to let it happen,” he said. The Physician called it “a curiosity that I do not wish to see fulfilled. More of a nightmare.” He was telling the truth, but only part of it. At the back of his mind he had wondered many times whether the Warmind would spare those who hid, whether opening the Planar Gate would bring help from the Dread Fortress, or whether it would simply become “somebody else’s problem.” These were the things that kept him up at night, because the scale of what he had helped build was immeasurable.
The conversation took a sharp turn when Nehebka confessed that she had been “the war mind for my domain.” The Physician’s tentacles spread wide in surprise: “Really? You are a war mind?” She asked whether he, the creator, stood with his creation or with the people in the room. “I stand with them,” he answered. Then he made a grim vow. If the city fell, he would make sure the Warmind could never reach the minds of anyone in the room, “and then I would make sure it couldn’t gain access to mine.”
He asked plainly whether the outsiders would truly help or abandon them. Grimnar, who did not trust him, answered: “We will do what chaos allows.” The Physician seemed to like that: “Unknown variable. Some would say random chance.” He took careful note of Nehebka’s warning that what the party had come for resided within the Warmind, and that they would take it and destroy it if they had to. He also snickered when Muffy needled Gund, who would be directing ground and artillery forces in The Blastlands, about whether he would actually be fighting, and told him to “have somebody paint me a picture so I can make sure of it.”
After breakfast, he rode with the party in an insect-like tracked transport through mountains, factory pipes and an hour of horrific silence underground. They came out at the colossal corpse of a fallen solar, which was being drained of gold, bone and marrow for the weapon. While Gund looked proud and Trissavin stood stiff, the Physician watched the party. When smoke rose to the south, he put his mask on: “Well, my friends, looks like we’ve been found.”
Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind
In Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind, the Physician reported that the counteroffensive was launching “following the attack on the solar,” and that the next part of the operation rested in their hands. He and the Nightingales healed the party after the battle at the solar. Without that help, he said, “that site would have been lost.” When they reached the warhead, he primed it and told them they would have “a good solid minute” to get back to the transport once it was armed. He insisted on coming along: “I want to see this through to the end.” The party read him again and found both motives true. He wanted his deadly creation destroyed, and he also wanted to see his magnum opus at work, the result of “harnessing a celestial being’s power for a weapon.”
On the way in, he asked the party why they aligned themselves with chaos after seeing what it had done. Grimnar replied: “What has chaos done? All I have seen here is that what you have done.” The Physician conceded the point: “Facts be facts, I guess.” He also mentioned two strangers who had come to Trissavin seeking “some artifact of power.” They had never accepted any aid and “just trundled off. I honestly considered them dead.”
Near the main chamber, enemies closed in, and the Physician sent the party on: “The warhead is ready. Go. Go to the warmind, and I will handle this.” Unseen force lifted the rocks and dust around him. He drew a misericorde from his coat, conjured a teal-blue blade of light from his fingers and charged in with a promise: “I’ll see you all very soon.” The fight gave him a run for his money. When the party came back, he was still alive but terribly wounded, one arm gone, with the wrecked frame of a plumed-helmet Warforged lying around him.
The party had already destroyed the Warmind from inside its own brain, and the remaining Warforged stood inert. The Physician admitted, “Oh damn, I did want to see what this thing would do,” but chose to dismantle the warhead instead, reasoning that Gund “would probably put it in a cannon and fire it off for fun.” He thanked them, saying he did not think they would have survived without them. Muffy agreed cheerfully, “Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t have. You’re welcome.” He glared at her little stanky smile.
Personality and Abilities
The Physician looks like a nightmare’s idea of a field surgeon. He is a tentacled illithid in a mechanical, plague-doctor-like gas mask and a helmet that locks into place, and he wears a bloody surgical apron hung with blades and a wand. His manner is courteous, dry and clinical. He speaks of chaos as an “unknown variable,” and he describes the Warmind loose in the Void as “a curiosity that I do not wish to see fulfilled.”
His defining trait is curiosity that never switches off, even when it frightens him. He is honest about wanting the Warmind gone, and just as honest, if only under scrutiny, about wanting to see it work. He also has a streak of quiet amusement, snickering when Muffy cuts Gund down to size.
In a fight, his psionic power is vast and alien. In his own words, “I am more than adept at breaking apart the minds of my opponents as I break apart their bodies in tow.” He fights with a misericorde and a conjured teal light blade, and he can mend wounds alongside his Nightingales.
Relationships
- The Nightingales: His followers, whom he leads as master; they guarded the transport and healed the party alongside him.
- The Warmind: His creation and his nightmare, which he helped build and then helped destroy.
- Grimnar: Distrusted him openly, and won an argument about chaos that the Physician conceded.
- Nehebka: He read her mind and was rebuffed. Later he was startled to learn she had been a war mind herself.
- Muffy: Traded name jokes with her at their first meeting and got her smug “You’re welcome” at the end.
- Grim: A fellow member of the war council who rode with him to the solar.
Memorable Quotes
- “My name is a mouthful, but you may know me as The Physician.” (Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL)
- “My mother just wanted to have a very long, important sounding name.” (Pieces of a King Ep 2 — THE WAR COUNCIL)
- “I stand with them.” (Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead)
- “Well, my friends, looks like we’ve been found.” (Pieces of a King Ep 3 — The Warhead)
- “I am more than adept at breaking apart the minds of my opponents as I break apart their bodies in tow.” (Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind)
- “For all we know, Gund would probably put it in a cannon and fire it off for fun.” (Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind)