#Medical Worker (醫療人)

Contents

Authority. This document is a variant rule (Variant). As with every variant rule of this volume, it is premised on GM permission, and fc cannot override co Canon. Only the values of the starting drifted-goods cards are narrow Canon (this volume only), and §Table Hooks is a Scene Tool. This document follows, as is, the 5 components of makeup (Law 1), the operating rules (Law 2), and the document format (Law 3) fixed by the Identity Sets — Overview.

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#Scent — A Miracle Becomes Rumor

#Opening Vignette — An Arrow Is Not a Thing to Pull Out

When the man came out of the mountain mist, he still knew nothing but that his shoes did not suit this mire.

A scream rose from down along the highway. People were gathered in a ring beside a cart, and through the gap between their shoulders a young ashigaru could be seen. An arrow lodged in his thigh, his back propped against the wheel, while one of his comrades gripped the arrow's shaft.

"Don't pull it out!"

The man shouted before he thought, and ran before he thought. Two spear-tips turned straight at his chest. Clothes sewn from a cloth no one had seen, a bag no one had seen — someone muttered low. A Kamikakushi.

"That arrow — pull it now and this man dies." The man raised both hands before the spear-tips. "Lodged where it is, he won't die. It's serving as a stopper."

The spears did not lower. But the hand gripping the arrow's shaft stopped.

"Is there boiled water? If not, liquor. The strongest there is."

When no one moved, the man looked straight at the white-bearded squad leader (組長). The squad leader jerked his chin, and only then did someone unfasten the gourd at his waist.

The man knelt and opened his bag. Scissors slit the quilted hakama in a long cut. The strong liquor washed around the wound, and the ashigaru clenched his teeth and howled.

"Listen well. The arrowhead lies beside a great vessel of blood. The instant it comes out the blood will spring up, so you —" the man pointed at the comrade who had been gripping the shaft. "Press with all your strength where I mark. I pull on three. One, two —"

The arrowhead came free. The blood sprang up. The palm pressed down. While the man's fingers threaded a needle, the people standing around watched that the hand did not tremble.

After about half a quarter-hour, the ashigaru's scream became ragged breathing, and the ragged breathing became cursing. Only the living curse.

Only then did the squad leader open his mouth. "Of what school are you, sword-wound physician (金瘡醫)?"

"I have no school. I learned far away."

"Far away, is it." The squad leader looked down into the man's bag — the silver-shining tools, not of this world. The eyes that had leveled spears were now reckoning something else. What entered where the fear had drained out was awe, and a desire to possess.

"I will not ask your name. Come to our camp. A hand like yours is worth a hundred men."

In answer the man closed his bag. Before it shut, his eye grazed the inner pocket — three white drug bottles. What that meant, on this highway he alone knew.

#Scent — The Hand Worth a Hundred Men

The hand that knows the Medicine of centuries hence. In this age that is a miracle, and a miracle inevitably becomes rumor. Rumor brings patients, and behind the patient comes the lord, and behind the lord comes the cage. What was forged from a single line of the canonical modern person's role — "Medicine specialization" — into a scalpel is this set.

Yet here too the spine of this volume does not bend. This book is not a book that makes the modern person strong. It is a book that gives the drama of a future being consumed. A miracle is in the medical worker's bag, and the miracle has a remaining count written on it. Antibiotics are three bottles, and patients have no end — one bottle can save a village, but at the second village there is none. The reason the set of highest drama density in this volume is the medical worker is that its reckoning is the most cruel.

And let one thing be written down first. Of the six sets, the medical worker alone — the end of Depletion is not ruin. The drugs run out — but the way of washing the hands is not depleted. That story is told in §Growth Curve.

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#Set Data — The Five Components

The frame of Overview Law 1 as is. The former occupations are doctor, nurse, pharmacist — all three use the one suit of data below.

#Component 1 — Starting-Ability Adjustment

It changes two of the canonical modern person's four starting automatic abilities (Stratagem acquisition, Medicine entry, Negotiation entry, Perception entry). Grade preserved — an acquisition slot to acquisition, an entry slot to entry. The ability points do not rise by a single point.

• The canon sets the ceiling. Medicine and Stratagem are abilities on the canon's master-eligible list (Stratagem, Medicine, Negotiation, Perception, Deceit, Survival) — the door of mastery is one the canon has already opened, and the set does not touch that door. Herbalism is outside the list — a Licensed (3) cap (the Licensed-cap rule of the Overview as is). The road of an Herbalism master lies not in the set but in a teacher of this age.
• The pharmacist's price. The pharmacist gives up Stratagem whole — beginning with the unskilled penalty of -2. It means having chosen the apothecary's head over the tactician's head, and that price comes back not on the sheet but in the scene.
• Use alongside a background. If the ability perk of Memory of the Modern Age (2 of Stratagem, Medicine, Negotiation) points to Medicine, that perk is forcibly moved to a remaining ability — the one-line rule of Overview Law 2 as is. The same origin is not counted twice.

#Component 2 — Set Technique

#tier 1 — Disinfection and Suture [aptitude]

[aptitude] Disinfection and Suture
Choice: chosen instead of the canon tier 1 Foresight. Energy Transfer (consume 2 Energy
   → deliver 2 Energy to the target) and the ability-score special (Courage/Finesse/Physique -1,
   Wisdom/Presence/Fate +1) are the skeleton of the occupation and so are kept
   (Overview Law 2 — the canon-protection principle).
Effect: the Medicine and Herbalism treatment this character performs is a "clean treatment." Always:
 - Infection-worsening prevention: a treated wound does not worsen by infection — that wound
  is not counted as a "contaminated environment" for the triggering of disease (疫)
  (citing the co-03-09 integrated rule).
 - Bleeding suture: in a lull phase or non-combat treatment, the target's bleeding (血)
  state is removed without a check. In the very midst of combat's breath, the canon
  removal check (Physique >= 13 or Medicine >= 11) is as is.
 - Aftereffect removal: if this hand treated one who survived with a grave wound by succeeding
  on the post-mortem check from combat incapacitation (co-03-05), the GM does not leave that
  injury as a permanent penalty (a stiffened leg, a hand that cannot grip). A scar remains —
  in story alone.
Condition: where there are modern consumables, on the spot. Where there are not, boiled water
   and a clean cloth, and a slice of non-combat time — tools wear down, but knowledge does not.
Forbidden: this technique does not restore Wounds, does not increase the amount of recovery,
   and does not add a bonus to any check.

What Disinfection and Suture changes is not the value of recovery but the quality of recovery. If the canon's Medicine takes charge of "how many points it puts back," this technique takes charge of "whether what was put back does not collapse again" — the recovery grammar of Wounds and Defeat does not change by a single line. The wounded of this age die of the pus three days hence rather than of the blade — and what erases those three days is the Medicine of the future.

#tier 3 — Triage (選別救命) [upkeep]

[upkeep] Triage (選別救命)
Choice: chosen instead of the canon tier 3 choice (Squad Command, Energy Infusion, Field Search).
Energy: 2 / Limit: 1 time per lull
Effect: classifies all the wounded of the same zone at a glance. In this lull phase —
 - actions requiring a Medicine or Herbalism check, such as treatment, stabilization, and detoxification,
  can be performed on up to 3 people (originally 1 — each check is rolled separately).
 - 1 of them may be an ally in a combat-incapacitated state: on a success of 2d10+Wisdom+Medicine >= 13,
  stabilized at Wounds 1 (the "first aid for a combat-incapacitated comrade" of the canon non-combat
  Medicine table — this technique merely brings that check forward to the lull phase).
Forbidden: it adds no bonus to any check and increases no amount of recovery.
   What this technique saves is time.

From tier 5 on, every set merges into the canon technique list — field medicine too, crisis management too are the canon's, and the canon's is enough. The color of the former occupation ends at tier 3.

Medicine-summation cap — inflation check. Put it into words. The medical worker set adds not 1 point of bonus to a Medicine check. The Medicine upgrade at the starting point is not a bonus but a redistribution of ability points — Medicine +1 (entry → acquisition) is swapped against Stratagem -1 (acquisition → entry), so the sheet's total is 0. The fixed corrections laid on a Medicine check are all the canon's alone: the emergency-medicine +3 of Foresight, the common-sense-of-another-age +1 of Memory of the Modern Age. No set technique or variant rule of this volume lays a standing fixed correction on a Medicine check — consumable and tool corrections (the +1 of the rescue worker's first-aid bag, the +2 of the Self-Defense Officer's personal first-aid pouch, and the like) are temporary corrections of the canon equipment grammar, separate, and do not enter this cap's reckoning. Therefore the standing-fixed-correction cap of the medical worker's Medicine is exactly the same as a canonical modern person without a set. One step further — a medical worker who chose Disinfection and Suture at tier 1 loses emergency-medicine +3 by the choice-instead. In numbers it becomes lower than the canon. What the set sells is not number but quality. And just as Overview Law 2 declares that the only set granting direct combat power is the Self-Defense Officer alone, the medical worker adds no bonus to attack checks in any form.

#Component 3 — Starting Drifted Goods — House-Call Bag (往診鞄)

One bag within the one-backpack principle. A doctor's is a house-call bag, a nurse's a first-aid bag — whatever the name, the data is the same. The card follows the seven-field standard format of Depletion System Law 4.

#Surgical Tools (手術道具)

#Treatment Consumables (處置消耗品)

#Antibiotics (抗生劑)

The Last 1 Use (Scene Tool). From the day the remaining count becomes 1, the antibiotics leave the equipment column and become a question. On whom to use it. Use it now, or wait for a worse patient. On a night when you held it back though you could have saved someone, can you sleep? The counsel for the GM is one — make two patients appear who need the last 1 use. That scene rolls even without preparation. Half the drama this volume has hung on the medical worker set is in that single drug bottle.

#Component 4 — Conflict Hook

A concretization of the canon's Three Ways and Six Hearts conflict list. There is no new axis of conflict — only the lens changes.

• Whom to save. The medical worker's lens on the canon's "the class system and equality." Triage is a question before it is the name of a technique — the peasant brought in first and the karo (家老) brought in after, the ethic of Medicine is in order of severity and the ethic of this age is in order of rank. And the enemy soldier wounded on the stretcher: save him following benevolence and the ally's righteousness condemns you; turn away following righteousness and the hand remembers it for a lifetime.
• The price of a miracle. The intersection of the canon's "loyalty (忠) or freedom" and "coexistence with yoma." The rumor of a divine physician (神醫) grows faster than [Depletion] — the drug dwindles while expectation grows. The daimyo will try to possess that hand (a cage by the name of a retained physician — loyalty, or confinement?). The commoners deify that hand, or fear it — one who cuts open a person's belly and yet keeps them alive, is that truly a person's craft? The canonical modern person's flaw "maladaptation to the era" is amplified most sharply for the medical worker: the more miracles one works, the farther one drifts from being human.

#Component 5 — Adaptation Variation

The canon rules of the Adaptation mechanic are all as is. The set paints only two lines of color.

• Fast path — Pure Land Monk. The occupation closest to the medical worker's work in this age — nursing and last rites, comfort and morale. From the very first technique borrowed from the Pure Land Monk, the same-occupation exemption applies. The sentence of the Overview as is — the nurse reads the hand-movements of a healer-monk in a single day.
• Blocked path — killing arts (殺法). All techniques including attack checks. The borrowing itself is possible by the canon rules, but no exemption is applied to the end in this domain — the Energy penalty remains forever. Hands that kept people alive stay clumsy to the end at the way of cutting people down.

And one thing outside the two lines — hygiene alone moves in the opposite direction of Adaptation. The medical worker adapts to almost everything of this age, but to rewinding a dirty bandage they cannot adapt until the last day. That is not a penalty but a mirror that shows who this character is.

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#Friction with the Era — An Age Where Medicine Walks Beside Sorcery

#Division of Labor — The Physician's Line and the Onmyoji's Line

Two kinds of enemy visit the sickbed of this age. The table of the canon integrated rule has already recorded that division of labor — poison (毒), disease (疫), and bleeding (血) are the line of Medicine and antidote, and the curse (呪) is the line of Exorcism >= 15 or Barrier >= 15. The medical worker is stronger than anyone of this age on the left three lines, and before the fourth line must set down the stethoscope.

So the relationship with the onmyoji and esoteric monk is not competition but — at the best table — joint care. If there is a patient whose fever has fallen but whose phantoms do not leave, that is the work of the two of them. Only after the physician removes the body's illness does the onmyoji see the curse laid beneath it. Conversely the seed of friction is in the same place: from the standpoint of a temple that lives by prayer-rites (加持祈禱), a hand that raises a person without prayer is a hand that breaks the rice bowl.

#Sword-Wound Physician and Herbalist — This Age's Medicine Is Not Empty

On the battlefields of the Sengoku there are already physicians. The sword-wound physician (金瘡醫) who specializes in the wounds of blade and arrow, the herbalist and apothecary who read the grasses of mountain and field, the healer-monk who takes in the sick at a temple. The medical worker cannot crush them down — they do not know this mountain's herbs, do not know this age's disease names, cannot diagnose a horse's leg. The sword-wound physician steals a look at the medical worker's suture, and the medical worker steals a look at the sword-wound physician's medicine pouch. The place where those two gazes meet is the third season of §Growth Curve. Of course not every sword-wound physician is generous — the grudge of a physician whose patient was taken knows the way to kill a person without using a blade.

#Boiled Water and a Clean Cloth — The Weight of Knowledge

The heaviest thing the medical worker brought is not the bag. What changes the death rate is not the miracle drug but the knowledge of handwashing. Boiled water, a clean cloth, not squeezing a wound, hot water of the birthing room (産室), the distance of well from privy — the list of treatments needing not a single tool is long. But those words do not carry for free. Firewood is dear, cloth dearer still, and "we have done it this way for generations" dearer than that. What is needed to halve the maternal deaths of one village is not a Medicine check but — a season of trust. Friction is not a penalty but the material of a scene.

#Rank and the Body — The Patient One Cannot Touch

In this age the body of a noble is not a thing to touch carelessly. The pulse is taken through the blind, the examination passes through the lady-in-waiting's mouth, and "disrobe and show me" is not consultation but insolence. The Medicine learned by palpation and auscultation stands before that wall of etiquette — and the way over that wall is not a Medicine check but Negotiation and Bearing, or else the patient growing more desperate.

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#Growth Curve — The Medicine Completed After the Drugs Run Out

Recorded in three seasons. A narrative curve atop the canon Adaptation and dan-advancement rules; there is no new data.

The season of miracles. While the drugs last, what speaks is not the medical worker but the bag. Antibiotics raise in three days one who could not rise, and rumor runs down the highway. The drama of this season is the reckoning of the remaining count — three bottles, two bottles, one bottle. Each dosing is a choice, and each choice is a conflict hook.

The season of silence. On the morning the last 1 use has gone out, the patients still come. The bag has grown light but is not empty — what remains is knowledge. Boiled water, a clean cloth, suture, splint, isolation, handwashing. The reason Disinfection and Suture was designed to roll even without consumables is in this season: even without tools, knowledge remains. When another Kamikakushi shaves a bamboo spear before the silence of the gun, the medical worker boils water before the same silence.

The season of joining. And the medical worker begins to learn the medicine of this age. From the sword-wound physician's medicine pouch, from the herbalist's mountain trek, from the healer-monk's nursing. On the sheet it is all the canon's road — raising the Herbalism ability with rest-period training and free points (the set-swap portion at the Licensed cap), borrowing the Pure Land Monk's technique by Adaptation. On the day the "first-aid decoction" of Herbalism Licensed and Medicine gather in one hand — the people call that hand a physician who joins the Medicine of two ages. It is a title, not a class. Neither a former occupation nor a dual build opens — that the end of accelerated Adaptation looks like a new occupation is narrative, not data (Overview Law 3 as is).

Design intent — the one reverse direction. The growth curve of every set in this volume is naturalization (歸化) (Depletion System Law 3) — at the end of Depletion the Kamikakushi returns to the canonical modern person. The Self-Defense Officer's main body is the gun, and the gun falls silent. The medical worker's main body is knowledge, and knowledge does not fall silent. Antibiotics are [Depletion 3·uses], but the way of washing the hands has no remaining count. So of the six sets the medical worker alone is, rather, a completed form after Depletion — because what is lost is the most distinct and the road after the loss is the longest, this volume places this set at the peak of drama density.

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#Table Hooks (Scene Tool)

Three of a size the GM can pick up and use on the spot.

The plague village. The village beyond the pass has been sealed off — the lord's soldiers block the road, and within, wailing rises every day. There is no new data of this volume for the plague — use the canon disease (疫) rule as is (daily Physique >= 13, removal is 3 days' rest + Medicine >= 13). What this volume adds is only the one line "infection-worsening prevention" (Disinfection and Suture, treatment consumables) and the antibiotics card. The relief of a whole village is the great board of the canon non-combat Medicine table — 2d10+Wisdom+Medicine >= 15, 1 week, on success Renown +2 — and the real fight is not the check but the reckoning: antibiotics are one bottle, and the fallen are forty. Can you hold thirty-nine with isolation and boiled water? Meanwhile the reckoning of the soldiers who blocked the road is faster — burning comes cheaper.

The daimyo's secret sickbed. In the dead of night you are carried in a palanquin, blindfolded. The patient behind the folding screen is the lord of this domain — and that illness none in the domain may know. Heal it and a cage waits (a retained physician — the conflict hook "the price of a miracle" in practice). Heal it not and a silencing waits. And on the third night, at the patient's bedside, you meet an onmyoji — he too was summoned to keep the same secret. Is it illness, or curse, or both? The arena of the division of labor begins.

A house call to the enemy camp. An envoy bearing a flag of truce comes to the camp — the enemy general's only son is dying, and the plea is to lend the divine physician (神醫). The guarantee of safety is the enemy general's single word alone, and the gaze of the allied main camp pierces your back. To save him, is it to put the enemy general in your debt, or to rear one more enemy blade — on the day you return, no one in the camp will settle that answer for you (the conflict hook "whom to save" in practice).

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The drug bottles are three, the patients without end — somewhere between them lies every scene of this set.