Quince: Hello! Please state your name and business.
[memorized phrase, Quince only really speaks Ceannic]
Thorn: It’s okay, Quince! She’s one of the Sønheic guards — you met her at that friendly contest we had, remember?
Quince: Oh! That’s right. Sorry, I don’t know how to say “I don’t recognize you because of . . . ” of, uh . . .
Geirölul: I don’t know what you’re saying, but I can only assume it’s about my eye surgery.
Quince: Thorn? Is she mad at me?
Thorn: . . . She will be in a minute if you don’t swipe her in.
Comment Header
15 Comments
Oh please for the love of God tell me this wasn’t forced on her by her command.
I mean… She’s military and flat out told her CO “I think I need my eyes checked.” I would hope that a person whose job requires marksmanship would be at least ENCOURAGED to go see an optometrist, if not ordered.
That said, I’m fairly sure she went to a Ceannic optometrist about that since she’s coming in from off-base. I’d say there’s only a 0.012% chance that they installed something… worrying.
It’s that last part I’m more worried about. If this was a surgery that wasn’t medically necessary or required to maintain her readiness as a part of her command, then we’re getting into disturbing territory.
I’m with you 100%, but holding off on actively worrying until we see Police Girl Blue or Draculina Red irises instead of Golden Wheat.
There’s nothing disturbing on being ordered to visit medical specialist. Now, if he send her directly to surgery, maybe, but presumably she went to specialist who checked her sight before and who agreed that her eyes are really bad.
Don’t worry — if this was supposed to be sinister, I would’ve dwelled on it and included some eerie foreshadowing. This is just “she got her eyes checked as requested, decided she’d rather have surgery than start wearing glasses, and gets to wear silly-looking eye-shields for a few days while recovering.”
Can you blame us? there ARE 3 pages left in this chapter for foreshadowing, sinister or otherwise.
Come to think of it, what kinds of differences are there in medical treatments between the two countries- if there are any at all?
Fist guess, the size of the bill.
Comment below was supposed to be a reply to this, whoops!
They share the same basic foundation of knowledge, and they don’t hide new research from each other, so a lot of it is the same. Differences would be things like…
— Cutting-edge research. Studies on a new medication or rare condition might be so rare that they’re only done in one country.
— Cultural differences. For example: circumcision is more common in Ceannis (varying by ethnic group), but almost unheard-of in Sønheim, except for specific medical reasons. In Sønheim they default to recommending spelltech treatments over chemical/biological ones, even when it’s not necessarily more effective. On the plus side, they don’t have a subculture of people claiming “spelltech and pharmaceuticals are both fake, the real cure you need is to drink this water that once had a leaf in it.”
— Environmental differences. Ceannis has more experience with skin cancer; Sønheim is way more sophisticated at treating frostbite. They deal with different parasites, venomous species, poisonous plants, and so on.
— Magical differences. In Ceannis, mages can treat people directly, and people face spiritual infections like STAD. Both countries can use healing spelltech, but a spell invented on one side of the mountains has to be re-encoded to work on the other.
— Everything in Ceannis is covered by health insurance! So its citizens are way more likely to have a good regimen of preventive care than people in Sønheim.
Nice, love extra worldbuilding.
I laughed at ” they don’t have a subculture of people claiming “spelltech and pharmaceuticals are both fake, the real cure you need is to drink this water that once had a leaf in it.” “. The positives list for Sønheim slowly grows, lol.
“They don’t hide” … does it means they are not trying to hide, or they are trying but it rarely works? I mean, everything remotely weapon-related would be good candidate for secrecy …
… oh, right, this was specifically about medical treatments. Still, there would be things like soldier augmentation which would be medical in nature but still weapon-related.
Also, I would expect they have biological warfare programs. Like, isn’t Ceannis working on researching biological agents only working on vampires? Even if nothing like that would exists, I would expect someone would try to verify that …
PS: Thanks for nice worldbuilding.
Comment Footer