Dr. Essler

Art by Starstainstuff

## Stats

**Essa Essler**, more commonly referred to as **Dr. Essler**, is a character from *Silent Knights*. She is played by Starstainstuff.

## Description

### Personality

Essa is constantly scribbling down notes about anything that she finds interesting, wanting to know anything that has to do with the workings of all creatures. For example, when the *Silent Knights* party first kills a group of goblins, she promptly takes one's corpse and spends the night dissecting it.

## History

### Background

Essa was born in Dolten alongside her mother, her father, and her younger brother Silas. Growing up in Dolten in a heavily Yuan-ti populated area left little room for proper morals or social etiquette that most other lands in Verum had, though she wasn't void of them. She had a strong sense of family, particularly towards her little brother Silas as their parents only raised them up to around 7 years old, then deemed them old enough to know how to take care of themselves, as they sent them off to their own home within another part of Dolten.

Dolten was an area that was crawling with roguish types, people looking to scrape by in a system that required you to take one of two roles; be the one under someone's foot, or be the one pressing them into the mud with it yourself. With a mutual desire to protect each other, Silas and Essa were thrown into the life of stealing, hunting and scuffling, though Silas took more of a spark to the physical confrontation than Essa did. Essa was someone who instead took an interest in the area she was born in itself, and how it worked.

In this town, you were the top dog living a comfortable life if and only if you were able to kill someone with no feeling, and as quickly as possible. At 10, Essa had already gotten the former down to a T, but she needed to figure out how to do it quicker. More efficiently. She wasn't very physically strong at 10, at least not compared to the far stronger adults, so she figured that there must have to be a different, more efficient way to kill someone to get what you need that doesn't involve raw strength.

So, she began to lurk around the streets and spy on fights. She studied them intently, keeping notes in her head and on any scrap paper she or her brother had. Over this time spent studying, she noticed patterns in certain body parts being more fragile than others. She would go on to discover the existence of bones and major organ locations, but it wasn't enough. She didn't know anything yet, she only had speculations. She had to take a body.

She dragged a street corpse home with her, and began to dissect it, looking into its chest and stomach to locate the bones, the thickness of the muscles, the strength of the tissues, and the location of the organs. She'd study these corpses and more fights for weeks that turned to months, but she still felt the nagging feeling that she was missing more information. She had to acquire a live subject, and watch it die. But there was no way that anyone in the streets would just let her watch a fight without getting involved. She would have to kill and observe someone herself.

She mulled it over for a few weeks, as while she was comfortable with killing, she was less cozy with the idea of a form of torture. After some while to think, however, she discussed it with her brother, and made a plan. They soon acquired Essa's first subject. Essa's procedure was to strap them down to a table, then stab them in the forehead, only to tear open their chest cavity as quickly as they possibly could to observe the still-functioning organs.

After the 'experiment' was complete, and she had watched the subject die and riffled through their insides, she would take extensive notes, finding a new flame of opportunity rekindled inside of her. The humanoid body was another world in of itself, and by gods, Essa Essler was going to become the first person to discover it.

Over the next few years, with the help of Silas collecting her subjects, Essa would gradually discover more and more about the functions of organs, how important each was, which parts were connected where, identifying fluids, and so much more as she became more enveloped in her experiments. She began to realize that while this research would obviously be used to become stronger around Dolten, to be able to kill people more efficiently as she wished, she also came to the conclusion that she could just as equally use it to heal those she wanted to save.

## Character Information

### HP Growth

Dr. Essler's HP Growth
 Level 2 (Ep. 2)
 Level 3 (Ep. 5)
 Level 4 (Ep. 6)
 Level 5 (Ep. 7)
 Level 6 (Ep. 13)
 Level 7 (Ep. 14)

### Abilities

#### Origin

**Dolten**

* +3 bonus to saving throws vs. Fear effects.
* +1 Wisdom

##### Sub-Origin

**Gravewatcher**

* +1 Constitution
* Skill Prof – Medicine
* Tool Prof – Woodcarver's Tools
* You can cast the Detect Evil and Good spell at will, but only to detect undead creatures.
* Burden : Healing effects on you are reduced by 3, to a minimum of 1.

#### Yuan-Ti Pureblood Abilities

* Darkvision
* Innate Spellcasting
* Magic Resistance
* Poison Immunity

#### Monk Abilities

* Unarmored Defense
* Martial Arts
* Ki
* Unarmored Movement
* Deflect Missiles
* Monastic Tradition: Way of the Long Death
	+ Touch of Death
	+ Hour of Reaping
* Slow Fall
* Extra Attack
* Stunning Strike
* Ki-Empowered Strikes
* Evasion
* Stillness of Mind

### Notable Items

* Daonos the Crimson Wind: +2 spear
	+ Blood Bolt: Crits cause an extra 3d10 necrotic damage to all enemies adjacent to the wielder
	+ Reaping Wild: Once per long rest, may hit any enemy in range and heal 3 HP per enemy, and all healing added to damage on next attack roll