Lauren Baskers

*"All I ever wanted, was to help people." -Lauren*

## History

A Native-born resident of Skyholm, Lauren Baskers grew up in a small sleepy village on the edge of the kingdom's borders by the name of Greenhaven, where she was raised by her grandfather after the death of her parents from bandits at a very young age.

Raised to eventually replace her grandfather as the local healer, she spent her entire life learning non-magical healing arts and herbalist remedies so as to better serve the small community and combat all it's ailments and medical troubles. Eventually coming into her own as the head doctor and marrying her childhood sweetheart Burkhard with whom she would mother her daughter Emiline, Lauren's life was good, until tragedy struck.

Awoken in the middle of the night on a full moon by sounds of panic coming from the barn on their farm, Lauren and Burkhard went outside to investigate, fearing a robber might be trying to steal their horse or livestock, and discovered a scene of carnage. Their horse dead & mangled, and an unusually large wolf loose in the barn.

Although they were able to successfully drive off the beast, Lauren was badly burned by an out of control blaze when the struggle against the wolf resulted in her oil lamp exploding and spreading it's ignited liquids all across the barn and herself. Badly burned along the left side of her body, Lauren would be stricken with terrible pain for the rest of her life from the disfiguring burns she suffered that night. Unfortunately, these would prove to be among the least of her new problems.

A month passed, and although still weak, Lauren's recovery was going well, until the full moon rose. Hidden by her terrible burns, none had ever realized the wolf had bitten her in the chaos of the barn fire, and out of her mind with the pain that night, Lauren had completely forgotten about it. As the full moon rose, Lauren transformed into a feral wolf, and tried to attack her husband and child, who were able to barricade themselves in another portion of the house until morning.

Terrified by Lauren's new reality, Burkhard never the less tried to stand by her and support his wife, until a disturbing trend began to manifest itself; More and more frequently, he would find Lauren willingly transforming during the night and losing herself to the wolf, on nights that were in no way close to the full moon. Justifying herself by explaining that in that form, she felt free from the constant pain of her burns, and never fully admitting to herself that she felt free as the wolf from the burden of the guilt and fear she felt for herself and her actions on the full moon, the two's relationship quickly soured until things came to a head one day, when Lauren was home alone with their daughter.

   Suffering a particularly bad day of pain, Lauren chose to transform while home alone with Emeline, thinking herself safely contained in her bedroom where the child could not go. Unfortunately, Lauren underestimated the determination of a young child frightened by her mother's sudden disappearance, and determination to find her. Although ultimately able to regain control of herself before she caused any physical harm to her daughter, the utterly terrified child would run screaming from the house and into the woods. Upon his return to their home, Burkhard was horrified to discover the loss of his daughter, which Lauren chose not to fully reveal the reasons for to him.

Although the two were able to eventually track down the young girl, Emeline refused to go anywhere near Lauren, and tearfully revealed the truth of her disappearance to her father. No longer able to trust his wife when the reason for their daughter's actions was revealed, Burkhard would take up a silver sword he had purchased and hidden away incase he ever had need of it, and drive Lauren away from their once happy home, threatening to tell the whole town what she had become and kill her himself if she ever returned, convinced now she had become a threat to their daughter by her neglect and refusal to take her curse seriously. Suffering and alone, Lauren began moving from town to town, using her knowledge of the medical arts to make a living for herself, even as she continued to slip further and further into dependency upon her cursed form during the night to sleep and escape from her painful life and memories.

Now, 3 years later, she finds herself in the city of Skyholm, where she has set up a medical clinic where she can accumulate money to fund her research into Lycanthropy, in all it's forms, and how best to try and cure it with her ever growing knowledge of the Xenoalchemical arts. Unfortunately, her efforts have only resulted in greater risk. Although Lauren has finally taken responsibility and learned to control her inner beast, the wolf itself has mutated horrifically from her continued Xenoalchemical self experimentations. Despite this, she has learned to live with her new reality, and is now actively seeking to reconnect with her husband and daughter, hopeful that they will be willing to take her back, or at least be willing to let her be apart of their lives again, as she works to safeguard the city of Skyholm against those who seek to harm it.

## Appearance

* Basker's Usual Appearance
* The Wolf
1/2
Lauren: A human woman with unnatural slate gray marble patterned skin in her very early thirties with dirty blond past shoulder length hair, and a very bottom-heavy, athletic figure of 5'7 height. Lauren is typically seen wearing medical robes based on a plague doctor's raiment, a clear indication of her profession in working with biologically hazardous materials. Her skin is a strangely colored light gray with a marble pattern to it as a result of inhuman full-body skin grafts used to replace her burn-damaged skin, and a plague doctor's mask can occasionally be seen to be worn by her when she is working, though this is something she frequently avoids wearing in public to prevent any crowds from panicking at the sight of a passing plague doctor in full suit.

The Wolf: Accidentally altered by extensive efforts by Lauren to cure herself via exposure to a number of alchemical, xenoalchemical, unnatural, and herbal methods down through the years, the wolf is an utterly massive creature the size of a blue whale, and exhibits a number of atypical traits that clearly mark it as something far removed from any normal woodland animal. Ignoring it's utterly massive size, the wolf is coated in hoarfrost across it's entire body and bears three glowing yellow eyes, boney protrusions along it's shoulders and spine, and a cluster of deeply unnatural tentacles sprouting from it's back. The wolf is an aggressive predatory creature driven only by hunger and a desire to hunt, and combines the worst traits of predatory drive and human ingenuity in it's efforts to bring ruin to all it can on the night it slips Lauren's control and is free to hunt.

Although Lauren is (always) in full control of herself while shapeshifted into the wolf's form, which she regularly does when she is out adventuring for Xenoalchemy resources, she is still a infected lycanthrope, and loses herself to the beast one night out of every month. Recently, she has employed the aid of her friend and the owner of the black-claw arena, Fenris, to help her contain the beast. Now, the colossal wolf is safely contained far below ground in a cage specialized for the containing of gigantic monsters.

## Personality

Naturally kind-hearted, Lauren was raised from a young age to value life, and devote herself to helping others without (too much) expectation of repayment or reward. Despite the dark turns her life has taken in the past few years, she is still a somberly helpful, altruistic person, who has devoted herself towards the pursuit of greater knowledge and new discoveries in her Xenoalchemical research. She considers exploitation or predation upon others, especially the young or those less fortunate, to be a morally reprehensible, evil thing. Ultimately, she genuinely enjoys helping people with her knowledge of the healing arts and has come to terms with the harsh truth that she will never be able to cure herself of her own unnatural affliction.

## Friends & Allies

- Maria Millshawn: A young human woman in her very early 20's who came into Lauren's employ after being rent limb from limb by cannibals and rushed to Lauren's clinic for healing by her rescuers. Maria, rebuilt physically with the remains of the Nymph responsible for her horrific injuries, accepted Lauren's offer of continued aid and employment at her clinic, where she now works as a receptionist and nurse, tending to customers and recovering patients alike on Lauren's behalf.

- Mutt: A male dire wolf that was subjected to alchemical alterations by a man named Kurusan who used the wolf to demonstrate his alchemical knowledge to Lauren, who later proceeded to use the wolf for her own testing purposes before freeing it upon realizing it was chemically tainted and unsuitable for such purposes. Although the physical changes reverted, the wolf retained a heightened intellect, and has recently been seen adventuring alongside other heroes to protect Skyholm and it's citizenry, a fact that is still unknown to Lauren at this time.

## Enemies

- The Werewolf: Lauren has never managed to locate the werewolf responsible for her infection. Despite spending the first few months of her life on her own searching for it in the hope old folk rumors of killing the werewolf that bit you being able to cure your own infection, no leads ever lead her to her quarry, and she later learned the old stories were untrue. Although she has long ago abandoned the search for the beast, Lauren continues to harbor ill will towards whoever the wolf may be.

## Buisness

Operating out of the low ward, Lauren runs a non-magical healing clinic. There, she offers her medical & herbalist skills as a healer, and her Xenoalchemic abilities to those looking to gain that little extra advantage over the many threats and perils the world has to offer.

### Business Details

**Groups:**

Laborers: 500 [Makes 1,000g/day]

**Buildings:**

Lauren's Modified Hospital: [Makes 68g/day] 1 Bath, 1 Common Room, 2 Infirmaries, 1 Lavatory, 1 Office, 1 Statue, 1 Storage, 1 Storefront, 1 Workstation, 1 Alchemy lab, 2 Book Repositories