Hey there guys!
So my little team and I are getting all kitted up for our first ever Empire LARP and we’re making costumes and kit like no tomorrow:
I seem to be pretty set with a badly made tunic, feathers and skulls for my Kallavesi, but my Chirurgeon friend is having a little trouble - she knows that to heal someone who is bleeding out, she has to use healing equipment or lay hands on them…but what sort of equipment does she need? Healing potions (or is that just for ALchemists? Does she have to buy it there?) bandages? fake blood (though I can imagine some people would get very annoyed with fake blood stains on their outfits!) a satchel to carry it all in? What say you crafty folk? As a starting Healer, what should she have? 
To stop someone bleeding with Chirurgeon takes 30s of roleplaying doing some form of medical treatment.
As Empire isn’t the real world, this doesn’t have to be real-world medical treatment, but lots of people use that as a baseline.
When I’ve played a chirurgeon, I tore up an old off-white bedsheet into 2" wide strips as bandages. Spend 30s wrapping one (not too tight!) round a limb (remember to check with the target before touching them), and the job’s a good one.
Adding fake blood is popular - always check before doing so. Another alternative is to pre-stain your bandage physreps with fake blood, and then let them dry before coiling up for use: they’ll look nicely bloody, but avoid any risk of staining people’s costumes.
Other alternatives could include crystals, or preparing a series of 30s sermons on the supremacy of virtue over physical injury. Or a combination of the above.
For a simple off-the-shelf option: larpinn.co.uk/healers-bandag … p-868.html
Bandages are good but not necessary. For example, if she’s a Kallavesi too, then waving some feathers around while you “re-knit their Skein” or whatever is just as valid as pseudo-medieval surgical RP. So long as you do something on the theme of “healing” for 30 seconds, it’ll work.
profounddecisions.co.uk/empi … _in_Empire
Fake blood is always a good plan, as at worst they say “no fake blood please” when you ask.
The absolute best thing you can have is an IC water carrier, so you can offer the wounded a drink. Carrying water is big and clever.
Another Kallevesi option is incense and smoke, in which case checking with your patient if they are happy with such around them is a thing that should be done
I’ve made two sets of surgeon’s tools using cheap plastic hobby tools - the sort for sculpting plastic or fimo - you can get a pack of a dozen assorted off ebay for a couple of quid. Pick out some of the pointier ones, sand them down, paint them a metallic colour. If you’re really lazy (like me) just paint the pointy end and glue some scrap leather around the handle. Wrap them in a cloth (blood stains optional) or make or buy a tool roll to complete the look.
As tea and Jim have noted, although the quasi-surgical approach is popular it’s by no means obligatory. Crystal healing, aligning humours, wafting feathers, chanting and drumming, drawing the injury into a totem that is then ritually destroyed, cat’s cradle with muttering over the patient, donning and removing masks - all viable methods of healing in Empire!
Larphacks has a useful post on playing a healer - larphacks.tumblr.com/post/112054 … time-medic.
1 Like
Cool thanks a lot for the advice guys; I’ll see if we can sort out some bandages, tools and so on.
Potions, I take it, have to be bought?
Potions need to be bought, or made by a character with the apothecary skill (which costs herbs, so it’s basically like buying them).
The phys-reps for potions can be made though. Small bottles look good, entirely up to you if they contain something that can be drunk (with of course the usual notification to your patient for allergy purposes), or are permanently sealed.
What your apothecary will get is a tearable lammie so it is useful to have something to roleplay dosing someone.
The Works are doing little bottles of sequins at the moment for not a lot which will work nicely if that suits you.
If you really want to go hard-core, then these would be the spiffiest stuff there is…
1 Like
Blimey, they’re good value - €49.90 (plus delivery) for the whole set 
Tempted just because the exchange rate is so good at present 
Go on Nik, you know you want to…