Forgive me Jin–calling this a treatsie is a bit arrogant, but it sounded better than “my rambling thoughts”. There are many books and papers on this topic in the Priory but they are also all terribly dry, so I didn’t think you’d mind if I whipped up something a bit more colloquial? I’m not sure how healing pairs up with Necromancy, so forgive me if this is less than useful for you in parts.
I have discovered over the years that healing is best approached by supporting magical healing with non-magical means. To crudely explain my own methods, my guardian healing is basically rushing the bodies natural processes–but this drains myself, and/or the patient. Basically, magic is the scaffolding and the workers, but the building blocks have to come from somewhere, and it seems to go better if the patient provides those. If we are both prepared, things can go much more smoothly. (Naturally this goes right out the window with emergencies. Talk to me sometime about healing the Captain–that was hell.)
Bone healing can be lengthy even at the best of times, but I’ve found these things can speed it along.
One: the patients diet! A protein and dairy heavy diet during the period of bone healing will give the patient’s body more to draw from. I usually favor a diet heavy in chicken (although red meat is better if there was much bleeding involved to begin with), milk, cheese, broccoli, yogurt, nuts, beans.
(In Riathan’s case I had to start off gently with blander foods, and this complicated things. But a prisoner’s diet is not conducive to healing or swift acclimation back to richer foods. I started off going heavy on the dark meat of a chicken chicken and only slowly adding red meat, but–well, this is worth another paper in and of itself. Forgive me.)
Other good foods are salmon and liver, if your patient will eat them. Eggs if not. If you can get your hands on some citrus that’s always helpful, tomatoes, peppers, berries…
Keep the patient away from alcohol (hard if Norn), coffee, or even too much tea.
Two! Increasing blood flow helps. I can do this magically, not sure if you can as well. Obviously the usefulness of this trick depends on the rest of the injury–it’s often something I reserve for latter stages, and not really for in the heat of the moment emergency healing. In that case, you just sort of crudely knit the bones together “enough” and have to let the body do the rest. Careful exercise can also help–again, this is another time when you have to consider things on a case by case basis. But as an example, in the case of a broken forearm you’d advise exercises that involve moment of the fingers and hand, as well as elbow and shoulder.
Three, sleep! Sleep is important for healing, as I’m sure you well know. I have access to a variety of alchemical draughts for pain as well as sleep, and I have no shame about making liberal use of these.
(They are especially useful in cases like Riathan’s, where sleep may be disrupted by mental trauma. )
In any case–I hope this was vaguely helpful. Next time someone comes in having broken something–Pikko or Pyri are likely candidates–you are more than welcome to magically piggy-back any healing I may do to observe.
FROM THE DESK OF:
Lady Ambrosine Thalkor
Head of House Thalkor (such as it is)
Priory Arcanist (on hiatus)
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