Healthcare in America is difficult to navigate for lower income families. Those who fall into the cracks often find themselves putting care off. Fortunately, there are those who are dedicated to providing low-cost care to those in need. People like Dr. Reginald Aster.
Dr. Aster has opened a series of clinics throughout lower-income neighborhoods in his city. He’s been featured in several local and national publications applauding him for his work to make quality health care accessible to all. He’s been named as a rising star in the medical field. He’s been interviewed on daytime TV.
Nobody is quite sure how Dr Aster turns a profit, or if he even does. His detractors point out the fact that he comes from an old money family. They assume he must be squandering his trust fund in pursuit of attention. They couldn’t be further from the truth.
Dr Aster doesn’t come from an old money family; he is the old money family. Dr. Aster is actually Orlang Sapientes, a Byzantine alchemist. Sometime shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire he was able to locate the ruins of an ancient city along the shores of the black sea. There he descended into catacombs long forgotten and returned with tablets inscribed with strange, shifting symbols.
He spent several years hold up in his manor studying these tablets. A fortune was spent procuring strange objects, exotic materials, and slaves. Finally, on the night of the autumnal equinox the moon was blotted out by strange clouds over the city. Animals for miles around in the countryside panicked. Their cries, howls, and lows filled the air until the dawn. A strange smell hung over Constantinople, bought by a thick, greasy fog. The sun rose on an empty Sapientes estate. Neither Orlang or any of the slaves, staff, or family members who lived there were ever seen again.
Orlang was the sole survivor. He sacrificed his household to cast an Extend Life spell. The process involved bargaining and offering souls to an otherworldly entity in exchange for the entity to agree to age in Olang’s place. The version cast by Orlang was flawed, however. The entity required constant sacrifices lest it catastrophically drop the contract and age Orlang to death.
Thus began a centuries long process of appeasement. Along the way Orlang has reinvented himself countless times. He spent several centuries in the slave trade, amassing a huge fortune while also supplying himself with a steady supply of offerings. He’s spent a good portion of that fortune on acquiring further occult knowledge. He’s become one of the most powerful living magicians, but the humanism of the modern world has made it more difficult for him to acquire fresh offerings without raising an alarm.
He settled on the solution less than a hundred years ago. Nobody cares about poor people who get sick. The engines of the industrial revolution and capitalism churned out endless injuries and health problems amongst the poor. Poor who couldn’t afford quality care. Poor with no one to report anything strange to, and no one to take them seriously if they did.
Orlang Founded the Aster family, always posing as a prominent Doctor. He dedicated himself to helping the poor. The chaff left on the floor of capitalism. He did a lot of good in his community. Every few Decades he’d need to stage a death for his old self and enter the stage as his own heir. The Aster family history is filled with patriarchs lost in plane crashes or killed in foreign lands while bringing medical aide to the locals. The Aster curse has entered local folklore.
The truth is Aster does help those in need. But he also preys on them. When he comes across a victim who he thinks nobody will miss he arranges for the worst to befall them. Strange illnesses, sudden accidents, tragic suicides all plague these people. Nobody bats an eye. Nobody questions it. It’s one of the tragedies of modern life. If someone thought to look at the statistics of Aster’s clinics, they’d find an above average number of these deaths. But nobody will. Nobody has the time or inclination. And Dr. Aster will grow more wealthy and more powerful on the backs of the poor and helpless as the centuries pass.
Dr. Reginald Aster aka Orlang Sapientes
STR 45 CON 80 SIZ 40 DEX 60
INT 76 APP 50 EDU 75 SAN 0
HP 12 DB 0 Build 0 MV 9 MP 17
Combat
Brawl 55% ( 27/11 ), Damage 1D3
Spells
As desired by Keeper, but always containing a flawed Extend Life
Skills
Appraise 45%, Biology 55%, Chemistry 25%, Cthulu Mythos 25%, Fast Talk 40%, History 55%, Intimidate 60%, Language ( Latin ) 60%, Language ( English ) 45%, Language ( French ) 40%, Language ( German ) 40%, Library Use 50%, Medicine 60%, Occult 45%, Psychology 45%, Spot Hidden 50%,
Christian lives in Rhode Island where all this started. He thinks people are much more terrifying monsters than any nameless thing from the stars. He’s one of the hosts of the DMsAfterDark rpg stream.
