#and mechanically is some combo of whispers bard/soul knife/ and enchantment wizard

[actionsurges]

the. brain surgeon??? willow. she's pretty i like her c:

the funniest part is willow is arguably so normal and absolutely not normal at all. i created her because @criticalrolo made kestrel and i was like "do you want him to have an an enemy to bounce off of" and oops now they're in love actually.

she had a pretty normal childhood and upbringing and her parents were the sort of fantasy upper middle class where it was expected that she do something academic and she just became really interested in brains and specifically how enchantment magic messes with people's brains and how to break geases and charms and etc.

so she was a magical brain surgeon. her entire specialty was a) regular brain surgery and b) brain surgery on spells or fixing memories that are blocked by magic and etc with a psychic scapel

she was just like. someone whose so largely dominated by their work that she has absolutely no life outside of it and no friends and was like. that's fun. whatever. (one of her hobbies is cringe. it's sitting in a public place casting detect thoughts and listening to other people's conversations while she sits alone. loser)

she's a skilled enough brain surgeon that there's a technique named after her. the amaryllis (her surname) technique is an innovation on how to do brain surgery of the magical variety (bringing people's memories back, putting them behind a wall, breaking a geas or charm, etc) with it causing little to no pain to the subject if you DO It Right. So the funniest part about willow is like. SHES A REALLY FUCKING GOOD DOCTOR WHO WAS DOING DECENT THINGS.

then the war gets WORSE and the military has so many pow and regular interrogation isn't working so they're like. hey. do you want to have an insane salary. and willow's life is shallow and she's apathetic to a sense of self or morality enough that she says yes.

she starts just. getting information out of people's brains for the military. that's what she does, and eventually she ends up with kestrel whose figured out Time Magic. which is something everyone wants. she's like. okay. normal job time, just find this info and get out. And This Fucking Idiot, RAMS HIS BRAIN AGAINST HER PSYCHIC SCALPEL SCRAMBLING HIS BRAIN SO SHE CANT GET ANY INFO AND CAUSING HIMSELF IMMEASURABLE PAIN.

he breaks out during this bc he goes So Wild magically from that meanwhile willow is just like. my guy. i. wasn't gunna hurt you.

she keeps working for the military but that incident is kind of the catalyst for realizing she lives a very shallow life and doesn't really like ANYTHING which is. bad. and also her habit of having detect thoughts going / being in the brains of people often doing surgery means she is realizing. people are either afraid of her, feel sorry for her, or think she's a terrible person for what she does.

so she starts to have an arc of 'hm. am i a bad person? yeah maybe i should step away and figure out how to be a better person and how to have relations.' and she tries to quit her job w/ the millitary. they say. what the fuck no. she says. ok. and learns that having a psychic scalpel is just as good for fixing brains as it is for absolutely destroying them. and walks out <3

and then eventually at some point meets kestrel and he's freaking the fuck out while she's like 'oh hey, sorry about that. can i fix your brain? why won't you let me fix your brain. kestrel. let me fix your brain it's broken. PLEASE.'