Viscose Sheen- itinerant doctor

(a.k.a. Tarantulina)

Physical Description

General Physical Condition

~33 years old, female, south asian with very dark skin and long black hair

Either born with hands coming out of her shoulders and no arms or with no arms at all, due to chemical pollution or rampant disease during the wars. She wears robot arms that fit over, and are controlled by, her hands. The white plastic arms attach to a single harness that looks something like a long-sleeved crop-top. Otherwise she is a lean, muscular, attractive woman.

Apparel & Accessories

She wears two beautiful white prosthetic arms which were the pinnacle of pre-apocalypse technology. She has upgraded the prosthetic arms and had them repaired numerous times. She pays people to charge their batteries.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

She decided to learn medicine as a young, starving child. It was quite clear to her that her parents would be unable to keep her alive and that when even kids without deformities were starving to death, she had no hope unless she took matters into her own hands. Noticing that the most valuable members of society were medical professionals, she immediately began pursuing this career with the single-mindedness of a starving dog pursuing the smell of food. When a medic of any caliber arrived in her area, she would show up and begin “helping out”. Often she would start carrying the medic’s luggage as soon as he stepped out of his vehicle. She was a good judge of character. If a medic seemed nervous or unsure of where to start, she would motor-mouth a continuous stream of important information about the local population, its medical needs, the best place to set up shop, the best place to catch a bite to eat and sleep, etc. If a medic seemed very self-assured, she would remain mystifyingly silent. If chased away, she would return the moment the medic’s back was turned, without a trace of shame. She only needed to be chastised for any given mistake once, after which she would never repeat it. This caused her to be strangely and notably efficient in her role as unrequested volunteer nurse, janitor, note taker, community ambassador, and local guide. Eventually the medic would almost always begin feeding her on the first day, and she would be an official part of the team by the second. Before they left town, they would usually start paying her a small wage, which she would always cautiously hide. She would then use this savings to subsidize her caloric intake until the next traveling healer arrived in town.
By the time she was 13 (she looked more like 11) a traveling doctor offered to let her travel with him, but sensing potential danger, she politely declined. Six months later, a traveling midwife made her the same offer, which she gratefully accepted. This was the beginning of her love-affair with the road. She would go on to travel with a variety of healers, soaking up everything they could teach her. Whenever she would meet another medic who could teach her better, she would jump ship. (A few times she also had to jump ship when she misjudged the character of a fellow traveler, and he or she became dangerous to be around.)
By age 18 she acquired her first set of robot arms which assisted her greatly. They are worth an enormous amount of money to the right person, but they do not prove a tempting target for thieves due to the difficulty of finding just the right person to buy them. With a full belly every night, a pair of robot arms on her shoulders, and the skills to survive anywhere in the world, she began to feel safe enough to relax her monomaniacal fixation on survival and started to develop a personality and an inner life. She began to notice in herself a desire for physical and emotional intimacy and became involved in a series of sexual relationships with her mentors. Her sense of loyalty or romantic love was still quite undeveloped however, and she left several broken hearts in her wake as she continued to jump ship whenever a better opportunity presented itself.
By the time she was 24 she felt she had learned enough to set out on her own. She has been traveling on her own ever since, rarely settling down anywhere for more than a few months. Recently she has started to develop a more mature personality as she crossed paths with several old flames, and was shocked to see the emotional wreckage she had left in her wake. She began to value emotional connections more highly and started looking at people as more than just means to the end that is survival. In particular, after stumbling into one of her old mentors who was dying from cancer (from radiation and toxin exposure) and many decades of opiate abuse (used to numb the horrors he witnessed as a wasteland doctor as well as to soothe his broken heart), she stayed with him for months, caring for him until he passed away.
Nonetheless, her emotional reactions are not what we would consider normal.

Education

She attended school until second grade, when the last vestige of the local education system collapsed.

Employment

Viscose is a fairly skilled and experienced wasteland doc. She can handle common ailments competently. She is sharp, but is still early in her career.

Mental Trauma

She grew up immersed in starvation, death, and horror. She spent her adolescence and adult life in the operating room. Gore does not affect her at all, and she has a much lower sympathetic pain reaction when observing the suffering of others. Her efficiency and tirelessness in the care of her patients comes more from an intellectual desire to improve a situation, and a pride in craft rather than an instinctual empathy for her patients.

Intellectual Characteristics

Viscose is smart and wise beyond her years (at least about matters of survival). Her wisdom and interest in things beyond survival are erratic.

Morality & Philosophy

She will rarely treat illnesses without a payment of some type (unless the patient is a street urchin with no support), although she can be flexible about the nature of this payment depending on how likable she finds the patient.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

She has a love affair with the road. Her overriding motivation however is survival.

Savvies & Ineptitudes

Her skills to include simple dentistry and somewhat surprisingly, trauma counseling.

Virtues & Personality perks

She is almost imperturbable. Blood, gore, explosions, being held at gunpoint - almost nothing rattles her.
She charges less than more experienced/educated wasteland docs.
She is young and healthy.
She's emotionally balanced - or at least self sufficient.
She is willing to pay 25% of her take in order to be allowed into the crew.

Vices & Personality flaws

She is notoriously blunt, unempathic, and has a mercenary reputation. Her reputation is exaggerated, but there is more than a kernal of truth there.
She is sharp, but still early in her career. She is a competent wasteland doc, but still has a lot to learn. Also, she's had to learn via informal apprenticeships rather than from an actual medical school.
If her arms malfunction during an operation (e.g. the batteries die) she will need to continue the operation using her feet. She's extremely dextrous with her feet, but they are still not hands.
At some point she will run into an old jilted lover with whom she must make amends.

Personality Quirks

She forgot her middle name and she does not know exactly how old she is.
Some people call her "Tarantulina" based on her habit of calmly eating lunch while stingy patients bleed out. It's a negotiating tactic intended to make it clear that she will not perform services for free out of a feeling of obligation. She is not a fan of the name.

Known Languages

Viscose is fluent in English, Spanish, and has partial fluency in French and Portuguese.