Dóktorhjeü

Dóktorhjeü is a long-running speculative fiction Copper Novel about a mysterious immortal (the Dóktorhjeü, Gnomish for "patron") who travels through time and space with his Warlock companion, saving lives and solving mysteries of the arcane.

History

The series was originally published in Y997 in Gnomish by AlleySJKÄNKSE Press in Cape Hildegard. Its first run, titled "The Dóktorhjeü of the Golden Millennium," was only twenty chapters long; three of those twenty chapters have been lost, with no complete copies known to have survived.
Dóktorhjeü's first run proved moderately popular, enough for AlleySJKÄNKSE Press to commission two subsequent series, "The Dóktorhjeü vs. the Eternity Brain" and "The Dóktorhjeü Beyond the Beyond." These series, which introduced some of the Dóktorhjeü's most enduring enemies and traits (including the villainous Eternity Brain, his trusty "eldritch army knife" tool, and his seeming ability to reappear after certain death with very little explanation), became wildly popular even outside Cape Hildegard. Translations into Common and Elvish were soon printed, and the series' popularity grew throughout the Aquatic Kingdoms.

Characters and Factions

The Dóktorhjeü is an ancient immortal of exceptional intelligence and incredible magical ability. He refers to himself as "a singular entity of myriad possibilities, traveling from beyond the beyond the beyond and beyond." His appearance changes throughout the series, but his most favored form is that of an average-build humanoid with pointed ears and pale skin. Gnomish has no gendered pronouns, and does not refer to the Dóktorhjeü explicitly as masculine; nevertheless, most translations into gendered languages have referred to him as such. There is a growing public movement to translate upcoming series using feminine or gender-neutral pronouns for the Dóktorhjeü.
The Dóktorhjeü's primary means of transportation is a flying interdimensional vehicle disguised as a produce cart, referred to simply as "The Produce Cart." It is consistently remarked upon by all companions and guests as "deeper than you'd think," since it can comfortably seat anyone within its various produce compartments, and contains fruits of any season or origin desired by the person who reaches into it. The produce cart is sometimes pulled by a horse-shaped void with fur the exact color and texture of the night sky. The Dóktorhjeü refers to this void as Clyde, "a good chap" who is fond of carrots, apples, and encantamelons pulled from within the cart.
The Eternity Brain is one of the Dóktorhjeü's most consistent foes. It is a eusocial network of mind flayer-like aberrations bent on the extermination of all souls that has been pursuing the Dóktorhjeü since time immemorial. Its natural form is fleshy and incredibly vulnerable to all damage; because of this, it tends to travel in hard-shelled plate armor casings on wheels. These casings can take any form, leading to a number of comical scenes throughout the series where the Dóktorhjeü mistrusts all artificers' contraptions (even benign house-cleaning inventions) and even knights in full plate armor, assuming that they are secretly hiding the Eternity Brain.
As of the twenty-seventh series, the Dóktorhjeü's current traveling companion is Poppy, an aspiring gnomish Bard who was in her first year at the College of the Arena before signing her pact with the Dóktorhjeü. She is often flustered and apologetic about her lack of arcane knowledge, but she consistently saves the day through her bravery and creative problem-solving abilities. She has a close friendship with the Dóktorhjeü, and is comfortable enough with him to make jokes about his eccentricities and question some of his more frustrating decisions and strategies.

Fan Response and Theories

AlleySJKÄNKSE Press does not credit its authors, but most readers believe that Dóktorhjeü has had quite a few different authors in its history, with theories ranging anywhere between six and fifty-eight different authors and co-authors having worked on the series. The characterization, powers, appearance, and even presented gender of the Dóktorhjeü frequently change, sometimes with little explanation or warning.
The fan community around Dóktorhjeü has collectively agreed that all interpretations and inconsistencies of the Dóktorhjeü are canon, and the unexplained changes are an essential part of his nature. General fan consensus holds that the powers of an eldritch Aberration will always be strange and unknowable, and his changes in appearance and ability simply reflect that. Others point to several unacknowledged cliffhangers in series finales as proof that the Dóktorhjeü has somehow died in these moments and been reincarnated between series. Proponents of this "reincarnation theory" generally agree that he is currently in his tenth form.

"Take the Dóktorhjeü, for instance. I've been reading that series since the beginning, and how many times has he cast a spell himself, I mean definitively cast it with his own two hands or tentacles or… whatever limb situation he's got going on? Exactly. He either channels it through his Compagnien, or there's some sort of gadget or something that goes off. That's why his magic looks a little different every time, right? He keeps picking up gadgets from everywhere he travels, maybe tweaking them a little bit, but never actually powering them by himself. It's the Compagnien who's magic, every time. Sure, he's a weird-looking guy who lives a long time. You know what else that describes? An Elf. Mark my words, students: the Dóktorhjeü is actually just a regular elf." —Dr. Tink Tinkerton, during a lecture that Inventor's Institute of Cape Hildegard students report was originally a lesson on the alchemical uses of lead

The series has a long-standing tradition of keeping the nature of the Dóktorhjeü's origin and powers vague, reportedly to discourage young fans from attempting to summon him. This has led to some fans speculating about whether he may actually be some more specific, well-known immortal; popular theories over the years have included the god Hermes, the archfey Telwyth-Teg, and the demon Crowley. This last theory was indirectly addressed in Series 23, Book 66, titled "The Dóktorhjeü, The Dóktorhjeü, and the Dóktorhjeü," in which the Dóktorhjeü and his warlock companion (Zed, a surly Human thief with a heart of gold) are summoned to the Celestial Courts for violating interplanar law to save Zed's niece from the clutches of the Eternity Brain. When they meet the bailiffs Crowley and Aziraphale, they directly comment on the physical similarity between the Dóktorhjeü and Crowley:

"Oh, he's a handsome one, isn't he, Aziraphale?" Crowley said, circling the Doktorhjeu. "It's like looking in a mirror. Shame about the hair, though."
"What's wrong with my hair?" the Dóktorhjeü demanded.
"Hard to say, really. But obviously something, or you wouldn't be wearing that hat."
The Dóktorhjeü clutched his tasseled cylindrical hat defensively. "What's wrong with my hat?!"

Though the Dóktorhjeü protests this similarity, it eventually proves useful, as he uses it as a disguise to escape the wrath of several Celestial Enforcers and eventually slip away from the sentencing hearings before he and Zed can be tried as accidental participants in the Litigation of Flames. At the end of the journey, when Zed remarks on the similarities between him and the two bailiffs (both of whom also take warlocks seen during the adventure), the Dóktorhjeü responds:

"Crowley and I will always be different, Zed," the Dóktorhjeü remarked. "He's got a way of looking at things, sure. Fascinated by souls, more so than any demon. Loves 'em, in fact. Loves to build 'em a little nest, keep 'em close, watch what they can do."
"Isn't that what you do?" Zed asked.
The Dóktorhjeü shook his head. "Nah," he said, biting into an orange with the peel still on. "His way is like keeping birds in a cage. My way's more like… birdwatching."
Zed smirked. "So I'm just a bird you're watching? I'm free to fly away?"
"Always have been." The Dóktorhjeü took another loud bite of his orange, peel and all. "Do you want to?"
Zed watched the Astral Plane streaking past below the flying produce cart. The constellations ambled across the indigo expanse as the cart lurched forward in time, far faster than on the Material Plane and yet glacial in relation to their journey. Between the starlight giants, smaller spirits flickered back and forth, gleaming like opals.
"I think I'll stick around for now," they said.

Read the Document

Dóktorhjeü

Series Twenty-Seven, Issue Fifty-Seven: Last Stand of the Souls, Part Two
"That's the absolutely splendid thing, right there, about creatures with souls," the Dóktorhjeü said. "It's how fantastically short you have. You pop out of a womb stuck onto some, ah, lamppost or wherever it is a womb goes--"
"Usually that's part of a mother, I should think," Poppy answered dryly.
"Right! Lampposts, mothers, I'm obviously aware of the difference." He fiddled with the myriad gears and switches on his heavily modified and improbably useful dwarven army knife. Several balloons inflated from somewhere within its handle. The Dóktorhjeü watched them float towards the cave ceiling serenely, oblivious to the quickly-approaching cacophony of noise from just outside the cavern, then continued. "Anyway, you pop your soft little slippery heads out, look around for a bit, take in the futility of all existence and the fact that you will someday no longer pilot the fleshy little visage that you just inherited, and you scream about the sheer unfairness of it all for, oh, a month or however long it is. And then..." He looked back at Poppy with a smile, half wise and half manic. "Oh, and THEN!"
"Dóktorhjeü, can you get to the point, please? The Eternity Brain is going to chew through the leaded barricade at any moment!" Poppy pointed to the black slab standing between her and certain annihilation, behind which she could clearly hear a series of unsettling slurps, scratches, and clangs echoing through the cavern.
"Right," said the Dóktorhjëu. "So, knowing innately from the very beginning that your soul is destined to separate from its form and find some new fate based on such an infintessimally small, I mean absolutely abysmally microscopic, amount of time that you have an impact upon this plane, that you only have so much time to grow and change... you say to yourselves, 'Well, alright then. By the gods and the demons and the..." He stopped tinkering with his dwarven army knife for a moment to gesture to his own body, which still looked for all the world like that of a rather average, if flamboyantly-dressed, elf.
"...and the whatever else there is in the worlds beyond, by the spirit of everything magical in the universe, I will be a part of that magic. I will use my eyes and my ears and my brain and my, you know, toes or what have you, and I will make something of this short time that my soul's got eyes and ears and toes to make magic with. I will keep striving to see, to do, to make, to feel, to never cease from exploration, and to understand—and I mean fully comprehend—almost nothing of it!
Sure, you might fail. You might not get everything you want. Hells, you might not get ANYTHING you want, and might make everything a whole lot worse besides. You might erase all your memories. You might burst into flames on the spot. You might sink into the sea like the lost cities of Achlys. But oh, you... will... live!"
"That was very beautiful," Poppy said. She had meant to say it sarcastically, but looking at the fugitives beside her-- all that was left of the doomed crew of the Seraph's Fire-- she realized the speech had moved them. She realized she meant it, too, softly feeling the hot tears running down her own cheek, before the sounds of the approaching Eternity Brain jolted her back to the task at hand. "But what does it mean?"
"It means that we've had enough time to charge up my eldritch army knife, and if we blast this leaden door hard enough, the Eternity Brain will slurp up all of the energy and be incapacitated long enough for the teleportation crystal to beam all of us back to the produce cart. Now in three... two... one... start blasting!"
A crackling beam of white light leapt from the little handheld tool. It joined the twin beams emanating from Poppy's outstretched hands, and all three rays converged into a single blinding river of energy before smacking headlong into the leaden door. Stray sparks and jolts from the beams pierced the gap between the door and its frame, and from the acrid smell of sizzling goo, she knew they had found the advancing aberration army beyond.
"ANNIHILATE! ANNIHILATE!" cried the watery voices from the other side. Poppy could make out the shadows of their myriad tentacles writhing in pain, projected like shadow puppets in the light of her Eldritch Blast upon the ruins' walls. The horrid gurgling of the Eternity Brain's voices were rapidly growing fainter as the beam grew brighter and brighter, until it was too bright for Poppy's mortal eyes to handle.
"Dóktorhjeü!" she shouted back. "Is the teleportation crystal charged? Can you see it?"
"Great news! I can absolutely see it."
"I know that tone, Dóktorhjeü. What's the not-so-great news?"
"That it can also see us."
Poppy turned slowly, rubbing her eyes to help them adjust once more to the ruins' darkness. She blinked several times, looking at the opalescent crystal. The dozen golden eyes it had suddenly sprouted blinked back.
"What... do we... do?" she asked.
"Easy," the Dóktorhjeü replied. "RUN!"

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Type

Text, Literature

Medium

Paper

Location

Cape Hildegard