Hetero Somatic Transmutation

_{Describe an invention in your world that helps people with disabilities.}

NECESSARY CONTEXT

On Planet Earth, as you should know, there is this popular saying of ancient wisdom: "Lawyers are the professionals that exist to solve all problems that would not exist if lawyers didn't existed".
Here on the Planet Blessed by the Vortex civilized society goes on mostly without an exact equivalent for advocacy. They do have professionals of Law in State Cities, one way or another, but they have a role closer to ancient Greek logographers than to the work of lawyers. In the sense that they do not replace their clients in the act of argumentation, merely prepare the argument and help those clients train to present themselves well in the pertinent court for their case.
Sharitarnes in general value direct participation and self-defense more than we Earthlings do. They implicitly believe that those who cannot defend themselves have no right, they should and will live as pleases their owners, or will die. That is not a law, that is a general moral principle, but their laws and interpretation of Laws are based on this principle, as much as ours are based in the notion of all human lives having value and all humans having right to freedom. Since the difference is essential for our understanding of how they deal with disabilities I am calling your attention to it.
Another cultural element often related to disability in past History is charity, whit or without connection to any specific religious flavour. Sharitarns do have religions, all those you know are up there by now, and they have many, many others. However, one thing they do not have (except in small closed ghettos) is 'charity'. Closest equivalent up there is "generosity", which to simplify things you could define as "charity, minus guilt" (CHARITY-GUILT = GENEROSITY; as Sharitarnes understand the term).
So: you are familiar with stories, and pieces of history, where someone chopped his own leg or arm in order to get more money while begging on streets; perhaps pretending to be a war veteran. A father or a mother who mutilates their own baby to make easier for them to survive on streets. You cannot TELL a story like that on Sharitarn, unless you get yourself a very patience audience of Scholar Castes who will want long explanations about Earthling habits for the sake of satisfy their intellectual curiosity. Nothing in this stories make sense for your average Sharitarne.
No one feels guilty for have a better life than anyone else, and no one feels that all children have right to live_to not even talk about live above some level of comfort or dignity_ just for having been born alive.
The normal thing to do when a baby is born without a leg or an arm is to kill this baby, fast and without drama. Circumstances exist when that is not done, but they are the rare exceptions not the sensible thing to do. And usually the parents do have a reason to choose not to follow the socially prescribed path. Is not "I don't want to", is not "I feel bad about", but may be something like "I am the last of my Noble Caste lineage and I cannot have other children, or may no be able to have other children, so this children must grow if there is any chance it may one day procreate". (in most nations most Castes have adoption as a valid method to continue family lineages, adopted children are as good as biological ones: but that's never the case among Nobles Castes.)
I must point explicitly that is not Law what prevents the parents from raise a defective children (no judgement of value in my choice of words here: “defective” is the closest translation I can give you for what could be said in Merchant Language about the present subject). Wild folk would be another matter entirely, but within civilization if you have a blind, deaf baby with no arms or legs, and you want to raise it, no one will stop you. No one is likely to help you either, but free people are free to invest their time and resources as they please. Is just that Sharitarnes do not feel the same things we feel about the matter.
That’s the scariest thing about them for many iis from Earth. We like to assume that a lot in our basic feelings, disgusts and convictions are as they must be. An objective aspect of reality, not product of socialization. That’s mostly a fantasy. The fact that some things will disgust humans, is born with us, but what is disgusting and what is not isn’t. And is natural for mothers to kill some of their babies, and raise some others, which one they will raise and which one they will kill is not an instinctive thing, it is product of education. Also, how to love a child and what is a child exactly, are not natura things.
Children who lose a leg or an arm, of acquire any other disability, are seldom protected by adults. They may survive, by being cunning. Or they may survive for having an older brother or sister who watches for them (despite the advice of adults and not because of it) that does happens. More likely, children will die if they can't grow as strong as average.
Who reaches adulthood falls in a totally different paradigm. Because to be an (free) adult (person) is to be a member of a caste. And to be a member of a caste is to be an asset for your city. After that point, you can count with your Caste Brothers, and they can count with you. Within the limits of reason, if there is something you can still do to serve your caste, your caste will accept your service and pay you for it. And your caste brothers will go above and beyond to be sure that you have a life as good as circumstances allow you to have. Disabilities that cannot be eliminated by the resources available in your city, for your caste, are administrated withing the borders of your caste. Unless your behaviour for some unforgivable reason causes your caste brothers so much shame that they decide to put you honour in question. That’s an extreme very hard to reach, seldom anyone reaches it, but when it happens to you the lack of arms and legs became the less important of your defects. So, to resume this broadly: those people you see on Sharitarn with disabilities likely acquired those in their adult lives. Instead of either have been born that way, or have been mutilated during childhood.

THAT, BROADLY SPEAKING

There is a non-human city named High Towers, for instance, where very few children are not born with serious physical and mental disabilities. Up there they obviously do not kill their “defective” babies, since that would make their inevitable extinction as a specie more imminent than it already is. They do everything in their power to see every child grow and have their own children. There is small settlements composed almost entirely by heirs of one Parallel Planet culture or another, like the small village of Russian origin in the Eastern Border of the Xar-Scar in South Continent. In places like that people often follows some mix of Sharitarn culture and their original heritage, from before they met the Vortex. In any case, local circumstances are paramount. Except for the Exclusion Law there is no “crimes of war”, or “crimes against humanity” on Sharitarn. No excuse for one nation poke the practices of another with her nose and claims the moral ground while doing so. Strong nations force weaker ones to pay tribute sometimes, for “protection”, but that is as far as they go in interfering with other people’s business. And they only do that in self-interest, never “for the sake of Democracy” or “to protect the civilian population against chemical weapons used by their own government”. So, you neighbours, military allies and/or business partners can have_ and probably do have_ costumes you strongly disapprove. Sharitarns accept that sort of thing far better than we usually do. To them there is nothing to be fixed or solved in situations like that.

SOLUTIONS FOR WHAT CAN (and must) BE SOLVED

I begun with that popular expression for more than one reason. I wanted to give you a panoramic view of law and costume, and mention how central is for the people here the personal defence. To the point where they cannot have someone else talking for them in a court of law, but must talk for themselves.
The same expression serves for me to tell you that magic is the opposite of lawyers in some sense. Lawyers, if that mean comment is to be trusted, would be useless if lawyers didn’t existed. Since lawyers do exist you must get your self one to not be a victim of other people’s advocates, but that’s all they are good for.
Magic on the other hand can solve barely any problem you can think about. Particularly in the field of health. Magic can solve any health problem not caused by magic, it is. Magical problems, are harder to solve.
A lot of people don’t have easy access to magic healing, even in cities like Lutianen where there is a Mage University with mentors of Healing Magic Way. Sigraxes are expensive. Mage Caste will provide service for other castes, that demand help for official channels. However, that service has costs and is a delicate matter to decide if demand it is the best course of action in each case.
If you are a well respected member of peasant caste who lost a leg under a wagon, your caste council will likely prioritise to get you another leg. Assuming you are not too old. If you are a well respected Scholar Caste on the other hand, your caste brothers may argue that you don’t really need a leg. You can always pay a sigrax for the spells, but replace a lost limb is not a trivial task for a healer sigrax; will take time, and cost you accordingly.
It you don’t have healers in your city, or your health problems falls beyond what they can solve (what almost necessarily means there is something magical in its origin) you can travel to the solution or try to bring the solution to you. First is usually more dangerous than expensive, second more expensive and less dangerous. However, in any case you will need help of others. Is not the sort of thing your caste will do for you, usually, but the sort of thing friends offer themselves to do if they can.
One thing is important to have in mind: not matter the circumstances. No one can demand spells from a mage. That’s one of this strong taboos all cultures have, anywhere in the Multiverse. Some taboos make more sense than others, and I never understood the reason for that one. Still, it is essential around here. Do not even try to violate it. You can press a sigrax for spells sometimes, but a mage never.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

Goes without saying that Healing magic is the most obvious Magical Way to look for solutions when your problem is have lost a leg, or any other part of your body. But it is not the only alternative. A blind alchemist may solve his problem replacing his sight with a magic ring or a tattoo enchanted with Divination spells. Is not “see” in literal sense, but can work just as well. Possibly better, under most circumstances. A person without magic potential awaken would not be able to use this solution, but is possible to make the same spells work with magic potions. Potions like that which affect mundane people are far more expensive than they would be if they had been made for alchemists or Mage Castes, and you will not solve the problem for more than a couple of hours each time. Mind Carver is the tool of choice to solve barely all neurologic problems, and it is know to wash away psychologic traumas faster than waterfalls can wash away dirt from someone’s hair. Problem is that you don’t find many Mind Carvers walking around, is a rare Magic Way.
Necromancers can replace dead organs with undead ones, and as morbid as it sounds the operation results in something far more functional than a prothesis made by a blacksmith. Those are rare spells among necromancers, and the average necromancer would not even try to use them in someone who isn’t at very least an alchemist. Still, there is situations where healers can’t help you but necromancers can (outside those that involve kill you and bring you back as undead). Another way is similar to necromancy in terms of replace lost organs, but better. I will talk about it after cover two more possibilities.
Finally, if your disability has a magic cause then perhaps your first stop should be an Anti-Mage. Those are magic users that follow a Way entirely dedicated to erase magic. Is not likely an anti-mage will make your leg work again, but it may be able to eliminate what is preventing healing spells from heal it.

NON-MAGICAL ALTERNATIVES

There are two big non-magical solutions for disabilities on this world. Not counting artisanal prothesis made of wood and bronze, glasses, that sort of thing. Agoioven permanent armours (perms) and Mibavan symbionts. Neither has to do with magic, or at least they are both capable to work under circumstances where magic does not. Symbionts are perfect solution in almost all cases of a lost limb or organ. Mibavan has developed lineages of animals that can replace any organ and function of human body and grow to the right size to fix in any one. Usually this solution don’t look like human organs, but they do function at least as well. You can enter Xar-Scar with those puppies without fear surprises. And they do not consume much more nutrients than your original organs did. Unfortunately, Mibavan does not sell symbionts. There is one Mibavane who escaped his home city with a few dozen specimens and has been cultivating new products ever since. This man has a shop at Alkavalla, and it is the only place where you will be able to buy symbionts. Agoioven permours are larger, bulkier, less sensible and less elegant. They are not as versatile, and will demand maintenance from time to time. What will force you to travel to Agoioven, since there is no other place where you can have this product fixed. However, is legal to sell permours in Ring City, and you will be under no risk to be assassinated by someone for be a walking violation of their dogmatic laws.
Both symbionts and permours do more and less than just replace the lost organ or function. They are likely to be stronger, and include secondary advantages. Permours have the disadvantage of not provide sensibility of skin, symbionts offer a closer equivalent.
Citizens of Agoioven are able to rebuild brains in a very large extent, and mix it with their armours. However, that is not something you would be able to buy. Is part of the sensible secrets kept in the city, used only for replace the users of their larger guardians and defence towers. Mibavanes have a “technology” able to replace large parts of human brains, and heal extensive traumas. This living gadget happens to be the original masters of the human founders of symbiont city. The specie responsible for develop the symbiont technology in the first place (before end up mutilated and slaves by their human vehicles). Needles to say: they do not sell those symbionts either.

AND FINALLY

Somatic Transmutation is a wild Way of Magic with two very different sides. The core principles are the same, but the applications are so distant from each other that is hard to justify the use of the same expression for both. There is probably different origins as well.
Self-somatic transmutation has a barely dead side. The last wild sigrax who follows it is Riagare of Yellow Lizards, who unifies the Piwag Tribes (the human tribes of East Piwag, I mean). This Way uses spells that transform the body of the sigrax, making it stronger and faster than it could possibly be, permanently. Some traditions use a different application, that consists in shapeshifting temporarily into the shape of beasts: that application is dangerous and far less practical in some senses, but it survive in different barbaric tribes on Main and South Continents.

Hetero Somatic Transmutation

Is the most exotic, and probably the most useful branch of that Way. The tribes whit those sigraxes enjoy a considerable advantage over other human groups.
As suggested by the name HSTs don’t use their spells in themselves, at least not often. Is preferable to have another follower of the Way helping you, and then pay the favour. Basically, the magical Way is a transplant technique. Simply put, the sigrax take an organ (usually of some specie that isn’t yours) and replace your own with it.
Things are fanciest than that, because the organ magically replaced can by significantly different to yours in size and shape. The Somatic Transmutator will change it magically, and shape your body accordingly, connecting the two.
That’s usually done to improve humans who are totally healthy. The sigraxes give to the all members of their tribes the organs of a given animal, usually sacred for that tribe. Could be eyes of nocturnal cats, clows and noses, and ears. Could be low bodies of six legged lizards, gills or wings. Whatever it is, the animal capacities obtained by the magic are far beyond human natural powers.
Like the variant followed by Riagare this sort of magic does not allow fast easy changes. Is possible to reverse transformations to some extent, and change the animal organs for others a few time every year is a practice adopted by some tribes. However, the results are more efficient if the shape is kept and new improvements follow the same base line.
Competent sigraxes are able to mix different animal elements, and obtain a combination that is stronger than the some of the parts. However, in all cases a period of adaptation will be necessary after each transplant.
In some areas of Main Continent is possible to find sigraxes who will sell their services to outsiders.
Unlike the symbionts of Mibavan those bestial prothesis are a product of magical intervention. You are in risk to have complications if someone applies anti-magic in creative ways to your person, or if you choose to move to a Xar-Scar. However, the animal parts are not magical in themselves, and the harmonization if properly made does not need magic to be kept. Therefore the problems should not came immediately, and may even never happen.
Is not impossible to change your human eye by another human eye, or your human leg by another human leg. However, the mage carries more than just the physical body. This transmutation spells also move and reshape the magical body, or dream-shape. Because of that, no healer will be able to make grow back in you the leg you just donated to your friend.
One last aspect of that magical Way, often considered by civilized clients, is change of bodies. Is possible to take a person’s brain and transplant it, caring enough of the magic self to transfer the spirit in the process. That sort of extreme experience is considered an abuse to the Way by most sigraxes, and seriously avoided.
Better to kill a criminal, or banish him, than insult the totems by placing this wicked person in the body of some non-talking cattle.
In any case, the changes produced by this Magical Way only affect the individual. They do not change the descendance. To change the individual in that level is a logical possibility, or so it seems for Earthlings like us. Sigraxes who follow the Way do not say it is possible, or not, but they seem disgusted by the suggestion.

A SENSIBLE BUT, POSSIBLY, NOT OBVIOUS CONSIDERATION

When civilized people look for the services of this kind of wild sigraxes, is more often than not to replace a lost organ. 
To be a human on Sharitarn is somewhat advantageous in many small ways. And the variety of non-human iis from all sorts of Parallel Universes makes possible to mistake a human with some non-human organs magically implanted for a non-human. To minimize the risk of that undesirable confusion civilized humans who implant animal organs in themselves do their best to keep the implants as "exotic" as possible, so they don't look like part of the person.
Brake symmetry is the most important guideline in this area. If you lost your hearing, get yourself the ear canal and the ear of some flying mammal, but only for one side. Leave the other side deaf. Or at very least replace it by the organ of a totally different animal, in an sort of grotesque but beautiful composition that cries out-loud "I wasn't born like that!". 
Merchants Castes are the most likely civilized clients of followers of that Way. They are the ones with money and contacts, who have travel through wild lands as part of their vocation. 
In some cities is even fashionable for merchants to have a flying-lizard eye or the fangs of poison panthers. Once a giving design became usual enough even the rule of avoid symmetry can be ignored: if every other Merchant Caste from your city changes his two legs for legs of Mountain Gorillas people in the region will stop seeing that as a possible sign of non-human origin. Fashion is a powerful thing, mind you! Even on Sharitarn.
Warrior Castes are the second most common clients of Hetero Somatic Transmutators among civilized people. This lot is usually less worried about avoid symmetry, and keep the aesthetic result pleasing. More interested in the purely pragmatic aspects. 
Some centuries ago a wild sigrax moved to a Feudal Domain in the West Side of South Continent, not too far from Micula, and got himself a position as "court wizard" (so to speak). In that generation a considerable percentage of Micula Blue Caste (Scholars) acquired distinctive non-human eyes of nocturnal predators. That just for the sake of reading in the light of stars. 
Punctual cases like that do happen from time to time. This particular fellow did not took pupils, and when he died the Scholars neither replaced him nor acquired the habit of make dangerous journeys North East to the central areas of Main Continent where the Magic Way is relatively less rare. One of this two things could have happened, and that could have started a more meaningful change in culture at Pearl of West. 
Abandoned after the death of that particular individual, the nocturnal eyes became just a curiosity of that generation.