The Cladery Heir

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"Most people think that the hard part of surgery is finding what's wrong and taking it out, but any fool could do that. A ship's cook with a cleaver can have that part of the job. The hard part is cutting so you can sew it all back up again afterwards."[1]

The Cladery Heir is a surgeon of unusual parentage.

Emergency Amputation[edit | edit source]

"I specialize in amputations. It's easy to acquire unwanted appendages at zee."[2]

The Cladery Heir is a skilled surgeon who specializes in amputation.[3] By cutting out bits of skin or flesh,[4][5] or sometimes a whole toe or earlobe,[6][7] she can excise a person's worst impulses and desires.[4] These include tendencies towards adultery,[4] thoughts of vengeful murder,[6] or even cravings for sunlight.[5] Most patients suffer no ill effects afterwards barring some scars,[4][8] and the Heir likes to preserve the body parts she extracts as souvenirs.[9] The Heir uses special knives and tools for her work,[10] and her skills also work on cadavers[11] and non-human creatures.[12][13] However, it is suggested that her operations are never completely effective.[14]

The Cladery Heir has a roguish and lackadaisical personality,[15][16] and believes that the real challenge of surgery is operating carefully enough so that her patient may be closed up again.[17] Her bedside manner is brisk and blunt,[18] but she genuinely cares for her clients[19][20] and refuses to perform dangerous operations.[21] Though her practice focuses on excising obsessions, she herself is terrified of them; she often tries to appear dispassionate,[22] and is willing to operate on herself to remove sentiments that trouble her.[7][23]

A Matter of Parentage[edit | edit source]

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"My mother was the child of a surgeon in the First City. You might say that knifework runs in the family. Then there are the rumours about my father. She would deny there's any truth in those."[24]

"It doesn't matter to me. Or... it shouldn't matter to me. The Cladery Heart is all I have of my mother, but I learned not to need her."[25]

A ship made from an ancient heart.
The Cladery Heart

The Cladery Heir is a member of the House of the Knife,[26] a family that dates back to the First City.[27] Her mother, the Surgeon's Child,[28] was the daughter of a First City surgeon[27] who passed her skills, as well as her city's ancient language,[29] down to her Heir.[30][31] Thousands of years ago, the Surgeon's Child amputated the Echo Bazaar's "cladent lobe" to remove its urge to wander.[32] She was accidentally exposed to the Bazaar's ichor in the process, which "changed her" and granted her an extremely long lifespan;[32] in fact, she was over three thousand years old when she bore her daughter.[33] The Surgeon's Child fashioned the cladent lobe into a living, autonomous ship called the Cladery Heart, but eventually lost track of its whereabouts.[34]

A knife.
Under the knife.

The Cladery Heir believes her father is none other than Mr Iron, one of the Masters of the Bazaar,[35] though her mother dismissed the idea and claimed Iron was only her sponsor.[36][37] The Heir firmly believes that her mother would never settle for an ordinary partner,[38] but it turns out she ultimately did: the Heir's father is a destitute tomb-colonist who was once an engineer.[39] His voice was excised by the Surgeon's Child in order to quell his desire and ability to look for their daughter,[40] but the operation was unsuccessful, and he still wishes to know how the Heir is faring.[41]

At some point, the Cladery Heir lost her mother and had to learn to live without her, though it is not stated whether her mother is deceased or the two simply separated.[42] The Heir now seeks to locate the Cladery Heart and continue her mother's legacy,[42][43] but she is conflicted by this desire due to her distaste for passion and obsession.[44]

Scientific Inspirations[edit | edit source]

A clade is a taxonomic term for a group of organisms that evolved continuously from a common ancestor. The term derives from the Ancient Greek word for "branch," and is the most likely origin of the name of the Echo Bazaar's cladent lobe. The lobe, in turn, originated the name "Cladery."

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Increase your Hearts, Sunless Sea
  2. ↑ Consider a specialist surgeon, Sunless Sea
  3. ↑ Consider a specialist surgeon, Sunless Sea "I specialise in amputations."
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Explore her Surgery, Sunless Sea "Here's the patch of skin from the palm of a woman's hand. I took it from her in order to cure her of the urge to adultery. Now she wears gloves, but she's kept her marriage."
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Have the Cladery Heir perform an urgent intervention, Sunless Sea "A [...] zailor is trying to gain passage to the Surface. He must stop desiring it. [...] The Cladery Heir extracts something from the zailor. It gleams with its own light. [...] The zailor curses you [...] "Now there's nothing but zailing in the dark [...]"
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Give the Cladery Heir a Prisoner to cut open, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir comes out of the surgery with an earlobe. The prisoner goes back to their cell, [...] not a day [...] they haven't thought of killing a certain person," says the Heir. "Now they don't have to think of it any more.""
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Push her about meeting her father, Sunless Sea "[...] she goes into her operating room with a scalpel and a mirror. [...] she has her small toe preserved in a whiskey jar, and a happy indifference to the question of her parentage."
  8. ↑ Refer a patient to the Cladery Heir, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir offers her a consultation. Afterward, the patient has a curious crescent scar on her forehead, [...] "I can wear a hat. It's no matter." She buries the pelts with honours, and buys a ticket for the next ship back to London."
  9. ↑ Explore her Surgery, Sunless Sea "On her shelf she keeps things preserved in alcohol or packed in oil. Things she cut from patients. [...] "These are souvenirs," she says."
  10. ↑ Employ the Cladery Heir, Sunless Sea "She comes with a bag full of knives and her own personal sharpening stone. "Don't touch these. Don't let anyone else touch them.""
  11. ↑ Let her have her experiment, Sunless Sea "She has expressed an interest in experimenting with the content of a Long-Box."
  12. ↑ Increase your Hearts, Sunless Sea "And she demonstrates on a shark fin, leaving it in a better condition than it started."
  13. ↑ Let the Cladery Heir have a Blemmigan, Sunless Sea "She has expressed interest in discovering how it works. Why does it propagate? Where is its obsession located? [...] She works [...] the blemmigan is gone and she has a vial [...] cosmogone powder. "I would advise against eating any of this, unless you fancy a very altered state of mind.""
  14. ↑ A bandaged funger, Sunless Sea "Her mother cut my voice. Hoped to fix it so I wouldn't be able to look for my daughter. So I wouldn't want to." He wheezes. "Didn't work. Operations never... completely effective. Need to know my daughter's well."
  15. ↑ Invite her to dine with you, Sunless Sea "[...] You might say that knifework runs in the family." There is a wicked quirking smile at the corner of her mouth."
  16. ↑ Give the Cladery Heir a Prisoner to cut open, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir emerges from her surgery in a curiously light mood. The body is wrapped [...] for disposal. "This is happier than living would have been." [...] "The prisoner would have died in a month or two. The difference is, I took out the pain.""
  17. ↑ Increase your Hearts, Sunless Sea "Most people think that the hard part of surgery is finding what's wrong and taking it out, but any fool could do that. [...] The hard part is cutting so you can sew it all back up again afterwards."
  18. ↑ Have the Cladery Heir remove the First Mate's unhealthy need for Aigul, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir takes the First Mate aside. She is brisk. Visiting the sorrows of Aigul is an indulgence. [...] Can they not see this? Do they not understand? While she speaks, she is sharpening a blade."
  19. ↑ Give the Cladery Heir a Prisoner to cut open, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir emerges from her surgery in a depressed mood. The body is wrapped in linen for disposal. "There was nothing wrong with the technique," she tells you. "If they'd been willing, it might have cured them of certain ailments... but they fought back under the knife. And what I extracted wouldn't be fit to stuff a sausage.""
  20. ↑ Volunteer for your own Cladery Operation, Sunless Sea "She asks what you want removed. Then she makes you consent three times to having it taken away."
  21. ↑ Ask her help with the Sigil-Ridden Navigator, Sunless Sea "A grim headshake [...] The sigil is an outside power," she says. "And it's consumed too much of him. If I cut it out, there would be nothing left."
  22. ↑ Seek the Cladery Heart among the abandoned hulls, Sunless Sea "The Cladery Heir [...] moves slowly, so that she doesn't look too eager. "We probably won't find her here," the Heir says. "I don't expect to. I don't believe in clinging to specific hopes and expectations of that kind; it's just the sort of obsession that ruins lives, just the kind of thing I'm always having to repair..." [...] "It doesn't matter," [...] "I don't mind." [...]"
  23. ↑ Where is the Cladery Heart now?, Sunless Sea ""I avoid obsessions, myself. But I know one of these days I'll have to operate on myself. Remove some desire that has gotten too unwieldy.""
  24. ↑ Invite her to dine with you, Sunless Sea
  25. ↑ Keep the Cladery Heart, Sunless Sea
  26. ↑ The Surgeon's Child, Fallen London "[...] the Fellow sold the majority of his possessions in order to fund expeditions – in search of 'the Heart, the chiefest treasure of the House of the Knife'."
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Invite her to dine with you, Sunless Sea "My mother was the child of a surgeon in the First City. You might say that knifework runs in the family."
  28. ↑ The Surgeon's Child, Fallen London "The Heart was a – fragment? An organ? A lobe? – of the Bazaar, extracted by the Surgeon's Child."
  29. ↑ Bring it back to health, Sunless Sea "She speaks to it in the native tongue of the First City, a language cluttered with velar stops."
  30. ↑ Invite her to dine with you, Sunless Sea "Perhaps she has missed a calling as a chef? [...] She denies it. "My mother was the child of a surgeon in the First City. You might say that knifework runs in the family.""
  31. ↑ Mr Iron? Truly?, Sunless Sea "But I have not met anyone who shares my particular skills. And I know my mother. I cannot see her in any ordinary liaison with an ordinary man [...]"
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Explore her Surgery, Sunless Sea "Did you know my mother operated on the Bazaar itself? She cut away its cladent lobe so that it would be at peace and not have to wander on and on. But the operation changed her. She got some of the ichor on her skin."
  33. ↑ Mr Iron? Truly?, Sunless Sea "And I know my mother. [...] She was in her third millennium when she bore me."
  34. ↑ What happened to the cladent lobe?, Sunless Sea "Mother experimented on the lobe, [...] It wanted to be on the move, however, and in the end she put it on a ship, or built a ship around it: the Cladery Heart. But it got away from her."
  35. ↑ Her father...?, Sunless Sea "Perhaps you can get her to say more about her father. [...] "I get my proficiency with metal from both sides of the family," [...] "Mother was a favourite with Mr Iron. [...]"
  36. ↑ Invite her to dine with you, Sunless Sea "My mother was the child of a surgeon in the First City. [...] there are the rumours about my father. She would deny there's any truth in those."
  37. ↑ Her father...?, Sunless Sea "Mother was a favourite with Mr Iron. She says that they only worked together, that Mr Iron sponsored her work and provided her with tools."
  38. ↑ Mr Iron? Truly?, Sunless Sea "[...] I have not met anyone who shares my particular skills. And I know my mother. I cannot see her in any ordinary liaison with an ordinary man, much less a husband."
  39. ↑ Someone trying to get your attention, Sunless Sea "In exchange for the simplest news, he explains himself: "I'm her father," he says. "Ordinary engineer. Not the sort of parent she would want.""
  40. ↑ Someone trying to get your attention, Sunless Sea ""Don't tell her you met me," he says, in a hoarse rasp. "Her mother cut my voice. Hoped to fix it so I wouldn't be able to look for my daughter. So I wouldn't want to.""
  41. ↑ Someone trying to get your attention, Sunless Sea "Didn't work. Operations never... completely effective. Need to know my daughter's well. Happy. Finding enough patients. Getting enough to eat and so forth."
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 Keep the Cladery Heart, Sunless Sea ""It doesn't matter to me," [...] Then she says, "Or... it shouldn't matter to me. The Cladery Heart is all I have of my mother, but I learned not to need her. [...]"
  43. ↑ Raise the subject of the Cladery Heart, Sunless Sea ""It's a unique ship, of course. I wouldn't want to recommend any foolish efforts to find her, but if she's there for the taking..." The Cladery Heir shrugs. "My mother always liked a challenge.""
  44. ↑ Where is the Cladery Heart now?, Sunless Sea "[...] it was a most unusual ship. Do I want it back? I try not to want anything too much. But if you cared to travel in that direction, I could hardly stop you. [...] I avoid obsessions, myself. But I know one of these days I'll have to operate on myself. Remove some desire that has gotten too unwieldy."
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