Dr. E. Livest
Ask anyone in the wasteland about Dr. E. Livest and you will get the same answer before anything else: "an asshole." It is not said with malice, exactly. More with the resigned tone of someone who once asked a perfectly reasonable question about death and got a pun in response. Livest has a habit of laughing at serious inquiries, not because the questions are foolish but because the answers are frequently so terrible that humor is the only rational defense. The puns are relentless. The laughter comes at the worst possible moments. The reputation is earned.
Livest is a Lascarian from Old York, where the prevailing wisdom for their kind has always been to keep your head down, stay quiet, and avoid drawing attention. Livest could not manage it. The Mortis Amaranthine pulled at them the way gravity pulls at water: constant, indifferent to resistance, impossible to negotiate with. They became a Necrologist, and then they became a problem. Their curiosity was not the careful, measured sort. It was the kind that builds biological transmitters capable of sending communication through death itself, that fashions items from flesh and sinew designed to function within the Mortis, that attempts experimental construction inside a space most practitioners barely dare to enter.
That work brought Livest to the Sunless Garden, and then further, into the Beyond. What they found there, or what found them, is not something Livest discusses in any useful detail. What is known is that they did not fully understand the repercussions of interacting with the Beyond before they did it. Whether they understand them now is an open question. Some of the Necrologists who have worked alongside Livest say there is something different about them since the return, something in the way they pause before certain experiments, or the way the laughter occasionally stops mid-breath before starting again with a slightly different quality.
The wasteland has no shortage of people who study the dead. It has very few who build new things out of death's own architecture and laugh while doing it. Livest is one of those few, and the settlements that have benefited from their transmitters and tools tend to overlook the personality in favor of the results. The ones that have not yet needed Livest's work simply know them by reputation: the Lascarian Necrologist from Old York who went too deep, came back too strange, and cannot stop making puns about it.
Livest is a Lascarian from Old York, where the prevailing wisdom for their kind has always been to keep your head down, stay quiet, and avoid drawing attention. Livest could not manage it. The Mortis Amaranthine pulled at them the way gravity pulls at water: constant, indifferent to resistance, impossible to negotiate with. They became a Necrologist, and then they became a problem. Their curiosity was not the careful, measured sort. It was the kind that builds biological transmitters capable of sending communication through death itself, that fashions items from flesh and sinew designed to function within the Mortis, that attempts experimental construction inside a space most practitioners barely dare to enter.
That work brought Livest to the Sunless Garden, and then further, into the Beyond. What they found there, or what found them, is not something Livest discusses in any useful detail. What is known is that they did not fully understand the repercussions of interacting with the Beyond before they did it. Whether they understand them now is an open question. Some of the Necrologists who have worked alongside Livest say there is something different about them since the return, something in the way they pause before certain experiments, or the way the laughter occasionally stops mid-breath before starting again with a slightly different quality.
The wasteland has no shortage of people who study the dead. It has very few who build new things out of death's own architecture and laugh while doing it. Livest is one of those few, and the settlements that have benefited from their transmitters and tools tend to overlook the personality in favor of the results. The ones that have not yet needed Livest's work simply know them by reputation: the Lascarian Necrologist from Old York who went too deep, came back too strange, and cannot stop making puns about it.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Dr. E. Livest grew up as a Lascarian in Old York, where the social expectation was to keep a low profile. Livest could not suppress the drive to learn about the Mortis Amaranthine. They claimed to study medicine while secretly cultivating their abilities, eventually becoming a Necrologist whose innovative and dangerous work earned a reputation across the wasteland.
Livest is known for engineering biological transmitters for communication through death, creating flesh-and-sinew items useful within the Mortis, and performing experimental construction within the Mortis itself. They have explored the Sunless Garden and the Beyond, though they did not fully understand the repercussions of interacting with the Beyond until after the fact. Livest uses humor, particularly puns, as a coping mechanism for the horrors of Necrology work. They are widely considered "an asshole," a characterization they have done nothing to dispute.
Livest is known for engineering biological transmitters for communication through death, creating flesh-and-sinew items useful within the Mortis, and performing experimental construction within the Mortis itself. They have explored the Sunless Garden and the Beyond, though they did not fully understand the repercussions of interacting with the Beyond until after the fact. Livest uses humor, particularly puns, as a coping mechanism for the horrors of Necrology work. They are widely considered "an asshole," a characterization they have done nothing to dispute.
Lascarian Necrologist from Old York. Builds impossible things from flesh and death, and laughs about it.
Children
