Trigger Warning

This character deals with:

• Mentions of war
• Mentions of gore
• Mentions of harassment

Personality

Cynical is the first word that comes to mind, but Wynn prefers realistic. Sure, she has dreams and ambitions, but she understands nothing can be achieved without lots of work—or calling in favors (gaining which is work, too). She's a dry talker, with a deadpan sense of humor, and anyone who's not higher than her in social hierarchy knows her tongue can be sharp. She can keep a secret, too: even if the fact of her bastardy is old news in Caravista, it remains mostly unknown in the capital (so far)—a feat of great work.

Wynn's much fun in good company, and to some her having any company at all comes as a surprise, given her tendency to keep to herself and how she doesn't come off as a people person. Said company is mainly nurses, some doctors, and guards, but her closest circle is a group of noble bastards, so-called Jacks-in-the-palace. And no, the silly reference to the wind-up kids' toy was not her idea nor to her liking. She likes the goofs, and damn does Wynn make for a good friend: loyal, protective, self-sacrificing and quick to help.

Another word that comes to mind is professional. Everything must be in its own place, and protocol must be followed to the bloody (in the most literal definition) letter. There's a reason you don't transfuse animal blood to humans, there's a reason you don't look into a cannon to check the charge, there's a reason you disinfect scalpels before using them again. Anxious, too, for those same reasons: if the work isn't done well, people die. If you forget the rules, people die. If you misplace medicine, people die. If you're late, people die. If you make a mistake, no matter how small it is, people die, and that death will be long and painful unless you take it into your own hands.

It might be a merit to her character, or it might be a personal flaw, but Wynfried has been described being as vengeful as a wraith. The only time you break protocol—small things, like limiting someone's painkillers, or missing a vein multiple times while giving injections, or accidentally giving them diuretics instead antipyretics—is when they've seriously pissed you off. Not befitting of a doctor, you say? It wasn't befitting of a patient to try and paw at her behind, either.

Appearance

Wynn is 5'8", and hard boots give her another half to an inch. Her brown hair is usually put away in a small round bun under her hood, or a ponytail on a study/non-shift day. Having a lean constitution doesn't stop Wynn from trying to keep a bit of muscle: trying to hold down someone who's bigger than you and thinks they're dying is one hell of a feat of strength, even if you have two pairs of hands helping you out, and she's not willing to relive that again.

She's pale from spending most of her time indoors, either working or studying. It seems like the only times you see her outside is accompanying a recovering patient on a prescribed walk when none of the nurses are available, or when Wynn has some work to do elsewhere, or when visiting the stables.

Wynfried wears attire most typical for Nilfgaardian physicians: long, heavy black gowns with puffy sleeves, a white undershirt, navy leggings, a dark brown ankle-length leather cape with a hood worn outdoors more than indoors. For a more parade occasion she has a long black overshirt with bleak yellow vertical stripes, but luckily (as she has recently figured) she doesn't meet Their Brightnesses often. Wynn wears knee-high black boots and elbow-length white gloves, all leather, more so because her limbs get stupidly cold these last few years, and those gloves seem a size too small, but she keeps saying she's alright or needs to keep the bodily fluids away or whatever other reason.

She doesn't carry her beak—the insulated crow-shaped mask—around on her neck or on her forehead like many do, keeping it either folded under her cape or, rarely, in the ward. Sometimes, closer to the evening or after a long shift or when going out with the Jacks, Wynn can be caught with a cane in hand. It's wooden and worn out, and it's obvious that the bird-shaped handle had been lacquered many times.

History

Wynfried is the firstborn to Count of Caravista, or was believed to be for less than a year, right until her eye color finally set in, and the blue-eyed parents suddenly had some talking to do about their brown-eyed offspring. Her mother did not hide her affair, a single drunken stumble to the side caused by the then existing rift in their marriage. Wynn's father, a seasoned notary not without sin, reacted not with a burning anger but with a cold mindfulness: so at barely one year of age, his presumed firstborn was cut out of the inheritance. Not left in the woods or thrown out of a window, at least, and she was still left with her mother's maiden name, and a pension as long as her mother lives, and an education befitting a noble maiden.

But mother's attention spread thinner with younger siblings and age, and soon enough Wynn was her always-second-favorite. Father—always “father” or “yessir”, never “dad”, just as she is always “Wynn” or “child”, never “daughter”—grew to like her, but that was it: no more, no less. The most generous things he's done for his bastard daughter were teaching her to shoot, skin, and gut game when she barely turned nine, and later paying for her medical education. The one person whose clear fondness for Wynn remains unwavering is her Uncle Morteisen—doctor and professor partial to the Imperial Academy's faculty, and the sole master of the morgue and Gross Practice, as he called it,—who picked up on her interest in animal innards after one family hunt and turned it into a steadfast love for medicine, artful sutures, names upon names of chemicals. Wynn became his charge at age ten; Uncle Mort stayed in their home, the two of them hardly ever leaving the library unless in search of subjects, or he'd drag her to the Academy for months at a time as he lectured (father sighed, waved a hand, gave some money for the stay), the young girl's presence officially excused as bring-me-that, write-that-down service work fit for a bastard cousin for years.

When the Emperor marched on the North for the second time, Uncle Mort went as a medic—and Wynn, age fifteen, followed suit as protege, obviously and stupidly. For those long months, they kept quieter and closer than usual for a chatterbox and his prideful pupil; Wynn managed to slip and call him “father” twice by accident (and once—not, but that's not of current topic). To their luck and another's demise, there's been more than enough dead and wounded for Uncle Mort to use as exercise during their time in Angren. It's been good teaching—and that's the most Wynn speaks of it. The soon following Quickie War saw them, too: saw and scratched and beat and almost killed, but among all the gore and fear and sorrow—named. During a conflict on Wesperley bridge, Wynn, being seventeen years of age (and no wiser than at fifteen, but certainly taller, a tad stronger, and bolder than brass), dove into the water to drag a drowning wounded soldier out. Uncle Mort joined, and together they helped eleven men out of the water. Seven lived to tell the tale of that small feat, and thus Wynn and Mort were given the nickname—half jokingly, but filled with gratitude—von Wesperley; and if Uncle was of noble enough stature to not need to go by a nickname, Wynfried calls herself von Wesperley with immense pride. The march to Dol Blathanna after that is a blur, and not one Wynn favors talking about.

She had a good relationship with most folk under her care during the Quickie War, if not with other medics. One of the men she helped save that day, one her Uncle assured her wouldn't survive—was a noble's young son, and later rose to some military prominence, or so he calls it. What's important is that he got Wynn a place in the court medical ward—with utmost secrecy and some help of her Uncle's, which she is not willing to open up about. After all, it makes sense as a result of good work, even if she still has way, way more to learn. And the guy owed her one, even if she didn't hold it over his head. Sure didn't.

Abilities

Wynn is a skilled medic, especially for her age, and has shown herself to be an adept surgeon, so she's been finding the work of treating soldiers with a hangover after soldiers with a cold rightfully discontenting. While she does believe the advice of “sow red to red, blue to blue, yellow to yellow” can be of some benefit (to some grossly underskilled amateurs), anatomy goes far, far beyond that, and she is keenly aware of it. In most cases, the human body is either a tool to use or abuse, or a subject of study or treatment; on rarer occasion—it is a burden, if not an enemy. For some unlucky boneheads (she may not believe an autopsy of them will show a clear lack of grey matter inside the cranium, but perhaps certain signs of it's misuse, if any use occurred at all), the body may even become a classroom exhibit way before signs of life stop showing—after all, how can a war hardened young medic know how to relieve pain without knowing how to inflict it?

Her father's hunting lessons haven't been fruitless, either. Wynn is a decent shot with a bow, and a sure hand with a skinning knife. On the other hand, she knows which way to hold a sword and that you need to swing it, but her fencing skills pretty much end at that—she's better off hitting people where it hurts than hitting strong enough for anything to hurt.

She's good with animals, especially horses and dogs, mainly in a veterinarian capacity, since choice of subjects in Caravista was exceedingly poor. That (or, more likely, her willingness to sneak some medicine out to the stables) has gained her some friends among the grooms and guards. Who wouldn't like the person who helped their beloved pet or steed?