Drawlloween 16

Today's prompt is Bird doctor, and here they are!

Pictured here are the Plague Doctor, and the Plague Doctor Vivisectionist.....

The  lands known as the realm of madness are otherworldly chaotic places. An  ever changing and limitless roiling plane of entropy and horror  indescribably to man. Lands formed from the thoughts of cosmic gods and  alien intelligence, and always changing and shifting to consume one  another or push eachother away, forming and unforming amidst the chaos.  Some areas are less mutable, and have become more stable despite this  chaos, as they are burned into the minds of those whom have died there  or etched into the very cosmic reality of the gods themselves. And none  travel these blasted landscapes of bleak misfortune and twitching horror  than the Plague Doctors.

No one is sure if the  Plague doctors emulate the dress of humans from the time of the bubonic  plague, or if the humans took on their look from some sort of encounter  that took place before the plague. Some scholars believe it was no  accident, and that these doctors had caused the plague in the first  place, along with various other plagues and pandemics that have swept  the world since olden times.

The Plague  Doctor is a strange entity standing anywhere from 6 to 7 feet tall. They  appear as thin, tall men with long black coats and wide brimmed hats.  They wear White bird masks that possess goggle like lenses, and possess  avian, talon tipped claws on their hands and feet, with those on their  feet possessing 3 fingers and 2 thumbs. Their hands possess three claws  and one thumb, and their index claw can stretch and extend to be  extremely long and they walk tapping it along the ground like a walking  stick or cane, and use it to poke at, point to, or touch specimens in an  inquisitive manner. They possess mottled skin that appears like that of  a corpse, with the skin being nigh translucent and the veins popping to  the surface, and they possess small puckered red holes where ears would  be on a human. They are entirely bald and the mask they wear is dug  into their flesh so badly that it makes a muffin top like squish of  their face flesh around the sides, with the edges by the mask red and  irritated as the skin seems to be cut into and infected. A deep and  heavy breathing seems to come from these bird men as they watch  silently. They occasionally reach into their coat and retrieve a bag  that appears to be two small bird hands clasped as a handle, with the  bag itself being made of a fleshy stomach like material, slimy and wet,  riddled with veins and with an opening that appears pink and fleshy.  Connected to the bag is some sort of metal device, and a tube that pumps  a yellowish bile like liquid to and from the bird doctor from beneath  it's coat. The bag occasionally squirms and pulsates.

Stories  of strange bird doctors appearing on the streets in the 1700's were  common, though some tales go as far back as the 1300's. Stories of a  sickness of some sort ravaging a town or city, but most famously the  Black Death. In this time many doctors would don the visage of a bird  man and attempt to aid those whom suffered from the pestilence, however  on occasion a strange doctor would appear to a patient. The doctor would  seem almost inhuman, quiet, and observant as they would often watch a  location at a distance. Unlike with the others, these doctors would only  watch from afar and would rarely approach a home for treatment. They  may be seen prodding at dead rats on the street, or watching quietly  from a dark alleyway, and many times if approached, they would swiftly  turn and disappear into the darkness, vanishing without a trace. On  occasion they would gather in large numbers, standing in groups of 3 or 5  and watching locations, with the number of doctors usually depending on  how many sick were within a group. Though this may continue for days,  or weeks, they would never interact and when one would attempt to force  them away or question them, the doctors would be gone in a flash.  However after some time, they would go. Perhaps while being observed,  they may check a watch, or simply look to the sky and turn into the  night to never be seen again, or they would be found missing one day. In  other cases they would last be seen exiting the home that they had been  watching, late at night, with a decidedly less full bag as they head  off into the dark.

Households observed by these  doctors would never recover. Even mild cases of disease and illness  would grow, they would fester and rot, the men and women living far  beyond what one usually would when consumed by such a disease. Some may  begin to contract other illnesses, the consumption, pox, spanish flu, or  leprosy to name a few. And in many cases unafflicted persons or homes  in the nearby area would also fall victim to such dissease and  affliction, with some surviving for so long infected that they appeared a  rotten, bloated corpse swimming in it's own flesh and pus. Some would  become violent, erratic, and nearly feral, and in many cases people were  killed by someone infected or afflicted, often times stammering and  stuttering about the crows or the birds. They would say that in their  dreams the doctors would stand over them. That they would poke and prod  at them, drain fluids from their bodies and into their strange pouches,  and take notes. They would look at one another and speak in  unintelligible muffled voices. Sometimes they would inject them with a  syringe, and some cases were even reported of the doctor removing it's  mask to reveal something strange beneath. Something hideous and  disgusting that would force feed the creature from it's mouth a slick  and disgusting substance that felt like tadpoles and tasted of rot. And  yet they remained paralyzed. Some still explained that they would be cut  open and their organs painlessly removed, or new organs taken from the  bag and placed inside of them, or even worse pulsating sack like  objects, dripping with amniotic fluid, and they would be placed into a  person before they were closed up with the creature's long finger as if  nothing had happened, leaving no scar. Some people were found to have  far less organs than needed to survive upon autopsy, and some were found  to have a large crow like creature growing inside of them. Corpses  found burst asunder and fed upon with feathers scattered about their  bodies were also found, and infected corpses burned at the pyre would  occasionally have the screaming screech of some bird like thing emanate  from within as it boiled in it's own fluids and tried to break free of  it's hellish prison.

Some would even speak of  the ones called Vivisectionists, which appeared much larger. Hunched and  with long, feathered, crooked necks and backward bent talon legs that  allowed them to stand tall enough to peer into second story windows,  though they usually remained hunched as small as their other  counterparts, though resorting to an almost crawl. These bird doctors  appear usually only at night, and after others have watched and left. It  slides it's finger in the key hole and unlocks the door and silently  enters on it's stilty bird legs, before approaching sleeping creatures  and slicing them open with their claws. There they take several organs  and replace them with new ones from the bag they possess. On occasion  however they will leave other objects or medical equipment within a  creature and strangely enough the creature can survive without the organ  for a short time, though they seem to slowly get sick and die after a  few months. Just like with other Bird doctors, they occasionally implant  small bird creatures into their hosts and scurry away into the night  with the tip of their hat.

Both types of  bird doctor may occasionally speak, though it's usually difficult to  understand them, some speak in perfect english and ask strange cryptic  questions. Though all of them are skittish, they will fight when  pressed, and will do so violently as any bird would. They may vomit  acidic black bile at you after removing their mask, or remove terrible  and fleshy things from their bags if not using various medical tools to  attack. Large ones use their scalpal fingers to rip into foes, and  talons to tear them apart. In times other than the plague, some may be  found near sites of disease or where a disease will be, and many  anomalous cases of strange afflictions have appeared after a Plague  Doctor sighting, such as Mongrel men, nephilim, various unknowable  terrors. It does not always seem to be their doing when something  terrible happens, however they always observe and take note. Many will  watch targets of other monsters or creatures for a while before that  creature is killed, and will leave before the entity arrives. Those whom  have traversed the realm of madness may have spotted these doctors  watching from afar silently and without approach. However once they left  they would be hunted relentlessly by the hunter in the pit, a strangely  shaped creature littered with dead bodies. They have a seemingly  symbiotic relationship with this hunter and seem to collect spoils left  behind by it....

No one knows their true  origin, though some believe they were once people, afflicted by some  strange disease in search of a cure. Hospital like bases can be found in  the realm of madness where they seem to reside in small societies, ever  researching strange topics in unintelligible languages. It is within  these homes that they are the most violent and defensive, and in fact  other types of Bird seem to appear in these areas....

In the nests of the Plague Doctors exist Plague Nurses and Breeders...

Plague  Nurses, better known as Lucka, Lutzelfrau, or Dark Luz are mysterious  female plague doctor creatures. They share the appearance of being bird  like with arms and legs like that of a bird, however they tend to  possess more thick, fecund bodies and wear white cloaks with very long  hoods. Their masks are more conical and they have no goggles, but black  pits where eyes would be which occasional glints of actual eyes can be  seen beneath.

Lucka are known  for their ability with spellcasting. Most Plague doctors possess the  ability to cast various spells based on the humours, however the Lucka  are much more adept at not only that, but other types of magic as well.  They waddle about, tending to the hospitals and to the creatures that  the Plague Doctors drag home, and they also take care of the breeders.  The Lucka are less active than the plague doctors, however they will  still vivisect creatures when needed, and will cut them open to remove  and replace objects and organs as necessary. The Lucka are tasked with  healing and providing comfort for the creatures brought back, and they  can afflict terrible diseases upon creatures by making affectionate  actions toward them, and will often lull creatures into a false sense of  security or almost hypnosis with their presence, and their occasional  quiet bird like singing mixed with the voice of a human woman. Lucka are  also known for using their strange beak mask to drink from creatures  while they sleep, puncturing them with a single pointed syringe like  needle that extends from the tip.

Lucka  have also taken on a position as being a creature of the advent in some  places, being recognized as a form of "Dark Luz" or a dark form of St.  Lucia in Czech areas. The mask is worn on St. Lucia day on December  13th, the day in which St. Lucia refused to wed nd was sentenced to go  to a brothel and become a prostitute and had her throat slit for  refusing. People dressed as Luckas will carry candles and walk around  homes to see through people's windows and would bang on doors and  threaten "I'm coming, coming to sip the night away". It is unknown how  these two came to correlate to one another, though it's obvious that  they are at least somewhat knowledgeable of the Lucka and what they can  do, however their correlation to the Saint and other historical  information are relatively unknown.

Lucka  will sometimes lay egg sacks and birth humanoid looking bird creatures  that will grow into a full animal, and often times this is why Lucka  tend to be rather pudgy and round, being pregnant with a child. However  the ones most known for carrying children are the Plague Breeders...

Plague  Breeders are massive bulbous things, bloated with various amniotic  sacks pushing through their translucent skin. These sacks seem to grow  on them like tumors and grow smaller bird creatures within. Their  appearance is that of a bird like thing wearing tattered and stretched  humanoid flesh with a beak emerging from the human mouth and goggle like  eyes emerging from the sockets. It's believed that some humans may  become Plague Breeders when brought back to the hospitals of the plague  doctors as one of their various experiments, and that it is the only  true way that they propagate their species, but it may be likely that  they are created to carry the young when the nurses are unable to do so  until there comes a time when a nurse can accept a child into herself.  Even so, the Breeders seem to only be carriers and cannot birth these  young themselves. As such the Plague Nurses will take the young and  implant them within other hosts, or grant them to the doctors to take  and implant into other creatures to birth them. They do not care for  their young, but they seem to be born with an innate knowledge of their  kind and their past as a sort of genetic memory. Even so they are used  in experiments quite often and the young are implanted into creatures or  places where they may undergo strange mutations or be killed simply in  the name of experimentation.

Some  Breeders are so bogged down with child filled tumors that they are  immobilized and the tumors rupture freeing yolk and dead young for the  Plague doctors to consume or to use in future experimentation...

There  may be other types of Plague doctor or other related creatures, but  that information is currently unknown. It is believed that the Corvid  may be related in some way.