Kuuvel (Head Surgeon)

The Surgeon's wise-cracking friend.

Physical Characteristics

Wears the effects of aging very lightly. Also a medical jacket.

Biography

The "irredeemably" jocular male the Surgeon survived school and a painful residency with. Their Surgeon-Master's favorite saying was 'Check for lividity.'

He has no problems talking to females as if they're capable of thought (he knew one who belonged to the male in charge of the capital system's defenses that he consulted for help).

Apparently he and the Surgeon have been done with medical school and their residency for at least twenty years.

He was Head Surgeon on the throneworld's main space station, attending to the males who oversaw system security, when the Surgeon enlisted his aid against the Usurper.

He reported to the Surgeon about the strange behavior of the ship- and station-based males: sleep problems, reporting each other for paranoia, and random outbreaks of violence. The Surgeon explained the results of Jahir's activities as alien retribution.

Using the Usurper's disregard for Outside status, Kuuvel and the Surgeon suborned the males who maintained the sensor platforms ringing the throneworld system, and arranged for the military to receive falsified information from the platforms. They also arranged for the Emperor to receive the true data, using their Surgeon-Master's favorite word as a passcode. Later, the Surgeon asked Kuuvel to sabotage the mobile system defense platforms, which he arranged by contacting a female belonging to the male in charge of the system defenses.

When Kuuvel felt that things were "getting far too hot overhead", he got leave to search for a female and joined his colleague in the palace. At that point, the Emperor was on his way, and Kuuvel felt that they'd "left enough holes in the system's defenses" that it'd explode when the fighting started.

Kuuvel and the Surgeon were in the palace looking for where they could do the most good when they met the crew of the UAV Silhouette and then got the call from the Emperor to treat Jahir. Rioting was beginning in the capital city, and the space battle was not yet over, when Lisinthir went for a last check on Jahir in the gel tank, and Kuuvel and the Surgeon told him about the Eldritch nanotech, and then Kuuvel opted to join Lisinthir on his mission to the Alliance.

Last seen, Kuuvel was in the Silhoutte's clinic, in charge of identifying any Chatcaavan bodies that the ship's crew found in the wreckage after the Battle of Selnor.

When Lisinthir returned to the Throneworld and Worldlord-Second fought for his suddenly-provisional title, the Surgeon wanted to observe Deputy-East/Hand's actions in the palace clinic so that he could report the details faithfully to his colleague. This implies that Kuuvel was not in the palace at that time.

Quotes

• "Maybe the way we've organized society is wrong. Maybe everyone should be Outside, and violence should be punished no matter who perpetrates it. Or maybe there's some better way and we just don't know it yet. But absent someone to show us that better way... we have to respond to people who want to tear down what protections exist for people who rely on them. I couldn't see that happen and not do something about it."

• "So, Valedictorian, Surgeon to Psychopaths, and Sometime Friend... can you make up a spare bed for me because I need one after helping you foment a rebellion."

• "Oh, I always leave a foreign object in a body. It’s a habit."

Trivia

• calls the Surgeon 'O Disgruntled One' and 'Valedictorian' and 'Stiffneck'
• swears by the Dying Air; 'Air and Breath'
• wiggles his brow ridges because physical comedy is best comedy
• at the time of the palace coup (the Chatcaavan one), did not know Universal
• never ceases the wisecracks
• he jokes that he always leaves a rubber body part in people to 'ensure that they come back'