Waldo’s life changed forever one day, when the village his family was visiting was attacked by a group of Ogres. When the dust settled, and the dead were accounted for, Dillan’s body was among them. Waldo can still remember the way Dillan’s face was split open, his skull cracked down the middle, between his eyes.
After losing her eldest son, Waldo’s mother fell apart. She took to drinking, and would frequently be unable to perform. Waldo was forced to fill in for her, but his assistance was almost worse than if his father went out alone. To remedy this, Waldo took to medicine, and taught himself almost everything regarding the profession. He could occasionally detoxify his mother enough to perform, but her heart was still so broken that she was nearly as bad as Waldo anyway.
In the end, Waldo walked away from that part of his life. He left a note in their tent, explaining that he was leaving because it had become too hard to live that way, not that he had ever been good at it anyway, and he was going to try to become a legitimate doctor.
Many years later, Waldo had started a family of his own, with a wife named Shona and a daughter named Corrina. He had started his own business as a professional doctor, which was moderately successful. Shona made extra money managing the front half of the building as an inn. They lived very comfortably, and were able to pay for Corrina to have a minor education.
It was horrifically ironic that Shona got fatally ill when Corrina was still only six. Waldo employed all of his knowledge and reached out to all of his professional contacts for help, but in the end, nothing could save her. One contact did hesitantly mention the name of someone who might help, and Waldo clung to this one lead.
In the slums of the city lived a man known only as The Good Doctor, though this name was used only by those with the worst of intentions, leaving a sinister aftertaste to the descriptor of “Good”. Desperate for a cure, Waldo went to see this man. The Good Doctor told Waldo that the only way to save his wife was to let her die. Only then would the illness leave her, and only then could she be “brought back”. He spoke mostly in innuendos, ambiguities, and implications, but Waldo had heard enough to leave The Good Doctor’s “office” in horror and disgust.
It was a peaceful afternoon when Shona passed away. Waldo had let her say her final words before inducing sleep so she would pass tranquilly. Corrina watched it happen; Waldo believed it would help her accept and understand better. Waldo can still remember how when Shona’s last breath left her lips, Corrina gently kissed her mother’s forehead and whispered “You’re free, now.”
Though she was still young, Corrina worked hard to pick up the slack left by Shona’s death, managing the inn. Waldo wanted her to play, to enjoy being young, but Corrina insisted. A year passed, and Waldo had come to rely on Corrina’s help. The two of them had grown extremely close.
Waldo received a summons one day to bring his services to a nearby town that had nearly burned to the ground. On the King’s coin, the town was being rebuilt, but the local physician had died in the fire, and many citizens had been left badly burned or otherwise injured. Waldo would receive a generous salary for the move – more than compensating for the loss of their inn and regular patients.
Seeing it as a good sign and chance to start over, Waldo and Corrina agreed to accept the summons. Within the week, they had arrived at the town, and Waldo began the arduous process of treating the neglected injuries of dozens of people. For several months, Waldo and Corrina worked in the town, watching it be reborn from the ashes, and they were happy.
One night, Waldo was awoken by the sound of thunder. He went to close the shutters, but realized with a jolt that it wasn’t thunder. The wall before him exploded in a cacophony of wood and stone as a boulder rammed into the side of his house. He hit the ground with ringing ears, and thought one word before he blacked out: Ogres.
The next day, Waldo was pulled from the wreckage of his house – bruised and disoriented, but otherwise remarkably unharmed. The raid that had ensued after Waldo blacked out was a gruesome one. Though it was clear that Waldo had much work to do, the first thing he did once he was back in his senses was search for Corrina. He found her in the street behind his house. He can still remember the way her face had split down the middle, her skull cracked open between her eyes.
Suffice to say, Waldo didn’t help anyone that day. Or the next day. Or the next week. Waldo’s salary had gone into alcohol, and he didn’t know or care much how many days or weeks had passed before he finally left his house. He had kept Corrina’s body and done his best to preserve it while he waited to become drunk enough to make the decision he knew she wouldn’t have wanted him to make.
When he left his house, Corrina’s body was in the trunk he took with him on a carriage back to the city. It was a dark, muddy, rainy afternoon when Waldo stepped out of the carriage outside of The Good Doctor’s office, dragging the trunk through filthy puddles of rainwater and scum.
Still sorrowfully drunk, Waldo banged on the doctor’s door, shouting through the symphony of rain and thunder for him. No one answered. Finally, Waldo picked the lock and forced his way inside. The Good Doctor would help him; whatever it took, he couldn’t lose his daughter, too. Perhaps he was simply away – Waldo would just wait here for him.
His hopeless, drunken thoughts ceased when he found The Good Doctor dead on the floor of the operating room. Dried blood caked the inside of his mouth, and stained his lips and the front of his lab coat. After a moment of hopeless silence, Waldo rolled up his sleeves and began plucking gnarled, sinister-looking books off of their shelves.
“I’ll do it myself. Yes. I can do it myself!” Many of the Good Doctor’s books detailed horrific practices that didn’t help. Some of them contained the secrets of Alchemy. One of them, though, was the book he was looking for.
Corrina’s body was drained of fluids and organs, its skeletal structure was removed and replaced with a system of synthetic supportive material, and its skin was glazed with an Alchemical preservative substance. After many other alchemical processes, Waldo completed the operation by replacing the lost fluids with an alchemical solution containing one pint of his own blood. Corrina’s body had become the vessel for Waldo’s Homunculus.
Waldo awoke the next day with a migraine and very little memory of the night before. As he came to and realized where he was, saw The Good Doctor’s corpse across the room, and the empty trunk beside him, the realization came sinking in. Regret and panic filled the pit of his stomach, and he cursed his own loneliness, wishing he could take it back.
His mutterings and moanings were interrupted when Corrina entered the room, holding a tray of food for breakfast. Only, the creature who stood before him was clearly not Corrina; her beautiful blue eyes had taken on an unnatural electric hue, and her stunning head of long, straight, blonde hair now made a strange, ceaseless rattling sound whenever it moved, almost like the popping of static electricity. Most obtuse of all, though, was the iron band bolted onto her face, starting where her nose used to be, and disappearing up beyond her hair line.
Sobbing, Waldo picked himself up and went to her. His trembling hands held her, working their way over the iron band, through the rattling hair, and beyond. Shame and joy ripped his heart in twain that day as he beheld what he had done. Further interaction proved that Corrina could no longer speak, and she also held no memory of her past life – only an underlying instinctual understanding that she loved Waldo as a daughter. With innocently concerned eyes, Corrina watched Waldo, inches from her face, confused why he was upset.
Waldo remains squatting in the home of The Good Doctor, and eventually adopted his title and profession when funds dried out and questionable customers continued to come calling. Waldo uses most of his profits to fund his now full-blown drinking problem. He continues to buy food for Corrina, who has learned to pretend to eat it, or else Waldo will grow furious, though she doesn’t understand why.
Corrina doesn’t understand why Waldo is constantly sad, nor that the business he’s running is morally disgusting. Corrina’s primary goal in life is to make Waldo’s easier, which occasionally results in her sneaking out to silence a loose-mouthed, would be customer threatening to call the authorities, or making sure Waldo’s medical supplies never run out by keeping inventory of them and using gold from the coffers to go buy more, and almost always preparing Waldo’s extracts for him if need be.
Mainly, Corrina wants to see Waldo happy. She’s gotten to see such a thing on occasion, always on the rare instance that he’s sober. This has made her arrive at the conclusion that alcohol makes Waldo sad. Unfortunately, her instinctual nature prevents her from taking away his alcohol after he scolded her from doing it the first time – and she thought he was going to be happy she had figured it out. This relationship with Waldo and alcohol remains the most confusing of all mysteries to Corrina.
I'm building a Promethean Alchemist with the intention of primarily role playing the Homunculus, and treating the actual Alchemist more as the companion. I'm here looking for help as to ways to improve the Homunculus. I'm going to look into the Improved Homunculi rules, as well as the Construct Modifications rules, so I'm not looking for guidance on that. I'm playing a Human, so I'm going to take the Eye for Talent alternate racial trait; I'm looking for suggestions like this - little ways to improve my companion, even if they take away from the effectiveness of the Alchemist. With the Sympathetic Alchemy feature, the Homunculus can prepare and imbibe all the extracts itself.
I'm also at a bit of a loss as to what the Alchemist could do during combat besides just firing a crossbow. He has no bombs, and his combat Extracts are likely going to go toward the Homunculus. I've added the Chirurgeon archetype because it fits the backstory so well. I know that Preservationist is also a choice, which could give the Alchemist stuff to do in combat, but I'd rather take Chirugeon for the backstory, so please don't try to convince me to. As for out of combat, he's going to take crafting feats, and VMC into Sorcerer for the Impossible Bloodline, making him one of the best crafters ever.
Any advice or guidance would be appreciated!