Wintercreep

The Good Doctor

 * The tormented screams of our patients is truly a lullaby for this good doctor. - Doctor Wintercreep

A Warning
The material contained herein is intended for mature readers ONLY. Even then, I have my reservations about writing this. I find it necessary to warn the reader that the character of Wintercreep is incredibly twisted and evil, suffering from mental instabilities up to and including: schizophrenia, sociopathic tendencies, sadism, and a complete lack of qualms, morals, and ethics.

Herein, I have written some rather disturbing material that discusses some of the insane and twisted actions that Wintercreep conducted in his past. Where possible, I have omitted the gruesome details and descriptions that my conscience will not permit me to put in written form for others to read.

That being said, I feel that I should warn you once again to be 100% certain that you wish to read this material before continuing on. To be completely honest, I myself feel the character of Wintercreep to be absolutely abhorrent to my own moral code and, at times, I find it difficult to roleplay him at all, but I have trouble denying the fact that his is a rather unique story and more or less NEEDS to be told. Don't ask me why. I can't give you a satisfactory answer. My own wife asks me where the whole idea for The Good Doctor came from and I find myself at a loss to give her a response that satisfies either one of us, despite my best efforts at attempting to find said answer.

Considering my high-ethical code and my creative tendencies, I can only assume that Wintercreep is the result of my mind assembling the perfect villian: one that is an affront to everything I believe in.

As such, I AGAIN caution you to be wary of reading this profile. I created the character of Wintercreep and even I am afraid of him. However, if for some reason you wish to roleplay on World of Warcraft with Wintercreep, feel free to message me here and we'll talk. Right now, I'm on a break from playing while my wife and I are in the process of settling in our new home. I hope to be back on WoW again soon and would like very much to return to the mainstream Moon Guard Roleplaying community.

Birth
The Forsaken who has come to be known as the Good Doctor Wintercreep was born twenty-four years before the Second War in the sleepy little hamlet of Pyrewood Village in Silverpine Forest as a human child named "Cranston Wintercrow". His parents were Avisten and Thalia Wintercrow, the village's resident Militia Captain and Physician, respectively.

As happy as the Wintercrows were to have such an adorable bundle of joy in their arms, some people wish they could go back in time and push Thalia down a flight of stairs to keep Cranston from ever existing.

Life
Unlike the other children in Pyrewood and nearby Ambermill, Cranston never enjoyed frolicking and playing out among the woods with his peers. Instead, his attention was focused entirely on the How's and Why's of the world, his insatiable curiosity compelling him to have his face constantly buried in a book or haranguing the travelers who took up temporary residence at the Pyrewood Tavern & Inn for stories of different places and peoples.

At ten years of age, Cranston began assisting his mother at the makeshift infirmary in the Tavern's basement, helping to tend to his father's soldiers who were injured in mishaps with the local wildlife, such as the massive spiders from the nearby mine or the bears and worgs that seemed to be smarter than the average wildlife. The boy seemed to have a natural talent for the Healing Arts and he was subsequently sent away from his home in Pyrewood to study the path of the Holy Light at Northshire Abbey.

Apprenticed to an elderly Cleric, Cranston quickly grasped the essential concepts of The Light and became a full-fledged Priest by the time he was twenty years of age, nearly a full decade ahead of schedule. Following his appointment, Cranston set about touring the Eastern Kingdoms to alleviate suffering and learn new ways of treating disease and injury. Lordaeron, Dalaran, Gilneas, Kul Tiras, Stratholme, Silvermoon, and Alterac are just a few of the many prestigious cities he was honored to visit and learn from.

Returning home, Cranston put his skills to use once again to help out his mother and father, like the good son he was.

Little did anyone know that black clouds were gathering on the horizon.

Descent Into Madness
Five years after his return to Pyrewood, the Second War was in full-swing. The Horde was rampaging through the southern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms, decimating Stormwind and displacing thousands upon thousands of people. With the need for healers increasing a hundred fold each day, it was not long before both Cranston and Thalia were called in to report to the frontlines, being assigned to a support services branch of the Gilnean forces assembling just north of the skirmish zone, a small town now called Darkshire.

The Gilneas Brigade formed up and charged straight into the flank of elements of the Stormreaver Clan, augmented by droves of Ogres and Trolls, in an attempt to relieve the beleaguered Alterac Strike Battalion.

Cranston, Thalia, and several other Priests from other Alliance nations exhausted themselves in an attempt to keep their forces alive. Numbers eventually got the better of them and the Alliance forces crumbled and fell back, finding themselves in an increasingly untenable situation. Retreating into Westfall, the unit commander hatched a daring plan.

Taking all the soldiers that were capable of doing battle, Commander Ravenshade launched a suicide mission to hold off the Horde long enough for the Healers to fall back to the relative safety of Ironforge or Gnomeregan. Finding themselves alone, the Priests and Clerics were ill-prepared when they were set upon by a patrolling warband. Cranston watched in horror as the gruesome Death Knight that led the patrol resurrected murdered Priests and Clerics before their bodies could even touch the ground. Calling upon the Holy Light, Cranston attempted to save his brethren from such a fate, but it was not to be.

Before his very eyes, his mother was slaughtered and returned to life by the Death Knight and then sent against him. Petrified beyond the capacity for rational thought, Cranston blindly lashed out with his mace, decapitating his mother's body in one fell swipe. Overcome with grief, Cranston snapped. Calling upon the Holy Light with every fiber of his being, he (or rather, they..) annihilated everything in the surrounding area with a brilliant Smiting flash, incinerating Humans, Undead, Corpses, Ogres, Orcs, Trolls, and the Death Knight.

When the dust cleared, the compassionate, intellectual Cranston Wintercrow was no more. Instead, his mind had fractured under such stress, creating two completely seperate personalities.

One is a shadow of what Cranston used to be. Inquisitive, bright, and compassionate, this personality is also incredibly weak-willed and is easily subverted by its opposite number. This personality, calling itself Cranston in honor of what it used to be, is the weaker of the two personas, but attempts to make the best of the time it has by following the path it distinctly remembers - healing the sick, tending the weak and infirm, and so forth.

The second is the antithesis of the noble and caring Cranston. Possibly the only redeeming quality of this personality, which refers to itself as Wintercreep or, somewhat more derisively as The Good Doctor, is the intelligence. Having full access to the wordly medical knowledge acquired during Cranston's sojourn, Wintercreep is the very definition of a sociopathic, homicidal sadist. Torture became the sole time-consuming project that appealed to the "Good Doctor", feeding his fascination with the limits of human endurance under horrendous conditions and madness-inducing "experiments".

Proceeding back to Lordaeron, Cranston/Wintercreep flip-flopped between personalities almost on a minute-by-minute basis, sometimes the switch happening so quickly that the two blend together in a scizophrenic tornado of bi-polar mood swings. Were it not for this switch, the two minds probably would never have been made aware of each other. Along the way, Wintercreep established dominance over the weaker Cranston mind and decided that perhaps it was time for "a little research". After all, he reasoned, Faith didn't help anyone. Why not try things a different way? One can not effectively tend to the needs of others, he concluded, if one does not understand the limits that someone can endure before surrendering themselves to fate.

Descending on the familiar confines on Ambermill and Pyrewood Village, Wintercreep first began experimenting on animals - torturing the creatures in such gruesome ways as to leave their remains completely unrecognizable. One citizen of Ambermill reported to the local constable after discovering the remains of a butchered housecat..


 * "..it was awful. I mean, how can someone simply rearrange the insides of a poor, defenseless cat?! The animal's guts look as if they were just shaken up, dumped out, and then jammed back in there any old way. A lung for a stomach, the brain inside the rib cage! By the Light, I have never seen such..atrocities.."

The discovery put a damper on Wintercreep's activities, much to his chagrin, and he made his way out of Silverpine and he subsequently set up shop in Tirisfal Glades, first resuming his activities on animals, but quickly growing bored with the weak-willed creatures. What the Good Doctor needed was something that could think, feel...scream...beg.

After a lengthy argument between Cranston and Wintercreep, the two now fully integrated and aware enough of each other to commence such discussions, Wintercreep succeeded in supplanting Cranston again and orchestrated his first human "experiment" - the youngest daughter of the Balnir family, Emily.

While young Emily was at play one beautiful morning down at the shore of Brightwater Lake, Wintercreep bludgeoned the girl across the head and dragged her unconcious form back to his camp near the Whispering Shore. There, he used his knowledge of medicinal herbs, surgical techniques, and of course, the Holy Light ("borrowing" this ability from Cranston) to amputate the girl's limbs and graft various animal parts in their place. Amused by his success, but quickly boring of the girl's piteous screams, Wintercreep embalmed the girl while she was still alive and hung her corpse from the arch of her mother's beloved Snapdragon garden. Upon discovery, her mom's heart simply stopped, killing her.

The population of Lordaeron flew into a frenzy over such a brutal crime. Investigators combed the countryside looking for the sick bastard responsible for such a heinous act. When approached by the investigators, Wintercreep subsumed himself into Cranston's personality, but kept a tight hold on the "goodly Priest", preventing him from spilling the proverbial beans and getting the two of them arrested. In the back of Cranston's mind, Wintercreep kept on repeating, "I'll do it again, Cranston, if you tell them we did it. I'll kill them, probably some animals too, and then I'll go back to Balnir Farmstead and find that delicious other daughter of theirs', the one with the beautiful singing voice, and I'll let you watch as I make her scream and beg for her life. I think I'll see how long I can keep her alive after I remove half of her brain and replace it with fungus. Know who the blame will rest with, Cranston? You, my friend, for the Holy Light that would allow me to do such a horrendous thing resides in your mind, not mine. Think about that!"

Cranston reluctantly told the investigators that he had heard some bestial howls the night before that reminded him of the War and offered to keep a lookout for signs of Orcs. Immediately after, Wintercreep resumed control and promptly went after the eldest son of the Solliden family, doing to him what he said he'd do to Yvonne Balnir. Much to his surprise, he managed to keep Vincent Solliden alive for the better part of a month before Vincent finally expired, his face contorted in a horrified expression, and his body was dumped on the side of the road near the Brill Cemetery.

Packing up, Wintercreep moved on to Andorhal, Quel'Thalas, Tranquillien, Quel'Danas, Aerie Peak, and other such places where he could carry on his experiments with a fresh batch of "patients".

Karma Catches Up
When the Plague of Undeath began claiming victims all through what is now the Plaguelands, Wintercreep's twisted mind saw it as a reward for his "selfless service" in pushing the boundaries of medicine, a veritable playground where he could work without impediment or threat of capture. With rumors of the dead rising from the grave, who would honestly look for someone living as the cause of their fear? After all, he was clothed in the vestments of a member of the Church of Holy Light, and surely noone would ever suspect one of the Holy Order of being a monster!

While exact records of this time are fragmentary at best, Wintercreep recalls even less, his mind simply refusing to acknowledge anything but one long, euphoric journey in the name of Medical Science.

Fortunately for the living, Wintercreep himself was not invincible when it came to the Plague itself and subsequently succumbed to effects with almost a maniacal glee. In the tattered journal he carries, one clear line stands out among the mad scribblings that were apparantly written during the onset of the Plague:


 * At last, we can finally move the experiments to the next level.

Servitude
(coming soon)

Shattering The Bonds of Slavery
(coming soon)

Delightful Dementia
(coming soon)

Senior Surgical Researcher
(coming soon)

Expulsion
(coming soon)