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Age: 24
Hometown: Waterdeep
Class: Rogue — Plague Doctor (The Crimson Codex)
Background: Unlicensed physician, anatomist, and apothecary
Alignment: Good-aligned, with morally complicated methods
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Eleanor “Nell” Pembroke is a self-taught physician from a working-class Waterdhavian family. Fiercely compassionate toward the sick and vulnerable, she has devoted her life to healing people who cannot afford conventional physicians or magical treatment.
Unfortunately, Nell knows the human body well enough to understand not only how to preserve life, but exactly how to end it.
She is not an assassin who learned medicine. She is a doctor who learned assassination.
Nell showed an aptitude for medicine from childhood but lacked the money or social standing for formal training. She pieced together her education through healers, midwives, apothecaries, medical texts, and whatever knowledge she could obtain.
Her pursuit of anatomical knowledge eventually led her into less legal territory, including grave robbing and clandestine dissections. Despite having no credentials, she became a skilled physician for Waterdeep’s poorer communities. Her patients began calling her Doctor Pembroke.
At first, Nell corrected them. Eventually, she stopped.
Philip “Pip” Pembroke was Nell’s younger brother by eight years and the person she loved most.
Bright, mischievous, and endlessly curious, Pip grew up following Nell around and believing wholeheartedly that his sister was the greatest physician in Waterdeep. By fourteen, he had become her unofficial medical assistant: cleaning instruments, grinding herbs, preparing bandages, delivering medicine, organizing supplies, and maintaining their inventory in a battered notebook.
He also regularly reminded Nell to eat and sleep.
Pip was one of the only people allowed to call her “Nellie.” She pretended to hate it.
When Nell was twenty-two, a devastating epidemic swept through Waterdeep. Poor districts were hit especially hard as physicians, magical healing, and medicine became increasingly difficult to obtain.
Nell turned her unofficial clinic into a makeshift plague ward and refused to abandon her patients. Pip refused to abandon Nell.
Eventually, Pip became sick. Nell kept him alive longer than many others, but she could not obtain enough of a scarce treatment that might have saved him.
Pip died at fourteen with Nell beside him.