Lady Aesculapius

Lady Aesculapius. called Aesc for short, was a member of the Firmament, the powerful species who controlled the bounded multiverse known as the 10,000 Dawns. A renegade, she travelled across all universes aboard her Factory of Crystal.

Early life
Aesculapius was a Firmament. Her teacher when she was young was Professor Meistras, a harsh, twisted individual who frequently killed her current incarnation to "teach her a lesson", who would remain her nemesis throughout her subsequent lives.

Eventually, Aesculapius became a freewheeling space-time-traveller aboard her "Factory of Crystal", (PROSE: Life After Death) or "Foce", interdimensional vessels which could resize themselves as anything from marbles to moons. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)

Aesculapius had many incarnations, who died in a variety of ways. When possible, she recovered her past bodies and laid them to rest inside her Factory.

She picked up a number of companions, who came and went. They included Graelyn Scythes, Archimedes Von Ahnerabe, and, at a different point in time, Blanche Combine. She also shared single adventures with Rita Andros and Jessica Zhane, but stayed in contact with both women. (PROSE: Life After Death)

Blue-peacoat-wearing incarnation
One incarnation of Lady Aesculapius had curly hair and wore a blue peacoat. She also often wore a slouch cap of the same colour. She witnessed the fictionalisation of the Firmament, was present at the Christmas Needle Agreement, (PROSE: White Canvas) and ultimately met her end when Professor Meistras placed a booby trapped parcel in her control room. (PROSE: )

Grey-tweed-coat-wearing incarnation
The next incarnation of Lady Aesculapius wore a grey tweed coat, and had several adventures, including figuring out who had murdered her previous body, (PROSE: ) negotiating with the Selachians on Hytheriax VII, and bringing down the villainous Letharchy. (PROSE: )

Undated events

 * Lady Aesc, Jason Jackson and Blanche Combine were among the friends of Graelyn Scythes's from across the realities who answered Archimedes Von Ahnerabe's call for video greetings to send to Graelyn when she had to spend her birthday in quarantine. On this occasion, she was wearing a T-shirt which had I'm Lady Aesculapius written on it. She enthusiastically wished Graelyn a happy birthday, and promised to get her friend Virginia Stens-6 to make Graelyn some cupcakes once she was free to meet people in person again. She then got Jason and Blanche to deliver their own birthday wishes, somewhat awkwardly in both cases for very different reasons. (PROSE: Birthdays are Made for Memories)
 * Lady Aesculapius once gave Chris Cwej, who was unaware of her identity at the time, a banana smoothie at Padrano Pier. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack, Barnyard of the Cyberons)
 * She later aided Chris, Kwol and Larles by giving them a ride in her ship back to the Totality after they realised they were stranded in Dawn 1027. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)

Relationship to a certain time-traveller
"I'm well aware people think of me as a dollar store - sorry, pound store knock-off. And from how easy I fooled him, maybe I am. But I feel like my own person. I'm genuine on the inside."

- Grey-tweed-coat-wearing Lady Aesculapius

Although she was accused of being a "rip-off" of Chris Cwej's former boss and friend, the inspiration behind Professor X by both Chris Cwej and Jhe Sang Mi, and even impersonated them at one point to give Grant Markham a sense of fulfilment, and easily fooled him, she maintained that she was her own distinct person. (PROSE: )

Behind the scenes
Originating in the short story Never Go On Walks, first published in James Wylder's unofficial Doctor Who poetry book An Eloquence of Time and Space, Aesculapius was a take-off on the Doctor, similar to the likes of the Chiropodist or Iris Wildthyme, essentially serving as her corner of the multiverse's equivalent to him — being a renegade member of the Firmament to match the Doctor's status as a Renegade Time Lord, wielding a Quantum Whisk as a wink to the sonic screwdriver, and travelling with companions in a dimensionally-anomalous space-time ship. The name "Aesculapius" is a reference to this, alluding indirectly to the idea of a "doctor" by being the Latin name for the Greco-Roman God of Medicine.

As the character evolved, she and the lore of the Firmament took on more distinct characteristics; for example, although, like the Doctor, Aesc displayed the ability to escape death many times over, she was shown to revive herself by downloading her consciousness into new bodies. However, winking similarities remained a recurring element of Lady Aesculapius: Series 1, with Life After Death featuring her Master-like nemesis Meistras (and including a red herring character with even greater similairities to the Master), and the story Jason and the Astronauts drew intentional parallels between the process of Aesc changing bodies and a regeneration scene, with Aesc paraphrasing several of the Doctor's lines from their regeneration scenes — "I just want you to tell you that you were fantas-" (TV: The Parting of the Ways) "I’ll always remember when I was me" (TV: The Time of the Doctor) and "I don’t want to go!". (TV: The End of Time)

Lady Aesculapius's incarnations have never been officially numbered. Life After Death served as the transition from one who was characterised by her blue frock coat to a new incarnation, illustrated on the poster of the series.