QUESTIONS AND INFORMATION
QUESTION: Why did you choose for Astoeth to be a healer?
ANSWER: Save for Elrond, Aragorn and Ioreth, are there any other healers mentioned in Tolkien’s works? Perhaps I’m missing some obscure Silmarillion character, but I chose for her to be a healer because there are not many healer characters in actual canon and this is one of the main professions elves practice.
​
She started as her father’s apprentice, in their home in Lindon. When he decided she was ready, Astoeth opened her own apothecary, where she does what she loves best: experimenting. Her work is complex and goes through many medical domains. One of the biggest advantage elves have over other races is the unexplained by canon "elven magic". She is hot-headed and started off a bit arrogant, claiming that her work and expertise made her superior to other healers, but her character arc is focused on her learning that there is no competition between healers and when speaking of saving lives, the more skilled in this the better. Because battles happen and many end gravely wounded.
​
Her main clients usually are men and dwarves, though sometimes hobbits of the West Farthing will come to visit her. Money is not important for elves. Even if she will demand coin from time to time, this is only for funding her work. Usually the payment she accepts are promises of return. Let’s say a dwarf from Erebor traveled across the Misty Mountains to Ered Luin, but fell ill when arriving at the destination. She will cure him, but only for the promise that if he will ever return to Lindon, he will gather for her plants that grow only around Mirkwood or on the Misty Mountains. The Eriador area is usually easy to cover, as rangers help her sometimes in exchange for her services.
​
From time to time she will even travel to the Shire and teach those who want to become healers the basics: what plants are good for what disease, how to spot the right plants apart from the poisonous ones, how to fight off common colds or how to patch a wound. It is truly what she loves best.
Akin to what doctors did in the 18th and 19th century (experimenting on stolen corpses to learn about organs), she too did her own experiments. The rangers bring her orc corpses for her to study from time to time, as they too were once elves. She has seen a lot of death, sometimes when her treatment failed and sometimes on the battlefield. But this motivated her to work harder to find cures for what men and dwarves and hobbits suffer from.