Submitted: 20 July 2000

What's happening in the Empath Guild?

by Kator Gasblin

I returned to Crossing and the empath guild after hearing from many travelers that the guild was in serious need of good empaths. I took the long journey from Theren to Crossing and arrived at the guild to realize that there we many more patients that there were empaths. I proceeded to do what I could to help the people.

The only problem with helping the people in the guild nowadays is that few people actually come in and describe their current state. Most people just walk in and say "I'm in need of help." This doesn't really describe their state to we empaths sitting in the guild. If I'm healing someone and another person walks in and says "I'm in need of help" this really doesn't make me drop what I'm doing to help this person. Now if someone came in and said, "I have bleeders, I'm in bad shape, I'm very near death. Could an empath help me please?" I would be more than willing to stop healing my current patient, if they were better off, and take a look at them. Then after taking a look I could decided who needed my help more.

Now, I've heard people complain that we empaths don't help like we should. Granted, we are busy people, especially in the guild, and we may not catch what some people say. If a person really wants to get healed, they should whisper to a certain empath, some people do this to me, and ask for help. Likely the empath will at the very least respond to the whisper and let them know a time frame that they will be healed. Most empaths may even stop healing their current patient, if they can, and take a look at the person.

I know from personal experience that it is hard to help everyone who walks in the door, especially when we have so many seriously injured people come in all the time. This, however, does not account for the fact that some people who are near death take a backseat to a person who is less seriously injured. Most people are gracious enough to let you heal the more seriously injured people and return to them when you can. A lot of people walk into the empath guild realizing that they may have to wait. Most people are perfectly happy to wait and take a backseat to the more seriously injured. If they don't want to wait, they can always leave and come back later.

I think that non-empaths could be a little more understanding (those that are aren't already) and descriptive of their injuries, and empaths could try to help the more seriously injured before the less seriously injured (not that most don't already.)

I think it also needs to be realized that higher level empaths don't necessarily stay in Crossing. Most leave and go do other things leaving the younger, less experienced empaths to do all the work at the guild. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else. We empaths have to go where we are needed. The more experienced we get the more in demand we are. These younger empaths have to be given the time and respect to help others while not killing themselves. Until an empath is sure of what they are doing, they may have to take breaks to heal. An empath is no good to anyone if they are dead. All it takes is a little more understanding and a lot more communication between empaths and non-empaths alike. If we could achieve this, the activity in the guild would go a lot more smoothly and the number of dead needing a drag from the empath guild would be lessened. All it takes is understanding, patience, and communication.

Bareksh leans over and gives the empath a warm handshake.