Lady Aesculapius

Lady Aesculapius was a Firmament who had met Chris Cwej in the Totality. She had a ship in which she took Cwej, Kwol, and Larles on. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)

Behind the scenes

• "Aesculapius" is the latin name of the Greco-Roman god of healing and medicine.

Invalid appearances

One of Lady Aesculapius's bodies, as depicted on the illustration to NOTVALID: Life After Death.

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 played a part in two crossovers between the 10,000 Dawns series, Faction Paradox and the DWU, namely the novella White Canvas and an installment of her own series, Life After Death. These stories are, however, not considered valid sources on this Wiki.

When the Firmament were turned to fiction by Auteur, Lady Aesc tried to find other survivors using her Quantum Whisk, which led her to New York City in 2460. From there, she joined Graelyn and Arch in pursuit of the painted warriors into N-Space. After meeting with Littlejohn on Gendar and being joined by Coloth, Aesc and her cohorts confronted the Original Mammoths. They were then betrayed by Auteur and Aesc was made a fictional character. In Auteur's Town, Aesc was the star of a long-running television series which had 276 blu-rays and wasn't suited to movies. Aesc escaped from fictionality during the Town's destruction and briefly fought the Firmament with Coloth. Later, she was present at the Needle during the signing of the Christmas Needle Agreement, playing cards with Archimedes, Coloth, and many other aliens. (NOTVALID: White Canvas)

After opening a booby-trapped letter, one of Lady Aesculapius's incarnations, which was far from the first, was killed. As she was a member of the Firmament, she was able to survive by downloading her consciousness into a new synthetic body. However, to discover who had actually killed her previous self, this new Aesculapius instead let the universe assume she had really died, and attended the funeral of her previous body in disguise as her own cousin, "Raesculapius". She eventually discovered that it had been her long-time nemesis Professor Meistras who had done the deed. (NOTVALID: Life After Death)

Similarities to the Doctor

In her original conception in Never Go On Walks, 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, travelling with companions in a time machine, including Graelyn Scythes and Archimedes Von Ahnerabe, and having an arch-enemy called Meistras (which translates to Master). As the character evolved, she and the lore of the Firmament took on more distinct characteristics; although, like the Doctor, Aesc displayed the ability to escape death many times over, she was shown to reveal herself by downloading her consciousness into new bodies.

The Lady Aesculapius: Series 1 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)