“Oh, God she could smell it, she could smell the smoke, see the flames, feel them licking at her back and sides, melting through her uniform, almost fusing it to her skin before she even had the chance to get away.”
World War Two was a devastating time for Nonna. Not only did she lose her adoptive father and the majority of the people she’d grown up around, but she found the right side of her face and a good portion of her back heavily disfigured due to fire caused by the 1941 attacks.
To further add to her distress, after waking up from suspension [x] she found that, unlike the rest of her previous ailments, her burns had not healed in the blink of an eye. Though they would decrease in size a little over the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, the majority of her back would remain covered, no doubt for the rest of her life. These tenacious wounds stayed for a reason, one that she hadn’t been made fully aware of until after that fateful attack, the reason being that, unlike before, this time her land had sustained extensive damage, therefore, the wounds she also sustained were not about to vanish anytime soon.
A Representative can usually heal themselves at an accelerated rate if the wound is dealt to them directly, a cut from a knife while cooking or a grazed knee will be gone automatically within seconds. Depending where they are on the Ladder [part 2] they can also heal relatively quickly from larger and more serious wounds such as lacerations, broken bones, internal bleeding, etc. However, all of this changes when their land is damaged, be it from natural or manmade disasters, if their land sustains damage, so will their physical bodies, and the damage will last for much longer as their healing-rate will slow to match the pace of the land as it tries to mend. Like everything else, this healing is dictated by the status of the Rep, since a Nation has more land, they will heal quicker than a bombed City, owing to the fact that the latter only has a certain amount of land to their name. If a City is badly damaged, the damage would be dealt to a decent chunk of their land in the grand scheme of things, whereas a Nation would only have to suffer through the damage done to one of their territories. With this being said, a Nation Rep would find themselves in a lot of trouble if a large number of their Cities were ravaged by war.
Using Nonna as an example (as I tend to do a lot) the impact the war had on her land lead to the fire damage inflicted on her to stay looking as raw and as fresh as the day she received them for years and years. This was due to the fact that most of the accommodation within Murmansk had been completely burnt down in the attack, and the land itself had been barraged by enemy forces. Of course, the land is capable of healing most of the time, but it’s a slow process, far slower than how a Rep would normally heal, and if the land remains permanently scarred, so will its Representative. The land is the Representative and the Representative is the land, both help each other to heal, the Rep wouldn’t be able to heal themselves without the presence of their land, without something left for them to live for and to represent, and the land would not be stable without it’s Rep, it’s a equally giving and receiving relationship, and one cannot be without the other, and it’s kind of a double-edged sword in this case.
However, this is ultimately where a big flaw in The Core’s mighty creations becomes apparent. A lot of the healing processes a Rep will go through - whether it be from damage to their physical forms or to their land - are automatic. Healing will happen no matter what, unless the damage to the land is irreplaceable, or if they fall and are completely dissolved/killed, whatever you want to call it. But there is one little thing that can seriously impact that, something that this species unfortunately needs in order to lead any kind of quality of life.
Their sentience
As stated in the the post about the healing-rate, a Representative’s mental state has a lot to do with how quickly or how slowly they heal from damage on a larger scale, and unfortunately, this is a problem that most all Reps have no doubt faced. As sad as it is, a lot of Reps have simply had to learn how to deal with, and toughen up against war, natural disasters, and general destruction in order to heal properly. The species as a whole is designed to be indestructible, but unfortunately their minds, thoughts and feelings are not, and that can seriously impact the speed at which they mend themselves. As I stated before, a lot of the healing Reps go through is automatic, but even automatic systems have their faults, a machine will still try to function even if it is broken, but will ultimately fail since a crucial part is not working properly, it’s kind of the same with this species. They have the ability to heal from most anything, but the speed of that healing can be incredibly delayed if they aren’t in the proper mindset.
Using Nonna as an example once again, it would be hard for her to realise and accept this fact, but her scars honestly should’ve healed and disappeared a long, long time ago. Since the attacks in the 40′s, Nonna has never allowed herself the time to crash and burn and properly grieve for the people she lost, which - even though it sounds harsh - is a big part of coming to terms with something that happened to you, and eventually moving on, something she has never been able to do. Even though she has made progress regarding her anger, she is still not in the right mental state to accept and move on from the things that happened to her during WW2. The land has healed, but she hasn’t, not mentally anyway, and so the scars remain on her back to this day as if the land was still as damaged as it was back then.
Nonna is a prime example of how delayed a Rep’s healing can become if they cannot come to move on from the damage dealt to them, which is why something like a war can be devastating to these near-godlike beings.