Although magical healing is available on the world of Curcalen, it may not be easy to find it offered for free, and poor people may not be able to afford it. In the City Center, Dr. Xambadu—Uphude Xambadu, to give his full name—steps in to provide healing and curing services to those who don't have the money or means to get them elsewhere. Although he doesn't widely advertise it, he also is able and willing to provide bodily augmentations—extra limbs, enhanced senses, or just increased strength or agility—even to those who are perfectly healthy. His methods are unusual, involving a combination of physical surgery and spellwork, but they get the job done. The interior of Dr. Xambadu's house and adjoining "clinic" is covered with a layer flesh and body parts, which many of his patients find very disturbing, but given the services he provides they patronize him anyway.

Of course, Dr. Xambadu has to make a living, and he does ask for some remuneration for his services, just not a monetary one. To pay for Dr. Xambadu's procedures, his patients are expected to give him a bit of themselves—not a large bit, perhaps a patch of skin or a finger, but some piece of their body. Dr. Xambadu helps them regenerate the missing part, so they don't lose anything in the long run—but Dr. Xambadu still benefits from what they give him, sticking it to and merging it with the other flesh and parts already covering his walls. This is, in fact, provides his main source of income, as he sells byproducts of this flesh layer to contacts he's established—hair to weave into fiber and cloth, bone for various uses, even meat for those who don't care too much where it comes from. The fleshy covering does slowly grow back when he takes from it, but adding more flesh to it makes it grow back more quickly.

Dr. Xambadu is a tall, scarecrow-thin man with skin the color of mixed soil and ash and arms that he often holds in front of him like a puppetteer controlling marionettes. His egg-shaped head is bald on top with a fringe of long gray hair; he has a flat but narrow nose, thin lips, and a bulging forehead. He has both navanars and alicunds among his distant ancestors, but shows little sign of that except his broad and flat feet that exude slime on the bottom inherited from snail navanars and, from the alicund ancestry, what appear to be small crystals embedded in his arms. Dr. Xambadu talks in a whispery voice, often repeating sentences and smacking his lips at the end of an utterance. He is usually seen wearing white gowns stained with old blood and black gloves.