The Story of Carl

 

Carl is old.  Carl is really old.  Carl is really, really old.

In fact, Carl is so old that there is a nasty rumor going around that he’s a lich and has simply forgotten it.  It’s possible, given that Carl is so old he’s forgotten more about magic than most wizards will ever know. 

Of course, that’s also a problem.

When Carl started out on the road to wizardry there were none of these newfangled wizard schools and adventuring parties were likely to die 12 feet into a dungeon due the deadly falling block trap that was always conveniently put there.  That’s back when being a wizard actually meant something.  Or so Carl says. 

He started, like most young would-be wizards, as an apprentice to an existing wizard.  Back then wizards were old men with beards who jealously guarded their spells and built solitary towers to defend against other wizards and generally held a scorched earth policy as being “a bit understated”.  Those were the days, as Carl will tell you, even if you don’t ask.  The “good old days” when the wizard motto was “There’s no kill like overkill!”.

In those days a young man would apprentice to a wizard and spend his time as little more than a slave, fetching water, cleaning, cooking, gathering weird components, and dodging spells as their masters attempted to test out new magic.  The only way to learn magic was to be cunning, staying up late to learn the basics from the tomes that were forbidden to be touched while the master was awake, and then, after many hard years if you were lucky and extremely talented at survival, you’d escape with some stolen spells and maybe a wand and start your career.  The good old days.

Carl escaped his master with a few stolen spells and a wand, as tradition demanded* and immediately set about finding an adventuring party.  As Carl will tell you, constantly, regardless of whether you’ve asked or not, adventuring parties were always looking for wizards in the “good old days” and they knew how to treat a wizard.  There was a general fear of, and respect for, magic in those days.  It was wild and unpredictable at best, and only the most powerful wizards could even hope to exert even the least control over it.  Oh yes, let me tell you, adventurers knew what a wizard was worth back then, kids.  Every wizard worth his components was a specialist, always having the “right” spell for the “right” job.  Or, more accurately, considering any spell they cast to be “right” for the job by virtue of their casting it. 

Like any young wizard fresh out of training and in the working world, Carl had dreams of building a tower, summoning succubae, and torturing apprentices, but all of that would require money.   Thus Carl kept working the adventuring circuit, but time passes, sometimes quite quickly, and Carl saw the adventuring game and magic change a few times over his many years.  The more it changed, the less he liked it.  The less he liked it, the more he resisted it, and one day he just decided he wasn’t going to do it anymore.  He gave up his dreams of a tower and an apprentice and summoning naughty demons and started phoning it in.  He’d already gained his title, The Lightning of Wrath, and he really didn’t care much about all this wizard academy nonsense and all these hippie attitudes he was seeing among the “kids” in the adventuring parties.  In his day a Druid was a Druid.  They weren’t some tree-hugging sissy.  After the Goblin-Faerie War of Terrortree Forest, where he worked with Goblin Field Marshall Cuspis the Dry Toothpick To the Eye, he really had had enough.  He took a position as a court magician for some nameless minor baron and settled down to a life of doing absolutely nothing.

Because Carl is old.  Carl is really old.  Carl is really, really old.  In fact, Carl is so old that there is a nasty rumor going round that he still owes Moses money.

Carl was fully prepared to retire on his pension when his employer was overthrown by an adventurer who’d just established his own keep nearby.  His home in smoking ruins, his employer dead, and his pension no longer in existence, Carl didn’t know what to do with what remained of his life.  The only things he had left were his magical staff, a portion of his spells, and a letter he’d received from the same Cuspis he’d worked with years before.  The letter was an offer of employment serving the would-be world conqueror Morcar.  With no other options open to him Carl made the journey and joined the Wizards of Morcar, a decision he regrets every single day of his life.

Personality: Carl is old.  Carl is really old.  Carl is really, really old.  In fact, Carl is so old that there is a nasty rumor going round that his first familiar was a dinosaur.  Carl is also a being of pure evil.  Well, he would be a being a pure evil if he was in his prime, but as he is not, he’s mainly just grouchy.  Nothing makes Carl happy.  The world has changed and Carl doesn’t like it.  His back always hurts, he’s going bald, he has a bum ticker, and the temperature is never quite right.  Not to mention he has to work with these “kids and this stupid dogman thing”.  Carl will go into long tirades about the “good old days”, which tends to confuse his co-workers because half the things that Carl claims seem most improbable, or at least historically inaccurate.  Being quite set in his ways, Carl refuses to research new magic or learn any new spells, although it might be Wizard Dementia, in which case he simply cannot.  However, since he’s not even inclined to try, nobody actually knows.  Cuspis has become concerned that Carl is actually bipolar but even he doesn’t suspect the truth.  Carl once invented a spell that he claims “will fix everyone’s little red wagon” but he can’t remember it and it is not in any of his spell books, leading to the suspicion that he’s confused or lying.

Likes: puns, Thin Mints, kicking Dingle

Dislikes: kids, other wizards, other people, weather, Dingle

The Truth:  Unbeknownst to anyone, including Carl, is that Carl is not Carl.  Rather, the being called Carl the Lightning of Wrath is not the being that Cuspis met at the Battle of the Stump That Looks a Bit Like a Wang.  That Carl died in the battle.  Or rather that Carl’s psyche died in the battle, but not his body.  When Cuspis cast his conjoined Temporal Stasis and Dimensional Aperture spells Carl was very close to ground zero and he was in the process of casting that spell that would, “fix everyone’s little red wagon”.  The energy from the Dimensional Aperture leapt into Carl as his greatest spell was being cast, and in the process destroyed the Stormlord…sort of.  What actually happened was a trifold crossrip that opened alternate timelines and sucked two different timeline versions of Carl out of reality and into the vacuum left by the destruction of Carl’s psyche.  Had the spell worked properly, Carl would have accessed the timeline wherein Carl allied with Morcar long before the battle, grew in power, overthrew the dark wizard, destroyed him, and accidentally destroyed the world while attempting to make himself immortal, taken the power from that Carl, and proceeded to make himself the overlord of his own reality.  The feedback from the crossrip, however, grabbed a younger version of Carl from one timeline and an EVEN OLDER version from another, and melded them together in the body of Carl as we know him.  The result is that Carl doesn’t so much remember the “good old days” as he remembers things that haven’t happened yet and that never did happen in his own world.  Which is a blessing considering what Carl could get up to if he were ever able to put his mind to anything.

Somewhat ironically, younger Carl had a destiny to invent the waffle cone.

*The tradition is, of course, for the master to prepare a few spells in a book and a wand of minor utility and leave them in a secure place that is easily broken into.  No one can say exactly when this tradition was established, but it is assumed that it was established in extreme self-interest, to prevent being murdered in one’s sleep as legends say it was in the “real good old days”.

 

The Story of Cuspis

 

Cuspis the Highly Annoyed graduated from Wizarding School with a degree in Thaumaturgy and a minor in Divination-because he listened to his guidance counselor who told him that it opened up job opportunities-and immediately found himself unemployed. After a few false starts with little success and having very little money left in his pouch, he reluctantly joined a party of adventurers. Their first and only delve into a small dungeon resulted in an almost total party kill where only Cuspis and two torchbearers managed to escape. Firmly set against becoming an adventurer again, Cuspis took any job he could find, including spending a short amount of time serving Verkonikon the Vile, and being the court magician for Rodentia the Verminlord. While hiding out from his latest patron in a local tavern he saw an ad in Summoner of Fortune magazine to serve in the Great Goblin Army during the Goblin-Faerie War of Terrortree Forest. Figuring it was better than what he was doing he applied for the position and found himself in charge of a Legion of Goblins. Due to a basic inability to do math the massive amount of goblin causalities were considered "successful leadership" by the Goblin King, who quickly promoted Cuspis to Field Marshall of the Great Goblin Army. Despite the low intelligence of his forces, Cuspis managed to forge them into an effective fighting force through a combination of elemental psychology and positive reinforcement. Things were finally looking up for Cuspis, who was now known as Cuspis the Dry Toothpick to the Eye for his reputation. Forces gathered in the forests for what would come to be known as the Battle of the Stump That Looks A Bit Like A Wang.  Cuspis was there with the entire Goblin Army, along with a number of beasts brought into service, and some mercenary wizards, including Carl the Lightning of Wrath, Flind the Fetching, and Flatus the Wind of Decay.  The fairies were ill-prepared for the battle, but unbeknownst to Cuspis a party of heroic adventurers had joined the fairies, led by Flennetar the Flayer, Scourge of Goblinkind, a paladin of great renown.  As the battle waged on, with spells flying and the blood of goblins and fairies soaking the ground, Cuspis became keenly aware that the battle was no longer between the fay races, and had instead become an adventurer grudge match.  In a key moment Flennetar the paladin kicked an attacking goblin with great force, aiming it toward Cuspis, only to have it go wide and strike Flind the Fetching in the chest.  In a rage, the vain Flind cast a Pulsing Nova Fireball spell, but not being much of an expert in fire spells it landed in the wrong spot and began to flare.  The first pulse set fire to the flowers and grass, and as it shrunk back to begin its second pulse Cuspis acted on raw survival instinct, casting a Temporal Stasis spell on the Pulsing Nova, linked to a Dimensional Aperture to siphon off the blast.  However, he did not have time to select an appropriate dimension and simply cast the spell.  The Dimensional Aperture opened into a dimension exactly identical to Cuspis's own, only where time moves backwards and this set up a loop that made the spell permanent and caused it to constantly pulse.  As a side effect, the Stump That Looks A Bit Like A Wang is constantly being turned to ash and then reforming and nobody wants to dismantle the spell for fear of what might happen.  Despite the Goblin and Fairy armies both being reduced to around 3% of the original populations, both sides claimed victory and the Goblin King offered to make Cuspis his Permanent GOAT Court Advisor.  Considering the disgusting state of life in the goblin warrens, Cuspis claimed he could not accept the honor as his destiny lay elsewhere.  The Goblin King, having no idea what that meant but not wanting to appear stupid, gave Cuspis his reward and allowed him to leave.  Unemployed again, Cuspis returned to his search for gainful employment...

Cuspis enrolled in Wizard Graduate School via distance learning, and took classes via correspondence while doing a variety of odd jobs, including identifying magical items for commission and pest control*, but after a few years he graduated from his courses with a Masters in High Wizardry!  Now over-educated in a market that can barely support low level wizards, Cuspis was frustrated.  While perusing the want ads in an outdated newspaper while using a public privy he noticed an ad for an Executive Administrator to a Would-Be World Conqueror, top benefits, management experienced preferred, contact Morcar, House of Pain, Fields of Death, 398576.  Cuspis decided to take the chance and journeyed to the location and applied.  After surviving the interview, an impressive feat as Morcar had not had an applicant survive since he'd placed the ad 4 years prior, Cuspis was hired.  His first duty was to oversee the hiring of more help.  Cuspis sent out a dozen or so letters and posted up flyers, but to no avail.  Finally while attending a mixer he ran into Pierre le Fableux, with whom he'd attended university and given that Pierre had become a proper Necromancer, he figured it was a good fit.  A few weeks later one of the letters he'd sent out produced a reply.  Carl the Lightning of Wrath had lost his pension and was looking for work.  Cuspis hired him and the three wizards set about the business of Morcar's world domination.  For the most part the job would be ideal, as it allows Cuspis to organize and direct the various monsters and traps and assets of Morcar's many dungeons, but there is the persistent problem of adventurers and his realization that he works with idiots.  There is also the problem of Morcar himself, who should he be successful in his grand goal will plunge the entire world into a hell of destruction and chaos, which it happens to be the world in which Cuspis lives and he quite likes it, meaning he spends much of his time making it look like the plan is proceeding while subtly shifting the assets to more useful and productive purposes.

Fortunately Morcar is a bit ADHD.

Personality: Cuspis the Highly Annoyed is not actually evil.  He's not even sort of evil.  He is, however, practical.  He gained his present sobriquet due to his overwhelming hatred of two things: inefficiency and Adventuring Parties.  It is hard to say which annoys him more.  The former is best represented by his employer and his co-workers, but the latter really gets his goat.  Adventuring parties always show up just after you've gotten things repaired, breaking furniture looking for traps and treasure, tracking soil and blood on the carpets, and slaughtering the staff whom they mistake for the monsters.  He loathes them.  Cuspis is famous for inventing the spell Kal-Gone, which when cast sends targets away to a dimension of soapy bubbles and leaves the gentle scent of lavender in their place.

Likes: kabobs, manly scented beard care products, hats.

*But that is a tale for another time...