A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Off to Be the Wizard

by Skysaber

aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

Story Day One, April 6th 2011, Wednesday - Early Afternoon

OoOoO

Jared sighed, staring at the gang tags all around him, the sound of gunfire nearby.

After being told by some random extradimensional bastard that he was going to be inserted in a Worm universe, a cosmic horror setting masquerading as a superhero universe, he had asked in return to be a D&D character according to the rules his table played, which was a mix of 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, and D20 in general, a mixmash they often referred to as 3.p (short for "Third Edition, plus Pathfinder"). However, the extradimensional bastard had dropped him off as a Level 1 Commoner in an alley behind a crack den with nothing but the shirt on his back and left cackling.

The redhead looked down, and sighed again. That "shirt on his back" thing was literal, too. He was barefoot and pantsless, although the rough homespun peasant shirt he was wearing went nearly down to his knees. Covered in mud, he looked every inch the medieval serf, a typical one doomed to die after a life of hard labor for his lord.

Oh, well.

Luckily for Jared, he was a very level-headed guy. Having been through most disasters that could happen to a man during his lifetime, he was very rarely impressed by a new one. He also had the experience to know that getting upset was very unlikely to help to fix most problems, and losing your head never did. So he preferred to save his adrenaline for when it was needed, rather than fretting it away in mindless worrying, or freak-outs over what might happen.

Or, as he put it, "I achieved my potty training a long time ago. Then I achieved the same thing with my emotions."

Losing control was losing control, whether physically or emotionally, and the results were pretty much the same either way - a mess.

It's not a secret that panicking in moments of trouble only made the situation worse. Freaking out and throwing a tantrum was the best way to draw the attention of predators - and gang members certainly qualified. So no use shouting 'here is a helpless victim without any control over himself', because really, there was not any better prey.

And the predators out there knew it.

So if you advertised at the top of your lungs that you were a perfect victim, you could expect your problems to multiply and get dramatically worse, not better.

Really, the surprising thing was that more people did not know that.

Actually, in the silence of his own mind he privately suspected most people *did* know that, they just refused to admit it, even to themselves.

But that wasn't any advantage, either. He regarded lying to yourself as one of the stupidest things anyone could do. It guaranteed that you would screw up on making important decisions if you based those on false data. So accepting as true things that were not true was like loading bullets into a revolver, placing that gun to your head and pulling the trigger.

Maybe, just maybe, if you had not loaded in enough lies, that hammer would fall on an empty chamber and you would not destroy your life - this time.

But why take that chance?

What possible reason was there for people to willingly believe in lies?

The person TELLING the lie wants you to believe in it, but what possible benefit was it to YOU?

Ah well. He'd seen people reject uncomfortable truths in favor of nice-seeming lies countless times in his own life, personally witnessed as well as read about. Most of the people who wrote stories he read anymore came from places and times very similar to his own world of origin, the early 21st century of Earth, one of the most peaceful and prosperous times in human history. And you know what they say, "Easy times create weak men, weak men create tough times. Tough times create strong men, strong men create easy times."

Being immature or irresponsible or lying to yourself conveyed zero survival advantages. Nature's problem solver was a responsible adult who could plan ahead, judge truth from error, and dealt with situations with a level head and steady nerves.

Jared had led a hard life despite his place and time of origin. Survival had taught him a lot of lessons. So he could take his lumps and not complain about it - such that he'd developed real sympathy and appreciation for those hard-bitten characters out of the old Western shows; the type of guys who can lose everything and not even flinch. Those qualities held real value to him, so he did his best to emulate them. He was fine with being playful in victory, but when the chips were down and survival was at stake you ought to keep your eyes on the prize and keep driving towards your goals.

Because if you didn't manage to secure survival, what difference did the rest make?

Only the state of your soul mattered more than life, because the afterlife was eternal, which meant forever, and life wasn't. Burning anything permanent trying to save something temporary was always a fool's choice.

And Jared had done his best to get over being a fool.

He'd grown up from the unmotivated and directionless fellow he'd tended towards in his youth, and could no longer relate to those who'd immediately pitch a childish fit on learning they were not going to get their way.

It was hard to respect that kind of lack of self-control.

No, frankly, it was *impossible* to respect a lack of self-control. Because self-mastery was an achievement, and the lack of it was not.

Really, dealing with a crisis was not that hard. Whatever your situation, just keep a cool head and identify what problems you face, then set about fixing them. Burning out all of your energy falling apart in emotional displays just attracted trouble and left you tired - which had no advantages to survival at all.

The first problem to fix was being a Level 1 Commoner. It wasn't even the Level 1 that was the problem, the Commoner class was not impressive no matter what level you took it at. So the first thing to do would be to go on a retraining quest, changing out that level of Commoner for literally anything else, and the established method for doing so was going on a perilous journey.

Paradoxically, the perilous journey was the easy part. This was Brockton Bay, there were prisons that were safer places to live and work in. Going *anywhere* around here fully qualified as a 'Perilous Journey'. He could totally sell going to the LIBRARY as having a not-insignificant chance of major harm or death, and therefore being perilous - especially given his start from the alley behind a crack den.

Going to a library was something he could even sell as being thematically appropriate for retraining as a wizard, one of his favorite classes, as wizards were scholarly and liked books. So there was a connection, to say nothing of the fact that he could not even think of a library that did not have some books on the occult tucked somewhere into the collection, and even if 98%+ of it was wrong, all it had to do was serve as a source of inspiration for him to have an epiphany to put him on the right track, and give him the excuse he needed to retrain as a wizard.

So that was his first pick.

He could not see Rogue or Fighter doing him any good in this situation. The modern world was very accomplished at dealing with sneaky people who lie, as well as musclebound grunts who used armor and weapons. Neither would be at any advantage here. Nor would any of the assortment of Rogue-like or Fighter-like classes. Assassins and Rangers had some spellcasting, but not enough to make enough of a difference to be any help. They were still too close to what this world was used to dealing with. Those classes with minimal spellcasting would be treated as minor supers (he recalled the locals called anyone with powers 'capes'), at best. They were too predictable.

The problem with being predictable was there was no such thing as a perfect defense. Everything could be defeated by the right approach or countermeasure.

Versatility was the key. The more adaptable you were, the more options you had, the harder you were to counter, and the higher your chances to survive.

And no one was more versatile than a wizard.

Cleric and Druids both came close, and had their own advantages. In fact, given how rare and prized all supernatural forms of healing were on this world, he could see considerable utility to going either route. A Cleric could fight almost as well as the Fighters could, but had the versatility of being full spellcasters on top of that. While a Druid's Wild Shape ability to turn into nearly any natural animal made him effectively invisible in a way that was better than actual invisibility.

In fact, the Druid class had been famously described as, "I have individual class features that are better than your entire class," and the ability to Wild Shape was only one of them.

It said a lot about a wizard's spellcasting that, despite the rest of the class being not too different from a Commoner, the spells available to them more than compensated until the wizard was considered to be at least the equal of, and some contend better than, the Cleric or the Druid.

The only difficulty to a retraining quest was this was Brockton Bay, and he stood a good chance to actually die on his perilous journey. Nevertheless, it had to be done if he was to have any chance of survival long-term, and it wasn't like he was in any safety staying there, in the alley behind a crack den.

Jared was just pondering whether he should take his perilous journey to the library and become a wizard, or to a church and become a cleric, when he noticed that the extradimensional bastard had not picked his feats for him. So Jared still had something under his control. He knew just what to get with his first feat, too, and with a wide grin selected it immediately before any lingering busybody could interfere.

After all, this was not a situation that was going to be resolved by Combat Casting, or any other feat in the basic rules. Players almost universally hated those feats, they were so weak, and took them only when required to, preferring almost anything else. Those were the feats you took only to get rid of your feat allowance without putting any thought into being effective. Almost any sourcebook had better feats than the basic set.

There were exceptions, just like there were ancient martial arts masters who could defeat men four times their size, and all of it muscle. But the exception proves the rule.

However, even the excellent feats out there, something like Fearless Destiny, that gave you 'once a day, when you die, you don't actually die, just become unconscious and wounded to the point even an overenthusiastic puppy could kill you, but left alone you'll recover to be perfectly fine', was an excellent feat to have, but not enough. Even good feats like that one, and others that gave out spell-like-abilities, or offered chi powers, or gave you the maximum possible hit points for your hit dice and level, or other useful abilities, still would not be able to resolve something as outright dangerous as the 'being in Worm' situation.

So Jared had gone nonstandard, electing to turn the whole situation on its head.

The feat he had already taken before he could be interrupted, Grateful Leader, gave Jared a grateful noble or other important person as a patron, one who was willing to grant any reasonable favor within that leader's power, and its only prerequisite was backstory. Now, as any D&D player could tell you, backstory was free. So he inserted the proper requirements himself, as that was another thing that the extradimensional bastard had not defined for him.

Jared instantly chose for his patron the headmaster of Redhurst Academy of Magic, an obscure D20 supplement that was obviously heavily inspired by Hogwarts. Really, any of the faculty or staff would have done fine, as they were all high level spellcasters. But as there was literally no reason not to pick Headmaster Andarlin, he did so.

Now, as it happens, "Any reasonable favor" from the headmaster of a school for wizards included admission to said school for wizards - and as the guy was 20th level, arranging for cross-planar transportation was not going to be a problem, either.

Jared smiled as a circular disk forming a two-dimensional window into another world appeared before him.

Wasting no time, he walked through it.

OoOoO

Story Day One, April 6th 2011, Wednesday - Early Afternoon

OoOoO

Jared had only just disappeared from the scene when a second later there came a crash of thunder along with a flash of lightning, leaving a figure laying in the snow of that same back alley.

Startled by the thunder, the newcomer woke and sat up, scratching at his side where something under the recently fallen snow had poked him. Then, upon seeing his surroundings, he froze, then stood and concealed himself in some nearby shadows, alert and attentive to the danger.

No one who had seen him depart a moment ago would have casually recognized him. For one, Jared was wearing rather expensive pajamas of some unfamiliar and possibly non-earthly material. For another, he was now a young adult where before he had been verging on being an old man. He did not regard that as remarkable. If you knew enough about magic it was trivial to regain one's youth, and aside from quality of life issues, where he had been it had helped him to fit in.

More importantly, the difference lay in training. This was obviously someone who had grown accustomed to danger, and was only showing appropriate caution as he assessed his situation.

But it was Jared, and he was back.

Of comparatively minor import was the newly-restored youth was no longer entirely human. Anyone familiar with Tolkien would have immediately recognized him as an elf, although the issue was more complex than that, not that any local officials would care about the details. They would probably just class him as a Case 53, the local term for humans who got mutated by having powers, and not look into any specifics.

Taking a step forward, back out of the darkness, the now-young man bent and retrieved a six foot shaft of golden wood from where he had fallen. Pulling that from the snow revealed a small pile of weapons, all of which he retrieved, along with a shirt of platinum white that almost glowed in the dim light of the overcast afternoon.

Some mild cursing followed as the elf realized the very limited extent of the cache. It was far from everything he had acquired over the years of his education at Redhurst. In fact, it was only those items to which he had mystically bonded in some way, and basically could not be kept from him.

They did not even come with any way to hold them, no belts or bags, and very few sheaths or scabbards, nothing like sufficient for this large collection. So he was awkwardly holding a small arsenal of medieval weapons in his arms with no better way to carry them. He did not even have pockets in his pajamas. Quickly, he sorted through the mess, putting on the platinum shirt over his sleepwear, adding the armored kilt that went with it, then placing the rings each on different fingers, and sliding the wand behind one ear like it was a pencil. But that left him still carrying several large (and many of them uncomfortably sharp) objects like he was carrying a bundle of wood.

Somehow hearing the sound of surf against the backdrop of loud music blasting from out of the crack den and not-nearly-distant-enough gunshots, the redhead swiftly and stealthily made his way out of that alley, then off in the direction he'd heard waves. Luckily, the beach was not far. Unfortunately it was a rough, rocky shore strewn with garbage, discarded fishhooks, along with general waste and litter of more unfortunate sorts.

The sight did not cause him any pause in the least. The young man went wading out into the water without hesitation, before disappearing under the waves. Once there, he breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he had planned ahead and prepared himself to operate underwater, as most human dangers would not follow him there. Lots of people could not swim, and guns did not function properly.

But with enough magic, it had been as easy to become fully amphibious as it was to regain his youth.

The water was polluted, but not so badly he could not breathe it, just like air on a smoggy day. After a few hours it might give him a headache if he wasn't careful, and there was a slight risk of infection. He'd have to take precautions.

Nothing so dangerous as getting shot, though. He'd accept the smaller risk and be grateful for it.

Swimming out into slightly deeper water, he at last found some sand. Pausing to place down his load of accouterments, he bent and gathered the grains in one hand, molding and shaping them using an invaluable class ability into a rough gemstone. Then, picking up two staves from his bundle, he carefully wedged them upright in the stones of the seafloor. Now having two uprights, the gem vanished from his hand and a horizontal wooden rod appeared between the twin improvised poles, and hanging on that rod were clothes.

Clothier's Closet was always such a useful spell. It created clothes, permanent clothes of any cut, style or size you liked, paid for by a gemstone that was the material component. Not a lot of people properly appreciated that spell. But in his opinion it was invaluable, as really, whether you were trapped in a desert, out on the tundra, or struggling not to embarrass yourself at some king's ball, what situation was not improved by being dressed appropriately?

Quickly getting dressed in more appropriate adventuring attire, he also selected various belts and scabbards so that he was able to properly stow his rather impressive but much diminished catalog of armaments. Now much more comfortable, even if he did look something like an ancient musketeer, the young man surfaced again just a touch, enough to get his eyes above water so that he could scope out his surroundings more properly.

He'd only performed about half of his plotted three-sixty degree scanning turn when he'd spotted the oil rig out in the distance, a force field shimmering around it as it stood above the bay.

"Oh, [Bleep!] I'm back in Worm!"

It's not easy to forget that place - and don't think he hadn't tried.

Ducking his head back underwater, Jared began to swim south, towards what he vaguely recalled was the nicer parts of town, while muttering under his breath "Five years of studying to be a wizard, and munchkining as hard as I could all the while, only to get dropped back here as near to naked as magic would allow. That extradimensional being is, indeed, a bastard."

Frankly, a game was a game, and they were for entertainment purposes only. The moment it became real and his life was on the line (as it was for any adventurer, but moreso than most for squishy wizards) he'd begun treating it under the ancient rule of: "The only unfair advantage is the one you don't have."

OoOoO

Breathing steadily and easily underwater, the redhead began reviewing his situation as he made his way south, staying underwater where he at least did not have to be concerned over getting mugged by one of the gangs.

On the one hand, his circumstances were unchanged from before. He was still in Worm, alone and unsupported, with no friends, no family, no contacts even, none of the local currency, barely any equipment, and no place to call home where he could safely rest.

On the other hand, everything was different, because he had changed. And the biggest of those changes was he now had spellcasting abilities.

Was it enough? He'd take it over virtually anything else. Magic was the most versatile tool ever imagined, and for those who used it well, there was little they could not accomplish. More than that, it was a tool he was well familiar with. Give two people identical characters in any game system, and the one most familiar with that system is going to outperform the one who knows less.

Now spellcasting was generally defined by two primary limitations, those being how many spells you had ready to cast, and the amount of energy you had available to cast them. Different classes interacted with those limits differently, and wizards had an arrangement that suffered on the 'ease of use' side of the equation, in exchange for greater overall versatility.

But there were ways to improve that situation.

The Pathfinder system had this wonderful rule where the lowest level of spells, 0th level spells, also known as cantrips, could be cast an unlimited number of times per day. You could still only hold a few cantrips ready to cast at any one time, but the ones you did have, you had basically unlimited fuel for.

It was a wildly popular rule, such that countless groups running D20-compatible systems had adopted it, including his table. So it was a rule that applied to Jared in his spellcasting.

Create Water, for example, was a cantrip. So provided he had that spell ready he could cast it all day and never run out (which, reminded of this fact, he stopped swimming and cast it around himself a couple of times, the new, clean water his spell had created mixing quickly with the polluted waters of the Bay, but still giving him a few deep breaths of the equivalent to fresh air, and helping to clear out his system and avoid any future headaches from the pollution of the water).

But Jared had also taken a feat called Cantrip Mastery. Now this feat was an incredible boon for any caster seeking versatility. What it did, was instead of picking and choosing 0th level spells you had ready for the day, you could freely use any cantrip known to you, or in your spellbooks. In short, all of your cantrips counted as ready to cast, all of the time. Now Cantrip Mastery did not increase the amount of energy you had available to cast your cantrips. So left on its own what happened was you could cast any cantrip you knew until you ran out of energy to fuel them.

But combined with the Pathfinder rule, well, one removed the limit on energy you had available for cantrips, while the other removed the limit on how many you could hold available, ready to cast. So between them you could cast any cantrip known to you, and keep it up all day long.

Staggeringly useful.

Jared had become a little obsessive about collecting cantrips after that, adding all the ones he could find to his spellbook, as even if he could not think of any use for one immediately, did not mean he would not later on.

In fact, one of the signature spells taught by Redhurst, Transmute Water to Wine, was a cantrip. Now Jared's religion forbade him from drinking any alcohol, so on the surface that spell was useless to him. Nevertheless, he had gone around learning all of the versions he could find and recording them into his personal spellbook. A different version of the Transmute Water to Wine cantrip could be created for every different type of liquor, and Jared had even gone so far as paying a bounty to any student who came forward with a version he did not already have.

Then, in order to avoid duplication (because it took weeks, and lots of work to create even a new version of an old spell) the variants they brought forward all got recorded in a blank spellbook which they were soon calling the Big Book of Booze, with cantrips for creating over sixty different varieties of liquor in there before the headmaster shut down the project and seized all copies of that spellbook, citing falling grades among the students involved as the excuse.

Jared had, in privacy a while later, gently asked what volume number the headmaster had scribed on the covers of those confiscated copies of the Big Book of Booze, and how many previous editions existed in the faculty lounge, and the headmaster's own library.

Headmaster Andarlin had quietly agreed that such projects had broken out among the students before, and they had to crack down on them periodically, as the Transmute Water to Wine spell could more accurately be termed the Transmute Wizard to Wino spell if used to excess. But so long as things stayed in moderation, they were happy to let the young experiment. And, now that Jared was in possession of this information, the headmaster would consider it a favor repaid if he kept it a secret.

Jared had agreed, and that had been the end of that. It did not impact him at all that the headmaster had seized all of the public copies of that spellbook on booze, as Jared had already recorded all of those cantrips into his private spellbooks.

A lot of trouble to go to for variants on a spell he had no personal use for. But that was just one aspect of the efforts he'd gone to in order to collect cantrips generally, as even things that seemed useless grew less so when casting them was free.

And if he'd snuck up on an orc camp a time or two, and transmuted the water in their cistern into a few hundred gallons of hard liquor, then come back later when they were all drunk as skunks, what of it?

It wasn't his problem if his enemies wanted to impair themselves when given an opportunity, now was it?

Cantrips were still the weakest of all spells, but unlimited casting of them was still a Very Big Deal, and one advantage that Jared was determined to make the most of.

There were even damage dealing cantrips. Most dealt so little damage that you'd be better off beaning your enemy with a club, not even a well-made club like a baseball bat, just any branch or twisted bit of wreckage that came to hand would do about twice as much damage as half of those cantrips. So, once again, it was possible to see them as useless.

Jared had collected all he could, even cantrips that, as far as he knew, the D20 rules for them had never been published anywhere but Sean K. Reynolds' personal website. Now Sean K. Reynolds was one of the creators of third edition D&D, so a lot of gamers accepted material that flowed from his pen as valid, but the elf still counted himself lucky to have found those spells actually existing in the D20 environment, and been able to obtain copies through Redhurst's library exchange program.

Between the ones in the core rules, and the ones Sean K. Reynolds had invented, Jared now had an arsenal of ten cantrips that could deliver any one of the five major energy types (acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic) in two different ways: delivered by touching someone with your hand, or as a ray with a very short range.

The touching someone with your hand variants did twice the damage of the ray versions, but at the price of spellcasting while standing right in your enemy's armpit, which was an engraved invitation for him to stick a sword in you. So really, in almost all cases, you'd be better off beaning your enemy with a club - to a point where any wizard casting direct damage cantrips in combat was considered to have already lost the fight.

Did not mean Jared had not collected the whole set of those spells, though, tucked away into his spellbooks just in case he should ever find a use for one. And thus, via Cantrip Mastery, they all stood ready for his use at any time.

Speaking of spellbooks, Jared did not currently have one. They'd all been left behind.

More proof, if anyone needed it, that the extradimensional being was, indeed, a bastard - as for most wizards that would cripple them. It would not matter their class and levels, they would soon be reduced to being nothing more than a commoner.

Not having a spellbook hampered him, but not as much as one might think, having already prepared a 'just in case' contingency in the form of taking an alternate class feature called Boundless Mind that traded the wizard class feature that gave him a small animal as a familiar, for the ability to not need to use a spellbook to prepare his spells - to effectively have the Spell Mastery feat for all of the spells he knew.

Now Spell Mastery was a feat that did not get a lot of attention. By itself it was horrible, trading something as rare and precious as a feat for the ability to prepare a very small number of spells without a spellbook. Later sourcebooks built on that foundation and made it less bad, even situationally very useful. But the core feat drew no excitement without the possibilities added by later supplements.

However, Boundless Mind made it both cheap and broadly applicable. Which made it useful.

If not for that alternate class feature, his current situation would have been crippling, as he not only lacked a spellbook, on this world there existed none of the usual resources for supplying one. There were no other wizards he could kill and take their spellbooks from, no towns bearing magic shops selling either empty spellbooks or ink, not even any magical creatures who might reasonably supply sources for crafting appropriate parchment or ink from.

No, he would have been well and truly stuck, all but helpless in an awful situation. As things stood it was merely awkward, as he'd set up his spellbooks so they had advantages like reducing his study time.

In the game, people never noticed things like spending an hour of study each morning. But living that? Jared rather cynically suspected the majority of college students did not supply themselves with as much study time, so rigorously or steadily. And if professional students could not do it, it was probably the case that almost no one really wanted to.

After all, an hour was enough time for a really good workout, and how many people managed to do that every day?

As a proportion of the population, he'd guess it was so tiny as to be insignificant.

No, it took both dedication and discipline to be a wizard, not just intelligence. But why make things any harder on yourself than they had to be? So, in his studies of the various D20 manuals in his life back before, when it was all a game, he'd noted a material that let a wizard prepare his complete compliment of spells in only ten minutes. So of course he'd sought out and obtained a supply of that material once at Redhurst, and made his spellbooks out of that.

Then he'd made a mint selling that special material to other wizards.

The secret had eventually gotten out that material was Mind Flayer skin, and he'd obtained his own source by hiring a party of adventurers to bring him one, alive and Feebleminded so it was not any kind of threat. Putting a cheap Ring of Sustenance on the monster's finger so it no longer had to consume sapient brains each month to survive, he'd kept it locked up and magically asleep with someone who would harvest that skin twice daily, then regrow it magically.

His biggest expense at that point had been painkillers for the mind flayer, as he did not want to be responsible for anything evil; and torture, even if the mass-murdering monster deserved it, was evil.

But then he had not been at that even a year before a member of the faculty had broken in and discovered his secret source for the super fast spellbook memorization material. And after that it was not long before everyone on campus was doing it. The bottom had dropped out of the market and prices plummeted. So many mind flayers had been captured and put in similar arrangements the school bookstore had started to sell the material at a rather substantial discount to students, faculty, staff, and alumni - discounted even over the current, devalued, rate.

No way he could compete with that. He'd lost his market share and that was that.

Oh well. Despite his expenses, like hiring those initial adventurers to bring him a mind flayer in the first place, he had made a tidy profit on the venture. Not that he hadn't spent that money, along with other small fortunes, on preparing gear he no longer had with him. But you win some, you lose some.

It paid to be philosophical about some things, as everybody suffered losses sometime.

At least Headmaster Andarlin had remarked "this repays several of the favors you owe me" when he had taken possession of that secret in the name of the school. At that level, favors were a currency more valuable than gold, so in that aspect at least Jared felt confident he had gotten off easy. It could have been so much worse.

When you owe a near-epic spellcaster favors, there is no practical way to say 'no'. And the things that bother them at that level are never easy to resolve. So it could even be counted as a miserable little third-level like him getting lucky, not owing more than he did to the level-twenty.

But oh, the money had been sweet back when it was flowing.

Not like that had been his only income stream, but it had been by far the most successful. And while day to day living costs as an adventurer could be surprisingly cheap, actually *surviving* the career? That was considerably more expensive.

Jared had been forced to stop hiring higher level adventuring parties on escort missions to take him to magical locations he'd remembered soon after that income stream had dropped. A pity, as magical tourism could actually increase one's power, if you knew what you were doing, that is. Just visiting certain places was enough to permanently change you for the better - the trick was getting to them, then back out alive.

Hence the escort missions.

Now the school made regular field trips to a half dozen of those locations. Ah well, more favors recovered, and it's not like he did not want his fellow Redhurst attendees to survive. But at the same time he'd like to be able to actually keep one of his secrets secret, once in a while, which was proving to be difficult around a meddling headmaster who considered you an intriguing source of generally useful ideas.

Anyway, the place where the Boundless Mind alternative class feature really shone was not in preparing one's spells despite being separated from one's spellbooks by a manipulative extradimensional bastard. No, such events happen very rarely, and tend to be resolved fairly quickly. No, where it really performed was in combination with those feats that had been intended to build on Spell Mastery.

Jared had taken another feat, one called Fire in the Blood, that enabled him to exchange any spell he had ready to cast for any other spell covered by Spell Mastery, of equal level or lower. What this did in combination with Boundless Mind was to effectively hold every spell he had ever known all ready simultaneously.

Now it did not give him energy to cast all of them. He did not and almost certainly never would ever have that kind of energy, at least not for his higher level spells (cantrips were another matter, thanks to Pathfinder). But it did give him a comfortably broad array of options when it came time to using what energy he did have, as Redhurst students were expected to graduate with thick spellbooks crammed with hundreds of spell formulas - and Jared had not been a slacker in that department.

He liked to think that what it did was turn every card in his hand into a wildcard, able to become nearly anything in the deck, even if it did not do anything by itself to increase the number of cards in his hand.

Of course, unlike cards in games, a third level wizard had very definite limits on the power of spells he could cast. So while he had lots of options, none of them were rated as any more powerful than the ability to Levitate, or turn Invisible. Those were both second level spells, and second level was currently his upper limit for how powerful a spell he could cast.

So, in summary, he had access to all of the cantrips all of the time, and could cast them forever. While his higher level spells he could pick and choose on the fly, so long as he still had the energy to cast them, which was far from limitless.

Still, great things had been done with less.

Of course, Headmaster Andarlin was trying to make this kind of training standard for all Redhurst students now, which was leaving Jared kind of miffed. Really, what use was it to come up with gamebreaking advantages no one would expect, if the school then starting churning out people with those abilities as standard so everyone expects them?

Frankly, it had been some time since Jared had seen the headmaster's owl familiar, a couple of years at least. In fact all of the faculty's familiars had been disappearing lately, almost as if they'd been trading them away for an alternate class feature...

At the end of Jared's ruminations, he decided to be amused by his current situation. It wasn't as if hating this life was going to be useful, and a positive attitude often was.

He would need that positive attitude in Worm, where the local power structures consisted of bad to worse - especially the government, which was run by the most immoral, and incompetent, secret conspiracy he'd ever heard of. Powerful, but Oh! The waste! The inefficiency! The stupidity! Not to mention having about the same sense of right and wrong as the one that made Adolph Hitler the man he was.

The wizard had already decided that he would be joining none of the local sides, as they were all bad guys to one degree or another.

So for as long as he was staying here, he would be forming his own side, his own team.

After all, he knew how to work with an adventuring party.

OoOoO

Story Day Two, April 7th 2011, Thursday - Early Morning

OoOoO

It was early morning, dark and hours before dawn, when Jared emerged from the water, having stopped to set up several bolt holes along the way. He could not do much at his level, but long experience adventuring, both as a game, then lately as a job, had taught him to always, ALWAYS have somewhere to run to, a place to go to ground and hide, and then to have backups for in case the first one fails.

Before leaving the water, when it was still waist-height, he reached down to below his knees and pulled out a rent backpack with some holes in it, but the contents were still good. Claiming from one of the side pockets a money clip filled with cash, he transferred that to his own pocket and slung the rest onto his back, continuing his march out of the sea.

He had chosen a spot on the shore without people, shielded from distant view by terrain features and buildings, and emerged only under a spell of Machine Invisibility. So cameras, microphones, infrared pickups, sonar and all of that would ignore him as though he did not exist. He also had up a Hermetic Membrane that prevented hair, skin, sweat or other DNA-carrying evidence from being left behind. Hermetic Membrane was a cantrip, but Machine Invisibility was a second level spell. Both were configured to last for several days.

It was safer that way. He was *quite* aware of the modern world's obsession with both surveillance and forensics, as well as the current government's 'See, Want, Take' attitude towards anyone with superpowers - something they would have no problem at all extending to cover someone like him, despite his magic being a learned skill, quite unlike the local parahumans.

So he intended to give them no openings.

Next he cast Prestidigitation.

Prestidigitation was a favorite of his. It was a cantrip that in an earlier version had been called "The Littlest Wish," because it could basically do anything, so long as you did not expect too much. It could brush your teeth and freshen up flowers, carve roast beef and create light, make one thing taste like another, exterminate a pest or even grow out your hair a couple of inches, among many other things. So long as you did not ask too much of it, so long as the effects were small, local, and limited, there wasn't much it could not do, but mostly what it got used for was cleaning.

What's more, Prestidigitation was generous. Cast it once, and its unmodified duration was an hour, and you could keep getting little effects out of it for that full time.

Casting that cantrip to first clean himself from the various substances picked up by swimming in dirty water, then dry himself and his clothes, the wizard then proceeded up the shore, casting a few Mending cantrips along the way to repair small damage to his wardrobe.

Well, first things first. Seeing as how he was out of sight of the beach, having got behind some houses and finding a vacant lot with some clearly abandoned cars in it (the rust, lack of wheels, broken windows, plants growing through empty windowframes, and the only paint on them being gang tags being good indicators), the wizard selected one, then proceeded to cast Mending cantrips upon it.

Mending repairs some damage to objects. Now there were two ways to view this spell, there was the way it was written, and the way that everybody played it. The way it was written restricted it to objects of one pound or less, which was next to useless as it could not even repair ordinary tools like a carpenter's claw hammer that way. So naturally the way everybody played it was to flat-out ignore that restriction.

Otherwise they would hardly use the cantrip at all. And if they never used it, if it did not make any appearance in their games, they could hardly be said to be 'playing' with it, now could they?

So the people who played it, used it without that restriction.

Jared's group did as well, so he began to cast. Being a cantrip meant he could cast it all day, and as he did there began to be something very much like time-lapse photography viewed in reverse, as with every spell some small portion of the car repaired itself; rust spots clearing up, dents evening out, rents closing, glass shards flying up out of the dirt and weeds to reassemble themselves as proper windows, and small parts reattaching, as the tires, dashboard and upholstery gradually grew a bit back together with each casting of the spell.

Mending did not repair a lot per casting, only 1D4 points, but then Jared had been stunned to learn how few hit points the D20 Modern setting gave to cars - usually only in the realm of thirty or so. 1D4 averaged 2.5 per roll, so ten castings of Mending ought to have fixed 25 points of damage. He could cast ten Mendings per minute, and was at it nearly five minutes on the clock before the car was in pristine condition, meaning even if he'd gotten bad rolls the vehicle had been somewhere over fifty points of damage below zero. Humans got disabled at zero hit points, and machines stopped functioning there as well. So fifty below zero was a stunning amount of damage. But he had to admit, the ruined wreck had reflected it.

Finally, with the last hit point restored, even the paint job was perfectly intact.

Then the wizard busied himself using his still-active Prestidigitation spell to clean the vehicle up, remove the gang tags, clear out the dust and grime of decades of abandonment from inside and out, and finally give the whole thing a bright polish.

It looked brand new and showroom fresh. It even smelled clean.

The plates had been stolen a long time ago, so he replaced them with a set of fresh Georgia dealer plates quickly conjured via Prestidigitation out of stray cardboard that had been blowing by, then turned a plastic shopping bag into the bit you put into the back window as a receipt to confirm a recently sold auto.

It would only last for a couple of hours, and was not authentic. But it would pass most inspections, unless someone ran it through the system.

Then he tried to open the door and climb inside only to discover the doors had been locked when it had last been parked here ages ago, and the elf had to resist the urge to facepalm, as it would have been so easy to have checked and unlocked the doors before repairing everything.

After a moment's consideration he cast Mage Hand, another cantrip, this one giving him 5lbs of telekinetic force that he could direct as desired, then used that to unlock the doors from inside.

A moment later he was sitting in the driver's seat, holding his head in his hands as he'd just discovered they had not left the keys in the ignition either.

Now he had trained in the skill Disable Device, which under Pathfinder rules also covered picking locks. But he knew his DM would assign him hefty penalties using skills, taught by thieves familiar with medieval locks and machinery, against modern devices without at least acclimating himself to the new technology first. Penalties heavy enough it was basically pointless to even try.

So hotwiring the car was out of the question, at least until a modern thief had taught him how.

However, there was a feat, Visionary, that allowed one to pick any 1st level divination spell, and once selected cast it at will as a spell-like ability. Jared quite liked divination spells, as they made life both easier and safer, so as he'd used extraordinary methods to pick up a truly dizzying number of feats in his munchkining, he'd made certain to get several copies of Visionary, each with a carefully chosen divination spell.

He cast Spontaneous Search, instantly getting a good sense of everything that could be found at his skill level within twenty feet of where he was standing. He found the keys.

They were inside of the car.

A spare set had been tucked between the passenger side sun visor and the interior roof, probably forgotten a long time before it had been parked. Of course, he also found numerous nuts and bolts, assorted car parts, nests of rats, the keys to several other cars that were rotting in the lot, approximately thirty dollars in loose change, and more garbage than anyone would know what to do with, half buried in the dirt and weeds of the lot.

He slid over and, flipping down the visor, let the loose keys fall into his hand.

Applying a disguise from the backpack, using the now-intact car mirrors to help, then tossing the backpack in the trunk before sliding back into the driver's seat, the elf sat for a moment, contemplating his next course of action. Knowing in advance the fuel would long have evaporated from the vehicle, and not being damage was not something that Mending would fix, he cast Power Device to enable the vehicle to run without gas or concern about an empty battery, then turned the key in the ignition and for the first time in decades the engine roared to life.

Power Device was another second level spell. So he had cast two of those since he'd emerged from the water. The rest had all been free for one reason or another.

Merely the act of running the engine would recharge the battery, as there wasn't anything wrong with the battery that Mending had not fixed. He would use some of the cash to refill the tank, so that when the Power Device spell wore off, he would still have the use of the vehicle.

Putting the engine into gear he drove off, weeds losing their ancient hold on the 1967 Camaro as he pulled away, out through the broken gate on the chain link fence around the weed-choked lot, and began cruising.

Cities were big places, and in the early pre-dawn hours they were practically dead. He needed to find information, and did not have a cell phone, so he'd gotten himself a vehicle for the sole purpose of covering more ground more swiftly than his feet could carry him. Any proper source of information would do, a person, an open store with a counter clerk he could ask, a library, really he did not intend to be picky. All he really needed could probably be found in a phone book. But no luck there, cellphones had killed the payphone dead.

The clerk at the all-night gas stop was no help, just staying in his armored plastic booth, banging his head to music on his headphones, and not listening to a word that was said to him. But at least he took some money and allowed the wizard to fill up his car on gas. Jared then checked the Camaro's fluids, and finding them all empty, paid more to refill them so the vehicle would not conk out on him the moment the spell animating it expired. He pulled out with the gas stop attendant not having looked up from his smartphone's game even once.

The wizard got his first break in spotting an early morning jogger once he'd moved among better neighborhoods. A quick drive-up-and-ask got him directions to an open coffee shop, which had a telephone book he could borrow.

He got odd looks when he used parchment and a quill to copy out the information he'd needed. But then he was dressed as a masked musketeer, so it wasn't like he was avoiding attention anyway.

Under Machine Invisibly, security cameras would record nothing of him. No devices did. The only reason he was able to drive at all was the sensors running the traffic lights could detect the weight (or metal, depends on the municipality) of the car. All traffic cameras would have been getting of his drive was an empty car moving around.

That left only people, and eye-witnesses were notoriously unreliable. So he would just have to deal with the attention while trusting in his ordinary disguise skills to keep from being identified despite his costume. Considering that most of the local costume crowd ran around in very revealing spandex, he felt his wig and false beard, makeup, mask, Cyrano de Bergerac nose, floppy hat, and heavy layered cloth and leather outfit put him well ahead of the curve.

Not to mention he'd had actual training in the Disguise skill, and the only observers were the barely-awake early coffee crowd wondering why their cameras would not photograph him.

Making sure to always keep the wide brim of his ostrich-plumed hat between his face and the security cameras, because bad habits are easy to form but hard to break, he collected and rolled up his scroll containing his notes on names and addresses copied out of the phonebook (notes written in Aquan, good luck to anybody on this planet trying to translate them), bought a small gift basket and some portable food, then departed with a nod to everyone there.

Moments later, the Camaro was smoothly pulling out of the parking lot.

OoOoO

Tap.

Nothing.

Tap. Tap.

Somewhere, dimly, a noise was heard. It got ignored.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Sleep was good. Sleep was life. Noise was not good. A figure rolled over under the covers, pulling the pillow more closely over her ears.

There was a pause.

Then her alarm went off.

Taylor did not jerk awake or jump out of bed. Sleep was released grudgingly, and under much protest. Dragged awake unwillingly, her arm shot out of bed groping for the alarm clock. Silencing it, she emerged from under her covers reluctantly, but alertly, ready but unwilling to go through another day of the hell that was her life.

And if she felt a little more tired (or reluctant) today over other days, what of it? She...

Tap.

Eyes darted first to the alarm clock, which had made no further noise, but what the [bleep!]? It was a full hour before when she usually got up! Then her gaze went to the window, where a masked man, a cape in a musketeer-like outfit was standing, looking in and smiling at her!

In one hand the cape (a hero? It wasn't anyone she recognized) was holding a basket filled with a few danishes, some fruit, and a couple of drinks. The other hand had been raised, tapping on her window like a man might knock on a door.

She felt a momentary urge to faint, but shoved that aside. Panic was near, but she overrode that reaction too. Why hadn't her bugs... ? But no sooner had the question been asked than she had her answer. Reaching through her bugs' senses she could tell they were avoiding him. Some kind of insect repellent, or something like that. None of her bugs would come close to him on their own. Now that she was aware of that she instantly took command and overrode their natural instincts, forcing a small swarm to close on him despite the smell, and that worked...

Tap. Tap.

Oh. Right. She supposed she ought to do something about the stranger standing in her window before any of the neighbors woke up and saw him there.

Deciding that any cape deliberately drawing her attention, and possibly offering breakfast, at least wanted to talk, Taylor threw on her robe over the warm winter sweats she wore as pajamas. Then, feeling a bit more psychologically secure even if the situation did warrant a little panic, she went and unlatched the window, feeling oddly like she was answering her front door.

"Yes?" She was proud at least her voice did not choke up. How did he find out about her? Where did he learn where she lived? Who was he? Along with a thousand other questions all swirled through her mind. But outwardly at least she kept her composure, as though this visit was normal.

"Hello," the cape said softly but cheerfully, offering the fruit basket to her. "I have need for an insect-controlling cape with a good range to help me on a reconnaissance mission, trying to locate the hidden, underground bases of the supervillain Coil before he kidnaps one of the mayor's family and holds her for ransom. Would you happen to have any idea where I might find such a person?"

A hero! Taylor's heart thudded with excitement inside of her chest. Well, at least he was fighting a supervillain. It counted. And he was doing it to protect the mayor's family! That certainly sounded heroic to her. It was straight out of the cape shows. She'd even heard of Coil. He was some minor villain who used mercenaries armed with tinkertech lasers. He did not count for much, being strictly a small-time villain, but that sounded just like something her speed, an easy target to get started on.

Heart thudding busily in her chest, she tried to control her excitement. Catching sight of his ridiculous oversize nose, she realized his costume was a tribute to the classic Cyrano de Bergerac, and appreciated that. Coughing, she cleared her throat. "And what if I did?"

The cape pursed his lips, nodding, eyes contemplative, assessing, "It's a good answer, but it gives too much away. In the future, I'd advise playing more innocent, childlike even. I'd suggest something along the lines of 'Well, I might have heard rumors of something like that on PHO. I could do some looking. Is there a way such a person could contact you if I could find them?' That way, you could subtly arrange for a meet elsewhere, in costume, without giving anything away. Pretend like meeting me here was normal, just like you were turning away another door-to-door salesman. Really, it's hard to go too far in protecting one's secret identity."

"Thank you," Taylor blushed, pleased by the praise (she did not get much). Then she coughed into her fist. "I mean..." she trailed off, thinking.

"I blew it, didn't I?"

"Shh, pretend you didn't." He instructed kindly. "Think it through. Getting caught off guard it's easy to make mistakes like this. Just prepare the answer you might have used if you hadn't slipped up, and it will come more easily if you are ever confronted like this again."

"Alright, um..." she realized it was freezing, standing there with the window open like this. "Can't you just come inside? It's a bit cold to be doing this."

"Agreed," he answered, flowing in through her window as she made room to allow him entrance. "But we will want to do a few role-plays, acting out scenarios like this one, because pretty much every time you are confronted by someone who knows too much, it goes better if you have play-acted out something similar. A little familiarity helps like you would not believe. Also, a point to remember is that nearly every important moment in life comes as an interruption to something else. So it's a good skill to develop, to prepare to deal with things when they are inconvenient for some reason."

"Thank you," Taylor replied, genuinely glad for the instruction even as she closed the window and cut off the supply of cold air.

He began laying out danishes and fruit on her desk. "Good. I'd suggest taking a few drama courses on the side, if you continue to go solo. But if we are going to partner up, I could help you. It's sometimes better to have a dedicated instructor who can give you his full attention, rather than just be one anonymous face among thirty, waiting for scraps of teacher's time."

She thought about that for a second, before reaching for a chocolate danish, "When would it not be better?"

"Army boot camp," he replied instantly. "Or any other situation where having the teacher's focused attention is to be avoided. Oh, and before you bite that? It's a good trick, to avoid having anyone slip you a mickey, for an insect controller to use her swarm to have a few insects discretely sample any food she's offered before she eats it. That way you can be alerted, just in case there is poison."

She stopped with the danish halfway to her mouth, chastened. "My bugs senses aren't that good."

He gave forth a gallic shrug. "Most people's noses aren't that good. But they can train them. Basically any sense you have not sat down and deliberately figured out is going to lack something. I'd suggest having various types of bugs eat certain types of poison, just to get an idea of what it tastes like on their end. Use specific bugs and specific poisons to start, then expand."

Taylor blinked. "But I don't have any poisons."

He gave her a thoughtful nod, explaining, "Start with the cleaning supplies under the sink. Send only a few bugs, and all of the same kind, to sample them deliberately. Then see if that type of bug can identify surfaces cleaned by those supplies in places you have not prepared deliberately. Do the same thing with different kinds of bugs, and different chemicals, and go from there. As a bug controller with a wide range you have the potential to be an absolute monster at reconnaissance, an advantage most capes would give up their tights for, as they have to wander around hoping to stumble upon something obvious, while you are constantly getting told information by millions of little spies."

She hadn't thought of it like that. Ok, maybe her power was not so useless after all. At least there was one thing that it could do well, if she could train it up a little like he was suggesting. Discretely, a portion of her mind diverted a few roaches to go sample the Draino.

"For those of us not surrounded by literally billions of better-than-military grade chemical sensors," he picked up a danish, then tore it in half, offering her both halves. "We generally wait to see what the other person has started eating, then have some of that. It still leaves you vulnerable to the Dread Pirate Roberts tactic, of course, where they are immune to the poison they have dosed all of the food with. But most of your enemies won't have prepared that far ahead. Now, pick a half of the danish. I'll have one half, and you the other. Fruit is also hard to doctor with drugs without leaving obvious signs. So check over the skin to make sure there are no punctures, then either wipe the fruit down with a bit of cloth under guise of shining it up a little, or don't eat the skin as they might have spread something on the outside. But for the most part, don't eat near someone you don't trust."

Taylor wished she could take notes. She took half of the offered raspberry danish and bit in. It was delicious.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

It might amuse people to know that, unlike most D&D self-inserts, I actually have a Dungeon Master looking over this story, and anything he disallows, the character is unable to do. So literally everything has been passed by him first for approval.

This character gets away with nothing that has not been approved by the DM of my actual gaming group - including the backstory you have not seen, that took place during those five years he spent at Redhurst, studying to be a third level wizard, the level at which Redhurst students graduate, and munchkining the whole time as if his life depended upon it (because it does).

The feat Grateful Leader is found in the sourcebook Quintessential Samurai, by Mongoose Publishing. Cantrip Mastery is found in their product Ultimate Feats. The alternate class feature Boundless Mind for wizards was published in the Warcraft: Alliance Player's Guide, while the feat Fire in the Blood was published by Sword & Sorcery studios in their product Strange Lands. Mindflayer skin used as spellbook vellum is from the book Magic, by Alderac Entertainment Group.

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