March 10, 2004
Wednesday Weird #6: The Wizard
They have beards. They are masters of the mystic arts. They have pointy hats!
This week's Wednesday Weird isn't about just any old hedge Wizard, but the classic wize old wizard that is a staple of the fantasy genre. Although Merlin is a heck of a lot older than Gandalf, I'm not sure if he started wearing the pointy hat before Tolkein's wizard. However, since D&D and most fantasy fiction has (for better or worse) been heavily derived from Tolkein's work ever since, we've seen a lot of wizards in the Gandalf/Merlin mold. They've been dispensing sage advice and assisting heroes for ages. Sometimes they have the hat. Sometimes they don't.
Some examples of the wize old wizards can be found in Record of Lodoss War's Wort, Yoda, The Oracle from The Matrix and Fizban from the Dragonlance series.
Now, a bunch of characters are about to meet with one of these wizened old wizards. All seems pretty standard about the wizard at first. How does it get weird?
For my taked on the wizard weird, I am picturing an adventure for D&D or another sword and sorcery setting.
The PCs have been asked to go to the home of a well-known and highly-respected wizard. Upon arriving at his cottage home a few miles from the city, they find all sorts of chickens, rats and other animals around the place, but otherwise everything seems fairly normal.
The Wizard wants the PCs to help him get some rare ingredients for a spell. To get them, he will have to go to some underground caverns. He has a cold and sneezes here and there, but still....little is out of the ordinary.
As they travel with the wizard, they encounter several animals along the way...many of which are rare or unheard of in these parts.
Eventually, as they explore the caves they start encountering all sorts of magical beasts.....many of which are not normally found underground....like Gryphons and Pegasi. Due to his cold, the powerful wizard is little help and the PCs have to deal with the magical creatures themselves. It keeps getting worse and worse..
It turns out that the old wizard had a spell backfire on him and now has a magical cold. Everytime he sneezes he summons a new creature to this plane. It starts hamlessly with rats, hares and chickens but the longer the "cold" goes on, the more dangerous the creatures. Only finding the ingredients in time for the spell that will remove the magical cold will stop him before he sneezes in a dragon...or worse.
Posted by Nuadha at March 10, 2004 3:45 PM