Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Wizard Wednesday: The Wizard Wednesday

Or: yes, I do think I'm very clever.
Albert Arbiea ("just call me Al") was a mage experimenting with time. He was meeting with some success: he had mastered a powerful spell, which could send things up to a day into the future, and sometimes into the past.

And then everything went to shit. Hey, sometimes you mess with the timestream, and sometimes the timestream messes with you.

Now he's stuck in Wednesday. 11:59 PM he'll spend in February 3rd, but at 12:01 AM he's jumped to February 10th. It's very annoying, and he can't stop it. Since the locals only see him around on Wednesdays, they've taken him to calling him the Wizard Wednesday. He's grown to accept it.

It's tough only being around for 52 days a year. His clothes and accent grow ever older, and he has a hard time keeping up with current events. Too much happens in his friend's lives. Sometimes his birthday lands on a Wednesday and that makes him very happy.

In addition to his other magic, Al Aribea can literally punch you into next week. Indeed, he can send anything into next week. He's fairly certain he's somehow casting the spell onto himself every midnight: maybe it's burrowed into his head. To test his theory he's looking for an exorcist or an anti-magic circle, no order of preference.

Adventure Hooks

1. Al Aribea knows who did this to him: Vrydag, a colleague of his now known as Mr. Friday. It's *very* difficult to catch a man who is never around when you are. So he's hired you: he has very good intel that the two faced incompetent is sleeping in the Rat & Barrel, two days ride from here. Al won't make it there in time, but you can. He wants you to take Mr. Friday alive. And on his very careful instruction, he wants you to interrogate him. Fun fact: Mr. Friday has, on his person, a spell that can send you back in time one full year. You can fix a lot of mistakes in a year, make a lot of smart moves. If you do manage to trap him, it's his first bargaining chip.

2. Or maybe the Wizard Wednesday and Mr. Friday have always been good friends, working together to solve their plight. They're working in the woods right now, mostly through very well written notes. The entire area is getting slowly saturated with time magic: some animals are permanently hasted, others permanently slowed. Some start and stop in strange fits. The ogre has fallen apart: his body is in one place, the howls come from somewhere else, and the club and claws strikes in a third place. Everything but the wizards seems to be caught in a loop: everyone does the same thing everyday, as if a giant clock keeps resetting itself.

And all the cats are dead. Fun fact: a cat is the temporal equivalent of a canary. Near a bit of time magic they start yowling, and near a lot they just drop dead.

3. The Wednesday Wizard lives in town. He has a nice house, and it's filled with all kinds of experiments. He's hiring you to house sit: he's gone six days a week, after all. Water the plants, keep the potions from bubbling over, feed the thing in the basement once every three days. Buy this list of groceries. And please deal with all the weirdoes who inevitably show up between Wednesdays.

4. Al Aribea's old castle is time-fucked. Sections of it only appear on particular days; dungeon is only here on a Friday, the moat shows up on Mondays. Most pertinently, the top of the east tower only appears on Wednesdays, floating in mid air: it's connecting bottom half only appears on Tuesdays. Getting from one to the other is... tricky. And Al Aribea left his wand, the one he thinks can stop all of this foolishness, up in the east tower. It's not his fault: he fell out when the floor disappeared.

Like this, but with more missing.
Beware: time moves six times faster in the castle. Al didn't tell you this because he doesn't know. But the other adventuring party he sent in? They know. And they know that when the castle pieces disappear, they go somewhere outside of time. Somewhere filled with horrible things that are currently killing them.

5. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT. He's done with trying to stop this thing. Hey you! Here's a magic wand. Whatever you zap with it only appears on a Wednesday. I WANT YOU TO ZAP EVERYTHING HERE YOU GO TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

5.5. You know it's the oddest thing, there's an entire town that only appears on Wednesdays now. What's up with that?

6. His birthday is next Wednesday! He wants you to get him a party. Get some tables out here, a cake, and invite all of these people. He'll gladly teach the wizard a little time magic in return. Things like haste, slow, time stop: the trivial, easy to learn stuff.