To Amazo

[TennyoCeres84]

While traveling with Praetorius, did he ever mention Meris, Merlin, or even Samoset? For a man who wanted to cheat death at the time, it seems like he would've tried to make a beeline for any archmage he could reach. Or did the fact that a wizard has to die before coming back deter him? And, in general, what was your former mentor like?

[IamLEAM1983]

"Warren wasn't much of a human being, but he was one heck of a teacher, I can tell you that much. He was a mage without any serious ambition: lots of talent down the sleeves but no real goal for most of his life. If anything, living off his gift was the only thing he really cared about, so a lot of what we did kind of bordered on larceny. We pulled cheap tricks by day and stuck to the usual travelling magician's repertoire, and kept our real power to ourselves.

I guess things started somewhere on our second trek across the country - from the West coast to the East, with no train lines or expressways. We stopped in every backwater town imaginable just to make a few bucks and then moved on. He caught on to the fact that he'd lost his youth, and I still had mine. I had youth and power, and that scared him. If he had more, he'd be able to live with more, maybe finally give us that king's ransom he'd talked about for so long.

We started our European and, well, Asian tour, huge fingerquotes - and I realized he didn't care about the show anymore. Being charming or good with the crowd didn't count for anything, he wanted to last. He saw me as a stepping stone to greatness, I'd say, and hid that behind quasi-fatherly bluster. In public, he'd call me his ward, say I'd beat him one day, make better shows, maybe break into scientific fields of study - but he didn't really wish for any of that to happen. If I took him on his offers and added bits of one-upmanship to my part of the show, he'd chew me out the next day. He wasn't ever verbally abusive and I'd had it too rough as a kid to care about him trying to mess me up psychologically, but he did try. Glowing praise by day, contempt by night. Because he didn't want me to cramp out his Roguish Magician act, he sent me out on library duties and slept with our temp hires - the girls we kept around to distract the audience.

Come Venice, he'd pretty much lost it. He knew all about the risks of arcane immortality - only exceptional mages have what it takes to find a way to Ascend and become Archmages, most of them burn themselves out and end up as liches - but he was determined to find a way to game the odds. I already knew I was part of his plan, and seeing as I was his research-related delivery boy, I knew everything he knew.

I mean - I'm not pure-hearted, far from it. I'm selfish and petty and more than a little lecherous - and I love what I've got going. I'm a household name and a trademark, I could drag Marvel into court for plagiarism about the way they're handling their Doctor Strange character, and I'm one of the last shreds of a time that dates back to before alien terrorism and computers that work faster than I can conjure. That Dieselpunk aesthetic all the counterculture kids rave about? I saw it, I lived it. I was a part of it.

I'm not pure-hearted, like I said, but I mean well, and I'm lucid enough to stop myself from going off the deep end. Praetorius wasn't. He was a show-man from balls to bones, and he couldn't drop the act once he had the Rod and Eye in his hands. He used me to raise Iram out of the sands, Iram ate him alive as it sank back down.

So yeah. He'd mention Meris or Merlin, sometimes - Samoset was more of a folk figure I'd get acquainted with once I'd move here. He didn't get the Wise part of Wizard, though. Neither do I, or else I wouldn't have offered to stick Hefner's soul in a Clank shell - half of the country's Post-Feminist Studies female mages shot me down online for being a sexist pig...

I'm not wise, but I know I'm not. I guess Solomon's spirit took a look at me and went 'Eh, could be worse...'"