It's Simon Hawke's umpteenth version of the post apocalyptic future, but this time with magic! Will Wyrdrune and Kira get away with their heist? How will nysteel figure into it? Will the old wizard on the cover eat those delicious Fruit Gushers? Find out this Friday, 5pm Eastern, as we delve into the world of The Wizard of 4th Street.
@Brockway please pin this in a posh Fifth Avenue gallery before some wiz kids come and steal it
I'm sure this will be as elegantly crafted as his "time travel/alternate dimension" novels
It definitely surpasses TimeWars
I'm struggling to get through Book 4 of that. No idea how there are twelve of those
Thought this was going in a different direction
And perhaps we can eventually get into the related materials
I'll tell you in advance, the artist does not have a good handle on the human form
He believes in the power of the forehead
It becomes a real problem with the women
I mean.. I've seen worse art
He knows how to draw one face shape
"I'm not afraid of the man who drew a thousand face shapes once. I'm afraid of the man who drew one face shape a thousand times."
My gems!
Protect the amulet
That wizard wearing a business suit under a robe is gonna take them from you
Business Wizard. Biz Wiz if you're nasty.
Simon Hawke's The Wizard of 4th Street starts in under an hour. Here's the preview
I'll see if I can get through this SEO assignment but I'm also going to try to get into a comedy show tonight so...sigh, this is a good one I'd hate to miss.
No worries. This may end up being like Psychodrome, where it's still ridiculous but better written than his comedy books and less insane than Steele
Not a knock against Psychodrome. I just found that one more challenging to riff
Time to begin
People think they're retro listening to their LPs, Simon Hawke was listening to 78s
@Torso Patrol Hamb$ne , you joining in for another read?
Sounds like Simon and John had a lovely weekend
God I hate that tagline
We begin with a flying cab
Does Hawke think every cabbie has a turban as part of their uniform?
thanks for reminding me!
Unimpressively flying
This cabbie sounds like he might be a genie? So I'm gonna let it slide this time.
I think it's more of a magic turban thing
Hawke's earned benefit of the doubt. But only so far
Time for another post apocalypse
Makes ya think, don't it
I hope you like the word thaumaturgy. It's going to be a thing
Seems like you could have set up an alternate reality instead of a future setting for magic, Hawke. But I'm glad you didn't because we've seen where that goes
wizard hipsters sound like a thing here
Time for a magician fashion show
never have i felt so compelled to give a fictional character a wedgie
oh god, he's going to differentiate between each word for wizard
Well, he's a drop out loser
This is a sweet dedication.
I don't like where this is going.
It went somewhere else!
Magic auction. WIZARDS ONLY
Magic replaced all tech
"Mr. Hawke? How did they rebuild civilization to match our but with magic and not create the same problems?"
"Fuck you. MAGIC!"
But there's a wizards-only auction.
Do you remember when I said the thing about thaumaturgy
Seriously, I wouldn't pursue fusion either if I could conjure up the precise gun or butter object of my choice for the same amount of expenditure in a wand instead of a 300-yard laser.
"United Semitic Republics Department of Antiquities"?
Pictured: crazy auctioneer haircut
i was really hoping for House Party hair
The haircut snaps shut if a fly lands in it
Don't let it distract you from those bambi-fuck eyes on the old man
He's Fuck Ape with a beard.
Seems like the kind of person who'd be permitted to a high stakes auction
Leon Spinks
Yes, I had to look up how to spell his name
It's going to be a thing
Black magic is one thing, but misappropriation of funds!?
So nuclear annihilation means everyone lost some cash?
How do you even bribe a magician.
Crystals
I think this is more of an ecological disaster. They stopped using oil due to the magic
But how will they lubricate their crankshafts?
Oh right, the cars are gone.
It's the jewels what from the cover
Ectoplasm?
"Wizards only" in a city with 15,000 magically licensed cab carpet conductors.
Magic's like the punk rock scene, it falls apart as soon as it becomes the standard.
You think there are enough archeological rune digs to supply this system
Steele had a more functional world, and they barricaded Prince St. against CHUDs
They probably have a holiday to bury stuff for the next year
The cab drivers are adepts. Adepts weren't listed on the sign. There are only a dozen types of magicians to keep straight, keep up
So what, they're force-sensitive, but too old they are?
This is a brilliant plan
Also, wizards are not sorcerors or mages
Those are separate classes. And there are only five mages in the world
Similarly, salamanders are amphibians, not lizards.
Wyrdrune is the kind of guy who would crawl through a perfectly good whorehouse to get to a gym sock.
Pictured: The world's wealthiest wizards
Hahaha, 800 dead because these idiots Three Stooged the fire.
Conjure Flame is a Lv 1 spell, but sure. Have flammable shit in a room only magic users will enter
Everybody has incendiary reptiles, nobody stocks an extinguisher.
Just summoning a hurricane in this ballroom
Wizards stopping in a crisis to argue minutiae is another Pratchett thing.
Yeah, but when he does it, it's because of their varying personalities being hilarious.
Proving again that Hawke is not Pratchett and he doesn't realize that
This is just 20 wannabe heroes tripping over the solution already in their way.
I'm going to take a drink every time I see something that's just Pratchett but worse.
You'll be dead by the top of the hour
Well, don't worry about that because Wyrdrune and his new friend are out of there
S&M Brunette Babe
Sweet, it's Silk Spectre 1602
Anyone have Hawke Bingo yet?
Dark haired is a hard direction to follow
So is "babe" apparently
The Wizard of the Small Apartment
Cripes, it's Disgrace Jones over here
Oh, is he dizzy? I wish Simon would tell us
Lip time
LIPS
K-ki--illll meeee buzzed the stranger, gone as soon as she had arrived.
I want it on record now that if Wyrdrune does not have a bizarre rune anywhere on his body, he can go to hell for that name
Sweet wizard shoes
No his dad showed up drunk to the birth, "Whuhyr doin'?"
Off to a great start
Good to see the latex rubber industry survived the magic apocalypse.
Yay!
Keep punching him!
He's a Best Buy employee, wrapped in a warlock, shrouded in a wizard.
That room of incompetent wizards
GDC, take a shot
The guy who lit the curtains on fire thinks blinding the entire room is inelegant.
Guys, you have my permission to blind me over trapping me in a room with 200 stampeding fools and a burning wall ten times out of ten.
And what a magename
Right now it's a deep swig of Amber ale.
Butter beer, for you muggles.
Also, the guy in cheap stage makeup criticising a smoke bomb.
Melvin and Kira
Nothing endears an audience to new characters like an argument that doesn't matter over stakes we don't know
C3P0 the broom
"Broom!" better be a curse word
Oh right. Hawke just stole the brooms from Fantasia
SEE?!
This broom just finished a Catskills summer engagement and is thrilled to return to the heart of Yiddish comedy in the Borscht Belt .
I'm also going to drink when I see something that's Douglas Adams but worse.
GDC, you don't have enough booze for this
Merlin's alive btw
The broom is a catty bitch, too
Kira is very incurious about her world
This isn't how to do exposition, Simon
Pratchett, Adams and now T.H. White. @FancyShark is right, I don't have enough booze.
Just breezing through some Arthurian legend
So the Knights of the Round Table caused an ecological apocalypse?
And that's why there's no oil?
Mordred.
There's a significant amount of time between that and The Collapse
And the tree was never found?
Felony wood chopping
Goddammit
FUCK THIS TREE IN PARTICULAR
Thomas Malory? Seriously?
You are not a subtle man, Hawke.
Pictured: Merlin being "released"
Merlin looks like an Inuit drawn by dr. Seuss.
And then Merlin single handedly saved the world
egh
Wyrdrune got kicked out of school for setting a concert on fire
Seems like his thing
Nazgul. We've got Tolkien now
It's the squiiiiiiiiid
This dude has a HISTORY of fucking up fire spells and he thought tossing a salamander would be a keen play.
A very clever sorcerer who burns everything
White Snake Wizard
"But sir! There were flammable drapes!"
More like Great White Wizard.
That's a lot of description
Lot of conservative dressing in this book
The artist decided to exclude most of that
If he gets the Mind stone, we're borked.
Mustafa is having a bad day
"The Minis, for one"
Really bad day
I'll say this
My very first thought looking at that cover was "He looks like he sweats."
"I'll just reuse this drawing of Ming the Merciless. No one will notice."
Ah wait, Rashid has the jewel
and it's the mind stone.
Paragriffin in the pawn shop
A paragriffin's just an eagle.
That's not a paragriffin, that's a mostly-turtle.
You get it, he's fat
I think the artist was trying to fuck Hawke, based on the glances these characters are throwing
I don't want to tell you how long a paragriffin should be, but no less than two sentences.
And in case it wasn't obvious that he was fat
So why do they call you Fats?
You see, Chet? You're so fucking fat, you make other characters fat!
Getting the required lip action
Fats was skinny his whole life, but his parents doomed him with that name
Fatty Arbuckle was doomed too.
Bullies saw dollar signs when Fats was called in grade school
Kira is great at bargaining
"Thanks for not just cutting my throat and taking the gems for yourself, angry rogue"
Instant seller's remorse
It was easy because you didn't haggle!
Let me see your character sheet
Oopsie doopsie
Kira has way less claim to these stones.
Like even by Thieves' Rules.
I'm so confused. She refused to haggle, then said it was easy, but she should have haggled?
Kira's not used to this ruleset. She learned on 2nd Ed
But it's okay because he seemed like he got away with ripping them off?
Might as well sell them again. What could go wrong
Kira doesn't even know their world's history, but she's the street wise one.
"Wasting your time with amateurs"? WHICH ONE OF US DIDN'T HAGGLE?!
When do we find out she's from the world with the guy who has to TK-gladiate / gamble his way to freedom?
This is some Cynosure stuff right here.
Very healthy relationship
"I hope it's on time because I hate waiting!"
"Me too!"
Might as well not try haggling again
I thought I hated you for costing me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But now that we made ten thousand twice, I want to jump your broomstick.
Once Kira learns math, Wyrdrune's so dead
Who could have foreseen this happening again
Chekov's teleport
"Now I'll light them on fire!"
"Stop it, you fucking psycho!"
This is a great approximation of my first 5e game
The dogbra constantly wished for death
It's either terrifying or adorable. I have two very different images going
A furry cobra that licks you a lot
Kira is a little slow on the uptake
Yep. Those streetsmarts. They sure are there.
A dogbra would have insane lats. I mean, imagine it.
An adorable, but lethally venomous puppy.
My dog scarfed a human turd in heroin park yesterday, so I can report that venomous puppies are real but still just barely worth it.
Would it have a voice like the king of hell?
I no-remorse love that line.
It tells you a lot.
It rules
You telling me these magic stones are magical?
Sweet. Infinite fraud
So...would the auctioneers have been able to sell them?
Looks like they're stuck together
I mean, they were tomb-raided
So how do the rules work? Shouldn't this magic property make them unstealable?
Unsellable, untossable
But perhaps not unstealable
OR
maybe if you're dead they reset
They had to slay an archeologist moments before the auction.
Oh, Fats, always fatting it up
haha, Fats thinks he knows what 'sexual' means
He's only heard stories from the mostly-turtle
Could it be magic? Nah
It doesn't mean anything to the audience. Could you maybe elaborate?
Fats calling up his hitman
I don't care how old he actually is, anyone named Fats has to be born in 1915
I don't make the rules
Fats is gonna destroy them like a 24-piece nugget box
Merlin rules in effect.
Wyrdrune gets thrown out of a bar
All Fats fall from oak trees in Sherwood when they reach 295.
Bartender's dead. It's so whimsical!
How is that not counterfeiting, I ask you.
Melty bartender
"Woah, these aren't USdollars, buddy, I just printed some art on textile-weave rectangles."
Dr. Who Cares
If your name is fats and you're not a jazz musician, you've missed your calling.
Stones giving Melvin magic steroids
Performance enhancing stones
This world sounds exhausting.
It's based entirely on charlatans.
"Istheroomshaking?Why'stheroomshaking?Whyareyoushaking?AmItalkingtoofast?"
Time for some groin kicking
I do like that we know that all these synonyms are something different, but not how.
Its currency is stuck on scarcity so everyone who can make all they need has to lie, trick, cheat, and steal to avoid penalties for artifical scarcity.
So, bitcoin?
Finally, Kira brings some skills to the table besides hustling (nonsexual)
Bitcoin what cause the Collapse.
Damnit, beat me to the crypto joke
Sure, that'll work
The…Wizard police?
"Jimmy, print me out some probable cause"
The artist decided to reduce this to ball kick, bite, fall on ass
Spider-Man left a note saying you're a bad guy so it's the clink, kid.
Melvin continues to morph into a cauliflower
This book feels like it was written for a "Chevy Chase type" of special '80s asshole.
Ah so the stones could really more actually be described as rocks
Like the crack kind
Drugs
I did so much reading
Simon Hawke spent the same amount of time coming up with authentic arabic names as HP Lovecraft.
Those foolish archaeothaumaturges
Jesus, that was something to type
"Pay me by the page, you say? What about character count?"