FlippantSausage
Pffft the LIBERAL WIZARD THOUGHT POLICE making sure you don't suddenly become rad at magic.
Pffft the LIBERAL WIZARD THOUGHT POLICE making sure you don't suddenly become rad at magic.
In fairness, becoming rad at magic all of a sudden feels like a thing they'd want to know about.
"Oh do you have a license for that wand?"
Considering that has been the direct cause of at least 4 near apocalypses.
Chalk it up to me coming from a country where it is legal to own a flamethrower.
I'd forgotten how much Hawke likes his big bureaucracies about weird shit.
Jacqueline sneaks backstage to meet with Jacques as he's putting on his Joker outfit
Oooof I do not like the Hugh Hefner\Joker vibe a purple robe gives you.
Turns out the change from earlier was also a werewolfing
Jacques and Jacqueline in one page. I bet that gave Hawke no trouble at all.
I guess she doesn't load her pistol with general purpose special ammo then huh? Cos I bet she isn't gonna bring down shit with it.
You don't need to magically wound a werewolf if you put a hole in the werewolf big enough to drive through!
You'd think thered be like a silver tipped, mercury cored thing to go with.
Ah, Jacques' home territory
Lol like rats are the worst part of a sewer.
If you set foot in Paris you are never more than five feet from more rats than you've had hot meals.
It's rats all the way down.
If you set foot in the Paris catacombs you are never more than three feet away from a corpse, I was told.
Undoubtedly.
Side note, the catacombs of Paris are really neat and spooky.
Jacqueline and Billy are captured before they can get in the sewer with everyone else. They meet some very flamboyant characters from the ITC
@high jakesy the conqueror We get a very different Raven here. Hawke had that name in the brain in 1990
We all did.
It was T-Minus 1 year til Raven CS Mcracken released World of Synnibarr and we were all feeling the psychic preshock.
Turns out Raveb/Kimberly is another old student of Merlin
I guessed it from your fakename.
God, Kimberly is such a lame truename. Its like she has the soul of a 1995 girl from the Valley
BOOO turning in outlines. I missed all of this and now I'm meeting family for dinner.
1990 was the high watermark for Hawke's lip moistening
"I COMMAND THEE KIMBERLY! BY THE POWER OF YOUR TRUENAME! GO TO PROM WITH ME!"
Oh well, at least I made it as far as Neo-Edwardian Bebe Neuwirth.
I think you mean Rubenesque Raven
Im pictureing Agent Piccard as Patrick Stewart, as well.
France has weird legal rules for the requests of ancient wizards
"Max Siegal looks sooo guilty thooo!"
"Release my friend from yon drunkard tank!" "Why would we do that?" "I am" eyebrow wiggle "A WIZARD!" "Oh shit, sorry, sir. Right away."
This is why you should stay in wizard school, kids
Britain and America run on common law, France runs on magic law
Magic law: Magic does what it wants.
This is the wizard equivalent of prematurely ejaculating and hitting someone in the eye. Disappointing and irresponsible.
Wyrdrune is a great and noble hero
Okay but lets be fair, Kira be nasty, there's poo in that water.
We seek adventure! Unless it's yucky then save yourself, asshole.
The protagonists of these books have been featured so little in the past two books. I'm not even sure if these two are still an item
She is going to get a UTI and then we will see who is laughing.
Also neither of them knows Tenser's Floating Disk.
Wyrdrune got really pissy after he found out that the magic of Disneyland wasn't real
"A little dirty water isn't going to kill your." I mean, it could. Are wizards immune to dysentery? Cholera? The literal plague?
Yes. No. Depends on which variant.
He's got a point while bitching about the lights.
Wyrdrune falls deep in the shit water and encounters the rat king
HAH THIS IS THE REAL DARK SOULS NOW!
Wyrdrune didn't wanna go down to Blight Town.
And thus did Wyrdrune and Modred get eaten by a rat king.
Modred, being effectively a god at this point, was only mildly inconvenienced.
Wydrune went to live in Billy's head.
The battle doesn't go well for the giant rat
Or, you know, that happens.
In fairness to the giant rat it was expecting to encounter level 1 wizards.
2 at the outside.
It seems kind of rude to face a giant rat when you're... whatever they are. Casting 9th level spells?
Great Glintstone Shard?
Or one of those bonkers 5e cantrips that never stops scaling until you roll ALL the d10s
I'm always amazed how these books make magic sound really dorky and unimpressive. "They killed a rat king! With sparkler fingers."
Well, at least you had one last show.
Oh there's your trouble my dude. Your blood belongs on the inside.
Honestly it feels like just throwing magic at things and not even bothering to cast a spell is more effective in these books than actual spells should be.
It's like he played Magicka 30 years before it came out.
It's all sith lightning fingers
Guy, I don't know, I think maybe you should have not let them steal your blood.
Maybe try not bleeding to death in a sewer pining for the eldritch horror in a woman suit who pegged you?
I bet he didn't even think of that.
When you get pegged by a god, there's really no other way this ends
Got that boomer brain.
What glorious book is this?
The Wizard of Rue Morgue.
Simon Hawke.
Its a real gem
Resaerch must be done! Been years since I read a new book that wasnt about… like building things
i thank you!
Colette, exotic dancer, meets with Leila (dark one) and Michel (werewolf)
It's nice to see werewolves be positively represented.
Stop me if you've heard this one, A werewolf, a dark one, and an exotic dancer walk into a sewer......
beb.
And all of a sudden, I'm back in the last Hardy Boys book
The fuck is it with fantasy authors and pickpockets?
This is a horrible stereotype of Parisian street children despite the fact that it is in fact entirely true.
A bit of male gaze here I feel
specifically french pickpockets
Did they all at some point visit a city and forget to keep their money in their sock like Mom said.
look, if you're going to wander the Parisian streets and leave your money in an easy to get space and look like a tourist, you're going to have it stolen by street children.
That's just Paris.
At least it was her eyes that were gorgeous npt her tits
A bit?
Everyone knows if you want to keep away pickpockets, you put jelly on a wallet that contains no money.
So... uhh... I know it's a common phrase, but... has anyone really wanted a woman that could break in half when you poke her?
Jesus. "Face of an angel and the body of a harlot"
This is hornier than a Sunday Chickweed.
Yeah I mean I might've done a subtle understatement there
Really? I tried chasing the street urchins down while shouting give me back my money and waving a knife.
I should have tried that.
Also, it turned out they didn't steal my wallet at all!
Yeah the downside to that strat is the little shits run really fast.
And you run out of knives if you start throwing them.
And customs frowns on shuriken.
Yet her nipples were slightly downturned so it looked like her chest was blinking.
Meanwhile, the dark ones start child-wrangling
What.
What you should want is the face of a harlot and the body of an angel.
Man, Fagan really stepped up his game when he became Lord of Shadow.
So hot.
That would be the face of an angel then
Shit, those kids got cenobited.
I mean my karate might be weak but O feel the nody of a harlot doesnt do much to mitogate that
No matter how big the breasts/dick is/are
Maybe he meant rickety and with ribs showing.
Modred compares acquiring necromancic power with investing
"And that is why we should invest in Dogecoin For Wizards."
@CEO of God J So, Simon Hawke stole your character idea a few years before you were born.
Wow
"And yes, DogeWizCoin is different."
That really turned fantasy into work didnt it
I know I'm convinced to become a necromancer.
Necrostonks!
Whats the benefits in seeking employment as a nevromancer
Is there dental?
Yes, because you get all the teeth you want.
Indeed!
I wonder where the necromancers could be hiding
"The Catacombs! That Paris famously has!" "The Catawhatnow?!"
This writer must get hard for multi-syllabic words!
Guys, I havent read much of these books, but I'm getting the idea that maybe Wyrdrune is not quite bright?
Did he just copy a section of the encyclopedia into his book?
Like is he a wheel idiot but for magic? But also not good at magic?
Guys, I think I want the necromancers to kill Piccard?
.
Kill him and eat him?
He should learn swedish or german, we have syllables for days
I think the writer is a word idiot maybe
Like he knows only syllabus
He got expelled from wizard Harvard for burning down a concert on accident
He claimed it was an accident, and on later determination it turned out that yes, it was an accident, he's just that dumb.
Shit hes like a character from Revenge Of the Nerds: Hogwarts Style.
So, Jacques gets burned through his eyes several times to become part of the Dark Ones plans. Colette strip dances for Leila then has a threesome with werewolf boy
Doesn't really seem fair
Hot.
And to be fair, if I was going to reforge someones flesh with my dark power, I'd melt the old shit smelling guy and fuck the dancer too.
Hey, just because you're evil doesn't mean you need to be a bigot.
Go and sit in the corner and think about why what you said was wrong.
No you can hate everyone
Thats not racist
At least give him a chance to shower and not do it in a literal sewer.
That bastard
Like if the old man was then like "NO! SHOWERS ARE HOW THE FBI TRACKS YOU AND STEALS YOUR THOUGHTSEMEN!" then I'd melt him.
Meanwhile, Max swears off nudes
I love that he learned entirely the wrong lesson.
Not "Maybe paint with more than one person around so you have an alibi" but "Nude women are nothing but trouble."
I feel this writer may have done slightly less research than necessary
Simon Hawke doesn't do research.
He just lets the mind fairies fill his brain with thoughts.
I mean maybe to@ of finland would have that issue but most artists wouldnt
Also, apparently he's a Russian guy who changed his last name to Hawke for real.
"Ze galleries, zey want your nudes!" said no one, ever.
Unless they were showing exclusively tom of finland
Trust me on this
I dunno, a lot of Parisian galleries show nudes.
Aside from that.
What they don't want are impressionist nudes, I'd think.
I'm not even sure what that would look like.
An impressionist nude would be interesting.
Google is telling me that I can't possibly mean what I'm saying.
I'm glad you guys are worrying about the realism of this book about wizards in the future
Well the characters are still technically supposed to be humans right?
For the catacomb adventure, the Dr Makepeace (giant fairy) shows up for no reason
If Star Trek taught me anything its that fiction is real.
And carpetbag? In the future?
I think not.
I don't think it's particularly well written and I kind of want to chase the characters through a forest late at night and devour their flesh despite not being a werewolf, so all I really have is criticizing the plausibility of the things that aren't the writing and the characters.
My grandma wouldn't be caught dead with a carpetbag, and she is dead.
Oh, hey, they brought in Sebastian Makepeace.
The adjectives and adverbs makes reading this hard
He is a fairy in both senses of the word.
I can only vouch for one of them, but I am 100% certain of the other.
He must have been payed by the word
Oh that is why he dresses like a Jojo character then.
Fairies have super scent powers
Still a few more hours to absorb another being.
What? No, don't be homophobic. He dresses like that because he's a moron.
And a prat.
Oh I was talking about the other kind of fairy.
The explicitly magic kind.
That does not help, no.
He was introduced to us, I think, by tricking a very drunk man in the only way you could make that man's life worse.
RIP Piccard
Lambent?
"AIEE MADEMOISELLE LE LOUP! YOUR TEETH 'AR ZO SHARP!"
"Argh my throat!"
Oh, good.
That is exactly what I wanted. I rarely get that.
"Now I will never get to fulfill my dream of opening an erotic bakery!"
So, Suzanne was kidnapped. Max and Co. decided to follow Colette because she said she knew Suzanne. This leads to an obvious trap
Max......my dude.
You were juuuuuust about clear of this.
Just indiscriminate prostitutes, no further questions.
Mind controlled, murderous street urchins have descended upon the city
Cool.
Welp.
Evil wins!
Not fucked up at all, having mobs of demented bestial orphans cause chaos and bloodshed.
Hurray for evil!
Up though the sewers come the pickpockets
Huh......Parisian police aren't usually armd.
I smell a conspiracy!
Which would make this plot slightly more interesting!
So its probably not a thing!
Let your imagination soar! This is a land of magic and armed French law enforcement!
So, this takes place in a future where there was a post-apocalypse. The world was restored after Merlin brought magic back to the world
Let's not apply present French policing to this
I mean, in the context of everything else in the world, the police being armed in Paris is not unusual.
Fine but only grudgingly.
But there are armed units in the Parisian police district today anyway.
What annoys me is that it's post-apocalyptic but Merlin did his level best to make everything look like it had before the apocalypse, just with magic.
At which point why have the apocalypse?
Armed police seem kind of pointless if magic is common enough to displace stage magicians.
I mean, a gun will still kill you and you don't need magic to use it.
Very few wizards have the power or flexibility to stop a gun from killing them.
Oops, Max done got werewolf'd
See? Even Modred has a gun. Guns are useful.
Whats the point of magic if you can't at least telekinetically block a slide or cause a misfire?
I mean, you probably could, if you're fast enough.
And precise enough.
This magic post apocalypse is lame.
Guns are fairly well designed these days to not do either of those things, and that's not technology that's dependent on a whole lot of material sciences. The apocalypse didn't make people stupid, just sort of knocked them around a bit.
So you'
Billy/Merlin enters their knight transformation from
So you would need to know someone is pointing a gun at you and block the slide or misfire the gun in that moment... while all the other guns pointed at you are firing.
I was not expecting this book to have so many werewolves.
Guns are very good at killing people.
I'm going to ignore your racism.
The Dark Ones primary move is to werewolf people
Look, it works.
That didn't happen in the first book, but it's become a thing
I guess the Dark Ones were released at the end of the first book, so that makes sense
Look, I'm not a werewolf, but it's hard to imagine a situation where werewolfing people isn't the best move.
I have plenty of good friends that are werewolves.
Seems like a good way to have a shedding problem depending on the season.
We hardly knew ye, Azreal
"Look, I'm not a werewolf…" sounds like something a werewolf would say. J'accuse!
OH SHIT THEY DID THEIR ULT!
Very inconspicuous in Paris
So many Parisian jaguars
Look, I'd be happy to discuss your ridiculous claims. Shall we meet at my place on the moors one of these evenings?
Modred's having a great time
Ouch, melted rubber on the skin.
He'll be fine.
Gonna hurt like a bitch when he peels it off if he has any body hair.
You don't want to be the necromancer that died to bullets
NOTHING CAN KILL A NECROMANCER.
Hahahah didnt even get vaporized by THE LIVING TRIANGLE!
EXCEPT EVERYTHING THAT CAN KILL EVERYONE.
"HOT PARABELLUM! MY ONLY WEAKNESS!"
I think the media shouldn't be that surprised, something similar just happened in Disneyland, Mr. Third Officer
"They used my one weakness: geometry!"
I bet they take Satanic murder cults much more seriously now that magic is a thing again.
Max was de-werewolfed, but blinded. But that just means the big bucks!
Got that sweet eye insurance too, i bet.
And we will write a song about her, as Derrick and the Dominos
That's a lot of info to relate secondhand so flawlessly and esoterically
"No, of course we aren't going to make an effort to track her down. She could be anywhere, did you not see how she turned into a fucking PANTHER?"
And we end with the sentient broom buying designer clothing
"And god knows there's a jaguar infestation in Paris so there's absolutely no way to find her."
The broom has money?
Does.... does the broom........NEED money?
We have defeated The Wizard of Rue Morgue
So concludes the 58th edition of The Book Cage
That was a strange one, thanks so much @gellaho
*Theater lights come back on, exit signs light up. Audience applauds.
Time for me to get some dinner and distribute medications, so thanks for an entertaining evening, friends.
Always fun @gellaho Thanks for letting me come along for the ride. I always wanted to see a Parisian sewer!
Can a poor sewer-illusionist get a recap?
I am but a humble morlock whose acrobatic body once seduced Josephine Baker.
it's the latecomer!
pelt him with eggs!
kinda bummed that I missed this one due to a power outage
I thought I'd get most of it but I had to turn in an outline.