Oswell: character profile in Seer of the Sands

Fantasy stories love their wizards: Belgarath, Allanon, Dallben, Dumbledore. You might expand your list to include Prospero, Morgan LeFay, Merlin, and even Yoda. They seem to know everything and do anything that the plot demands of them, including die and come back to life (I got my eye on you, Gandalf).

There's a place for wizards like that, but it seems to me that this characterization is just a little bit ... lazy. Formulaic. Pre-packaged. In some ways unsatisfying. The trouble is that the wizard is

I wanted to do it differently. I wanted to have the wizard who

To begin with, I had to come up with a form of magic that at least I understood (even if I didn't plan to share the rationale immediately). In my world, magic works roughly like this:

1. Wizardry is unique to the caster; there are no magic words, no mystical gestures, and no special powders or arcane runes that work for every magic-user. Each wizard must design his or her own.
2. Wizards have an easier time focusing their magic when they enchant physical objects, usually some solid, finely decorated item with engraved pictures or filigreed letters that explain what the object does. Spontaneous magic, such as casting a 3rd-level D&D
3. Wizards tend to specialize in a limited number of areas, often just one. Once a wizard becomes known for a certain type of magic, it's very difficult to branch out into other fields. One wizard might specialize in water, another in weather, another in emotion or illusion or healing, and so on.
4. Magic takes effort, usually slightly more effort than doing the thing by hand.
5. Confidence is everything. When a wizard's spell fails him, it can fail so catastrophically that he can never cast spells ever again.

Now that you know that much about the magic in my world — it isn't necessary to know the

Oswell is a young and inexperienced wizard who breaks many of the rules above. He has plenty of raw power and he

These failures — catastrophes, really — have made Oswell who he is today. If he were the heroic type of wizard, he might have gracefully learned from his mistakes and discovered the true depths of his power and control. If he had been the villainous type of wizard, he might have cackled in glee at the pain and suffering of others, or shrugged off the fatalities caused by his own errors as research, or as necessary steps on the path to enlightenment.

Oswell isn't either of these types. He's just an ordinary person who thinks highly of himself, because he can do magic and others can't. When his magic leads him into catastrophe, he simply lies about it and runs away. Far away. And changes his name.

In other words, he conceals his many failures and moves on. He reinvents himself.

This happens to Oswell a lot, too. He's created — and fled from — a number of different aliases over his young life. He's been a caravan guard named Fargas Horsewrinkle, a traveling fortune-teller named Erasmus Ravenhound, and a hedge wizard named Lukanis the Adequate; he's been a tinker, a graverobber, and a highwayman; and when the story begins, he's calling himself Shenan Butterfrock ... dragon expert.

He's just the thing Kasmina needs in order to defeat the dragon Brickwing. At least, he'll say that to anybody who will listen.