The Wizard

The Tailor's Tale

But before all that, he was a simple poor tailor's assistant/servant (the assistant was poor, not the tailor) in a poor old country in a medieval continent. The tailor would overwork him, having him work till late night often. One of these nights he was working on an order from a rich gentleman/knight/nobleman who had requested clothes that would make him amaze the attendees of his next ball. The tailor had long gone to sleep, the moon had risen and gone back down again and the young man was still at it lest he doesn't finish in time and is punished by his master/employer. All the light he had in the all-consuming dark was a small fire produced by a little bit of raw ashstone.

And at that time, the young boy had a streak of inspiration. Perhaps, due to a sudden ambition to create the best product he could or as a means to try and get the job done faster so he could manage to get a couple hours of sleep before he had to be up again; he took a bit of the Devil's Ash, imbued the thread with it and whispering words for charisma and making an impression, sew it in the clothes.

The next day, the clothes were prepared for delivery and the assistant received a beating for wasting precious medstone. And it might have ended there, but as luck would have it, the gentleman's ball (were they balls in medieval times or is there a different term for the meetings of the noble/rich in those times) was truly a success and the man excitedly told his friends where he bought the clothes that had so much helped impress the world.

Soon afterwards another knight arrived to the tailor's shop having a strange request. Referencing his friend's success he asked clothes to be made of the same sort such that would convince a woman that most detested him to marry him. If they managed to do that, he promised to make this shop the richest and most famous in the country.

The tailor agreed for of course how could he not say yes to such an offer. However, he soon came to despair realising that nothing he created seemed to fit the description to be able to change hearts in such dramatic manner. Fearing to report failure, for the knight was rumoured to be an ill-tempered man, quick to anger and possibly having killed his servant, too, the tailor eventually turned to his assistant, asking for his help: if he had done something special last time, could he do it again? The young man, seeing the opportunity, asked for better working conditions and pay as well as getting the credit for making it. If he got that, he would quickly whip up the most charming clothes the tailor had ever seen. Agreeing to the terms and supplying the ashstone, the tailor let his assistant do his magic, almost literally, and soon enough the knight was given the product he requested and some time later, the news of the man and his loved one's engagement were heard.

True to his word, the knight spread word of the shop's achievements and the tailor who'd made it happen. Indeed, feeling indebted to his benefactors, the man traveled the country and visited friends, acquaintances and more, as if to let everyone that was someone know who was the root to his happiness.

Sure enough, the success of the shop and its two tailors, now partners, was great and they became renowned nation-wide. They got many jobs, of all sorts, and created the most fashionable garments in the land. They quickly became truly rich and the business increased yet. And one day, a new request came, perhaps the biggest of them all. The king of the land, fearing a rebellion from the lower classes, asked to be dressed in garments that would allow him to win the kingdom over.

The former boss wondered if something of the sort was even possible, but the young man gladly took the job. Although a difficult project, the craftsman was finally satisfied after ten days of work. The King was sent his clothes and was able to come out and speak to his people once again, miraculously appeasing the at the time angry masses.

Peace came unto the kingdom for a while despite the poor state the lower classes were in. And right when the nobles of the land thought everything was right in the world, the young tailor suddenly closed shop and disappeared.

It wasn't long afterwards that things changed.

Just as tranquility had come over the kingdom so suddenly, chaos broke out perhaps even more abruptly. If the people were angry before, now they were infuriated, hating the king with a nasty vengeance. Historians would always be baffled at this turn of events, for there was no known trigger that brought about such sudden change. The masses simply snapped overnight. People rebelled and after rapid developments, before anyone knew it, the king was dead.

The dreaded knight also surprisingly found himself jilted and put in prison, a strange development considering the kind of influence he had that'd allow him to avoid repercussions for many of his actions before.

And in the end, the original nobleman was left wondering if all of this could have been avoided, for he very clearly remembered that before his friend, let alone the king, visited the tailor he had made sure to come back and complain about how despite his new clothes' original success, soon afterwards he'd found himself met with an unhappy wife, his servants showing their disdain of him and his friends distancing themselves from him; a turn of events so horrid he could only blame it on something so magical as a set of clothes that makes people like you.

But the Tailor was nowhere near to see the final developments. He knew that his "enchantments" of the garments he created were nothing like the "solid" unchangeable magic items most craftsmen made, ephemerally created through the flimsy means of words and ideas, he understood that their nature could easily be changed by the demeanour of the people using them. The hypocrisy of people wanting to be liked, but doing nothing to be likeable showed and their true nature was eventually imbued into the fabric of the clothes, replacing his words of charm and they ended up wearing their true heart on their sleeves, one might say.

Knowing that after a point, the Tailor anticipated what would happen, used his clients and when the time came, bailed, left the country and using the money he'd accumulated reached Modern-Land. There he received education beyond what he could ever get in his home land and also among other things met the Doctor (and stole a couple of magistone rings from them in the end).

At some point after he left his home land, the Tailor also began swallowing a little medstone every day, just little enough so he wouldn't die. Over the years, consuming it essentially turned his very body into a medstone tool. But the trick is in how flexible that becomes. One of the main components for creating an ashstone tool is something to define what kind of magic that tool can perform (e.g. carving a symbol of fire on a tool obviously makes it fire-based, though how specific things get after this depend I guess). This component doesn't have to be completely literal or an objective representation of something or maybe not even physical at all. The idea is that the medstone is "clever" enough to understand what you mean at the time of binding it, as long as you at least provide something. The quality of your description of what you want, however, is usually going to be influencing the quality of the tool as well. In the case of the Tailor's first enchantments for instance the Tailor's words, the concepts he described with them (or perhaps it's based on the state of his brain at the time of speaking the words, if you want to see it in a more scientific/physical manner; I don't know I'm really trying to find a way to make this work) became that component. Because they were so ethereal, that's also why the clothes' magic was so easily changeable.

What I'm getting to though, is that when the Tailor turned his own body into a refined magistone vessel, the "element" component or whatever you want to call it became what he has on his mind. Whatever he's thinking at the time completes the "tool" and if he activates it, he can cast any type of magic he wants. And that's the trick he uses that makes people think he has attained Free Magic, earning him the title of The Wizard.

However, this power did not come without its costs. If you recall, there were two main interpretations/theories/records of how medstone was created. One was pretty scientific and relied on the idea that if you mixed the right substances, chemistry would do the rest (probably). On the other side of the spectrum, was the myth of two spirits clashing and basically merging to bring forth the material that is ashstone.

What's the reality here is integral to understanding what magistone really is and how it works. But to that I don't think there is or should be an answer. We can wonder as much as the characters. What's important is that one interpretation based on the second theory suggests that the Heart of the Land (which is what some people call what makes ashstone work) is basically the essence of spirits inhabiting the ashes. The Wizard is one of the people subscribing to that kind of theory and that's why he believes that consuming the medstone for years caused him to be possessed by 13 demons. He may be right, but of course another interpretation is that the substance affected him neurologically and that's what unhinged him. Either way, he's not necessarily the most balanced person and although for the most part he's seen working together with the protagonists or other people that are probably usually seen as the ones "morally right", he's still probably a cold calculating manipulator that uses them as pawns for his own plans that may usually align with the general good or some of the protagonists' goals, but might not always do so and the reasons he does stuff isn't necessarily out of the good of his heart.

And I think that's more or less the idea right now.