Ozymandias

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

"This spell causes the hair to fall off cats." "That's fixed in Xaranthius' latest publication, you just have to rewrite your entire spellbook for compatibility."

Sure, "High Tower is a powerful language, but it's such a pain to write. I just use Unity* as it's simple to write and can do nearly everything I need" "cranky because you can't memorize all the conjugations and declensions, aren't you?" "LOOK MAN, I CAN MEMORIZE ANYTHING, INCLUDING THE FACE OF YOUR MOTHER IN ECSTASY. IN FACT, BEHOLD!" *a little time window appears between them, demonstrating exactly that. The first wizard (seen through the window) turns around and winks at the "camera".

"you kids today with your lizardman. How can you get anything done in a language without gendered pronouns? It's like fingerpainting. Sure you can learn on it but once you've got the basics you should switch over to a REAL language"

"the Kalic have been here already. We better get out before the rest of their army marches in." "how can you be sure?" "you see that teleport?" "no" "well, if you COULD see it, you'd see it's written in Adevic Yevi. That's the Kalic magic language." "couldn't it be someone else? We saw those Monon traders, maybe one of them..." "no. No one writes Adevic Yevi unless they're being paid to. It's a language written by committee."

Wizards going on a quest to get the spellbooks for a lost spell, only to find out that it was written in skydove cant. No one can read that shit! The creator must have been one of those weird "functional wizards". (They're obsessed with making sure their spells have no side effects)

There's a small library on the outskirts of Freeport which tries to collect versions of basic spells in every language. The Adevic Yevi version of "fireball" takes up 7 pages, mostly boilerplate setting up the interfaces with fire and explosions and ExplodingMagicalBallFactorySingletons. The Lizardman version is basically "AHAHAHA, YOU GO BOOM!"

There's a bunch of wizard apprentices working on porting an old "Summon Bread and Fishes" spell from the absolutely archaic language it was written in. Once it's in Unity, it'll be easy to modify and teach to more wizards, which'll obviously be good for disaster areas. It's just too expensive to keep paying the ancient guys who can still do magic in TRAN-FOR.

Eccentric wizards keep inventing new languages for spells. You look at them and they're neat, but it'll never catch on. And either you're right, or the next time you're applying to be a court wizard, the advisors want to know if you have at least 5 years experience in Tilted Runic and you're like "it only came out 2 years ago!" "aren't you a chronomancer?" "oh good point. Yeah I've been using it for 20-30 years."

There's wizards who will spend incredible amounts of time doing silly things with spells in strange ways. There's this guy (Vorth) who made his own language where there's only one basic spell: fireball. Everything else is basic magic glue tying multiple fireballs together. So like, he's got a breakfast spell. Stand back (good advice for all his spells), and you'll see a fish get knocked out of the local pond, flung through the air by successive explosions, and eventually it lands on his plate, nicely cooked and deboned, if slightly charred (the glass of milk is harder to explain). His magical door locks involve a quicksilver sphere and molten lead changing shape when heated... It's tricky but it seems to work. He's working on a teleport spell, but so far it's mainly just killed test subjects (primarily sheep from a nearby farm).

It's wands vs staves vs bare hands.

Wanders are like "they're available everywhere and once you learn how to do it it's so powerful!"

Staffguys always talk about how you can do ANYTHING with a staff. Wanders claim it's a pain to carry around an overpowered device that can do ANYTHING when you just need to cast fireball or a simple one man teleport.

Meanwhile the bare wizards are showing off how they don't need any magical tools and can just do hand motions.

Perhaps someone beat me to it, but here are ALL of the featured vines, in order of appearance:

I won’t hesitate bitch

Hi my name is Tre and I have a basketball game tomorrow

Whaddup, I’m Jared I’m 19 and I never fucking learned how 2 read

Kermit the Frog jumps off building

Fr e sh a voca do

back at it again at Krispy Kreme

There is only one thing worse than a rapist

Club Jam (yes a really good book)

At least the taco was free

I am the Sand Guardian, guardian of the sand

Grandma loves ping pong too much

If your name is Junior

Welcome to Target

I’m just cooking pizza

Cole Sprouse dress-up game

On all levels except physical, I am a Wolf

Kid hits ceiling of gym with rope (breaking free)

Kid smacked by fly swatter

Fuck it up Kenneth (my boy going to school)

Um I’m not finished (Tyler the Creator)

WE’RE BREAKING FREE

SAIL

I’m Squidward

So I’m sitting there, barbecue sauce on my tiddies

So no head? (breaking skateboard)

Actually, Megan (I can’t sit anywhere)

No off topic questions (Chris Christie)

What the fuck, Richard

Drop it like it’s hot (its just luke)

Bored as shiiiiii

Liberian accent (plasma globe)

New haircut (Parker Kit Hill)

Summertime sadness (chicken)

More like hurricane TORTILLA

I got an a-bor-tion

All Around the World (TheJasminator)

When there’s a cutie next to you at a red light

Snake licks lollipop

Accept yourself, love yourself

Be whatever you wanna be

Don’t touch Zac’s music (LENARR)

Whoever threw that paper, your mom’s a ho

Can I please get a waffle?

Turn off the flash you fucking moron (Star Wars)

Ebony Jenkins (shut up!)

Kevin, watch the light dude

Horse meditation

A girl a dream & a clothing hanger

Is that a weed? (911 microwave)

Helium balloons (floating car)

Fireplace fairy

I’m your freestyle dance teacher

I can’t believe you’ve done this

Which way the Quiznos is

Impossible paper toss shot

Hemtube (dancing with cat)

I nurture my skin (Shaq)

Why are you running

Happy birthday?

Thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (courtroom)

Farkle falling

Fuck you (soda machine)

Squash banana (the branch I was holding broke)

Take On Me

And now my sock is wet (water gun)

All I ever wanted was some motherfuckin guala

When there’s too much drama at school

Two bros chillin in the Hot Tub

What’s your name? (ouija board)

Chillary Clinton (chillin in Cedar Rapids)

Guy drops slurpee (7-Eleven)

Girl scared of convertible car

Guy who is self-conscious about his lisp (Rice Krispies Treats)

Would you like the spider on your hand?

Shopping cart crash

We actually have the chip reader now

I’M A GIRAFFE

Dinner with Zayn Malik (Chihuahua eating spaghetti)