Joker in the pack

Archmagus Casper of the Valley was considered a great teacher. For many years he had taught students in the purple wizard pavilion, trying help them as they risked body and soul trying to gain the prize of control over causality. It was a task fraught with danger, not just for the student but anyone unlucky enough to be close to the poor student when it sometimes went wrong.

He was considered brave by many for remaining in such a risky role for so long. The reality was he had long ago mastered luck as a magical force and kept a playing card on him at all times that he used in the same way as a canary had been used by coal miners. The minute his playing card stopped showing an ace he immediately moved to map out the area experiencing a causality problem and started trying to contain the situation.

He also had a second less well known reason for taking the role, he was aware that nothing in life was without risk so he had decided he would rather be proactive than reactive. Remaining close to the home of purple magic would give him plenty of warning if one of them became powerful and insane enough to be a threat to the whole of reality. 

His gut feeling though was that most problems like that would get solved quickly enough by groups of other wizards. The real risk was unknown unknowns in his mind, and for that he had a slightly different plan to remain safe.

He kept in contact with all his students as they moved away after graduation, asking them occasionally for magical readings from their location. Many were happy to provide these and from that he built up a magical power map of most of the known Runiverse. 

Over time he watched the shadows slowly moving and growing towards the Battle Mage Mountains but it was nothing that really alarmed him until one day a purple hat staying near Dream Master Lake sent him some readings that were totally normal. He was about to start teaching so he almost ignored it but as he looked at the readings his card flickered to show a joker for a fraction of a second before returning to normal.

Firing up a messaging orb he asked a favour from another wizard living next to the lake that he hadn’t spoken to in years, before walking into the lecture theatre. 

Additional note from our agent at the purple wizard pavilion based on interviews with the students that had attended the lecture: Immediately after receiving the second incoming message Archmagus Casper recklessly opened a dangerously unshielded portal in the lecture theatre and walked through it. Given his risk averse nature this appears to be an unexpected level of risk tolerance. Subsequent breaking of the encryption on the second message shows the data returned was completely identical to the first message we had already intercepted. Subsequent statistical analysis shows a data set that matches predicted magical curve expectations perfectly with zero error bars. Retesting the measurements using an on the ground agent confirms both wizards took the measurement correctly.

Recommendation: This warrants further investigations at a higher level. 

Entered by: 0xCa19…BA3a