The Amazing Aldus
Aldus was not always so amazing. Some say he wasn’t even a wizard.
Aldus had bounced around the Carnival for many years, taking on odd jobs and blowing what little money he earned on the midway before he decided to make it his life’s calling. But like every stooge not born into the trade, he started out as a gazoonie - a manual day laborer responsible for maintaining the Carnival’s attractions and grounds.
As time passed, Aldus learned the ins and outs of carny life. He learned how to sweet-talk the locals into spending their hard-earned money on games of chance, and how to put on a show that would keep them coming back for more.
He figured out how to spot an easy mark and he learned to distinguish an everyday chump from a certified cake eater. Later, when he became a barker he perfected his patter and spiel. He developed a talent for showmanship and quickly rose through the ranks, eventually becoming one of the most successful talkers on the midway. Most important of all, he learned to crack wise and became a master at the subtle art of goading unruly punks into showing their hand.
But it wasn’t until he first met Hromnice, the lucky black cat who lived in the possum’s belly beneath the dukkering wagon, that his fortune really began to change. Soon after, Aldus acquired a vintage Vanishing Coin concession from an old carny with an extensive collection of antique automatons and nickelodeons. The former owner of the concession had passed away many seasons prior and it had fallen into disrepair. Aldus got it for a cheap price and he set about restoring the device to working condition.
The Vanishing Coin is a simple grift. When the player puts a coin into the wooden contraption and pulls the handle, their coin drops down a chute and lands in one of a series of spinning cups. As soon as the coin lands in a cup, the lids close. When the spinning carousel comes to a stop, the player selects the cup that they believe contains the coin. If the player guesses correctly, they win a prize - invariably an absurdly large stuffed animal and depending on the season, usually either a duck or a goat.
If a customer was suspiciously lucky or if the owner was sufficiently greedy, the carny could prevent the player from making a winning selection by use of a built-in gaff - a mechanical trick that rigged the game to lose . If a player selected the correct cup, the operator quickly depressed a pedal with their foot and the contraption would “vanish” the coin before its cup was opened.
This illusion was generally accomplished by means of a simple mirror that swung down to cover the coin whenever the foot pedal was activated. In Aldus’ machine, the mirror hinges were completely rusted and frozen in the closed position. While examining the damage, Aldus discovered a number of unusual modifications had been made to the original design. The cups had a series of small holes drilled in the bottom and a magical wand had been attached to the original mechanism by a lever that moved whenever the foot pedal did. Aldus concluded that the modifications were a makeshift attempt to bypass the jammed mirrors. The gimmick was built around an old Midas Rod, a mysterious and powerful scepter capable of transmuting matter into metal. The head of the staff contained a tiny amount of strange matter, collected long ago from within the quantum shadow. [See Wizard #2601]
Aldus’ Midas Rod was unusually attuned to the Rune of Mercury, or perhaps even defective, because its powers of transmutation were singularly focused. It could not make gold, as the eponymous King Midas had. Nor was it able to manifest any other metals of a substantively solid state.
Hidden within the innards of a Vanishing Coin’s clockworks, the Midas Rod was intended to transform unwanted coins into mercury so that they would drain out the bottom of the cup when the gaff was triggered. While the coin was lost as income, it was ultimately more profitable than parting with an expensive prize. At least that was his theory, but Aldus could never get the machine to work correctly. It was just too old.
Aldus removed the Midas Rod from its dusty prison, discarded the old amusement in the trash and immediately put the wand to a better use.
Aldus developed a magic act that took advantage of his rod’s mercurial powers. He would appear to bend impossibly large steel beams using only his mind. He could escape from thick chains, padlocked steamer trunks and even enchanted handcuffs. He survived being run through by countless swords in his own version of the Indian Basket Trick.
Audiences marveled at his cleverly crafted illusions. An actual wizard performing these feats was nothing remarkable. It was only interesting because the audience believed that Aldus was a mundane - a duck like them. No one suspected there was any real magic at work or that Aldus was anything more than a carnival huckster.
Widely loved and admired, the Amazing Aldus eventually became the most accomplished stage magician on the Carnival circuit. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just another con; that he was just pretending to be a wizard, or perhaps that he was pretending to be a mundane who was in turn pretending to be a wizard.
Where was he located within this ouroboros of his own making? Aldus often wondered whether or not he was actually a wizard. Wasn’t he performing magical feats, even if they were disguised as legerdemain?
Aldus wanted to use his power to do more than perform simple illusions. He longed to become a real wizard. But what could he accomplish with only a lucky black cat and a broken wand? He had used his years of experience entertaining crowds on the midway to impersonate a wizard on stage, but could he ever hope to fool an actual wizard?
Often in disguise, Aldus wandered through the towns and villages along the Carnival’s path looking for people in need of a wizard’s aid. But as well intentioned as Aldus’s motives were, unintended consequences are the essential nature of the Midas Rod. Like the economic damage caused by generating endless quantities of gold, the ecological damage of the vast amount of mercury Aldus left in his wake began to take its toll on the environment and on Aldus himself.
Due to his constant exposure to mercury and its compounds, he was afflicted with erethism and slowly began to lose his grip on reality. Aldus’s solutions often caused worse problems than the wrongs he sought to right and Hromnice’s uncanny ability to influence probabilities meant that whatever cracked schemes that Aldus imagined were inevitably successful.
Episode One: The Case of the Keyless Keep
Aldus cleverly transforms all the doorknobs into mercury, rendering them unusable and trapping the suspect inside Alessar’s Keep.
Episode Two: The Case of the Vainglorious Vampyre
Aldus uses his wand to create a mercury mirror, revealing the vampyre’s true identity.
Episode Three: The Case of the Chroma Crystal Mouse
Aldus uses alchemical powers to transform the metal wires in the mouse's cage into mercury, allowing the mouse to escape and lead him to the real culprit.
Episode Four: The Case of the Stolen Sapphires
Aldus identifies the thief by turning the metal buttons on their coat into mercury, causing the jewels to come tumbling out of their pockets.
Episode Five: The Case of the Wobbly Wagon
Authorities are able to apprehend an escaped criminal after Aldus warped the axels on the fugitive's wagon and its wheels came flying off.
Episode Six: The Case of the Goblin Town Gumshoe
Aldus uses his alchemy to remove all the nails in the soles of a rival detective's shoes, causing him to slip and fall into a vat of hot tar.
Episode Seven: The Case of the Accident Prone Pony
Aldus uses his alchemical wand to turn the getaway pony’s horseshoes into mercury, causing it to slip and lose its footing, tossing the suspect over a cliff.
Episode Eight: The Case of the Irritating Inspector
Aldus turns the steel beams of a building into mercury, causing the structure to collapse and crush an annoying but otherwise innocent member of the local planning commission.
Episode Nine: The Case of the Floating Fortress
Fearing an invasion, Aldus turns the metal framework of an experimental dirigible into mercury, causing the airship to crash into the Salt Sea and drowning all aboard.
Episode Ten: The Case of the Flooded Factory
Aldus turned all the pipes connected to the factory's reservoir into mercury, putting an end to the illegal dumping that had been polluting the town's water supply but also permanently poisoning the town’s water supply.
Entered by: 0xa227…cC15 and preserved on chain (see transaction)
