Handbook of Erotic Fantasy: For Love of Alt

In solidarity with the community’s outpouring of alt lists, Wizard has seen fit to share notes on her multidimensional alter egos. Gleaned from her planar explorations with Street Samurai, these other selves represent possibilities not yet seen within the confines of Handbook-World. 

• Battle Smith Wizard — It was, I think, a fortunate thing that I encountered this shard first. She was less unsettling than some of the others. At first glance she seemed not unlike myself: accomplished in the arcane arts, heralded as a genius by her peers, and scion of a respected family. Yet that family was one of smiths rather than nobility. And rather than conjuring a conventional familiar, she had elected to construct a metallic version of Skitters from clockwork odds and ends. It seemed like rather a lot of work just to be a companion class.

• Titan Fighter Wizard — She wielded swords. Very large swords. And she had the musculature to do so. To think that any corner of the multiverse held such an iteration…! A fearsome thing, my scrying sensor caught up with her just as she was facing down half a dozen drunken braggarts in a tavern. It was no contest of martial skill, however. It was a belching contest. It looked as if “I” was winning. I suppose it is better than losing at such an endeavor, yet I cannot find it in myself to feel pride on her behalf. 

• College of Glamor Wizard — I should not judge. After all, what advantages I have enjoyed in life have been an accident of birth. The privilege of a formal education, arcane training, and the leisure to study are not available to all. Yet when I caught up to my bardic alter ego, she was busily engaged in paying for a tutor. It would seem that the satyrs who instruct initiates of the College of Glamour take other coin than gold. It was intriguing to know that I had it within me to be so flexible, or to hit those high notes.

• Magical Child Wizard — The accident of my present gender seems to have its own echoes across the cosmos. This shard lives his life as an unremarkable student, seeming to have no special aptitudes beyond running with toast in his mouth. When accosted by extrasolar entities, however, a rather shrill version of Scabby appeared dressed in a tutu, causing my other self to glow with a bright pink aura. A pyrotechnic display soon followed, accompanied by a musical score and a great deal of implausible bodily contortions. The result is something tutu-Scabby announced as, “Magical Guardian Radiant Jewel Kitty.”

• Swarmkeeper Wizard — I took her at first for a hunchback. Then I realized that there was a literal hive of stinging insects mounted to her back. They were in her hair and in her clothes, crawling and wriggling across her face, and my insane shard laughed as if they tickled. Lest I get sick on my own scrying glass, I thought it best to end my inquiries quickly.

• Divine Hunter Wizard — The armor was a thing of great beauty. The bow was inlaid with gold. I had never taken myself for the type, but this shard looked very like the heroes of antiquity depicted upon the family tapestries back home. But as I watched the armor came away, her back was bared, and she began to cast atonement on herself. The spell’s requisite prayer beads looked and functioned too much like a flail for my comfort. Likewise, the vocal components of the ritual seemed to be a disturbing litany: “I will not have lecherous thoughts.” I remain thankful that my position as a mage requires no such abstention. Else the doodles in the margins of my spellbook might require several such rituals.