Dear Osvaud

This is not Osvaud, This is Sil, I have recently come across this copy of your Diary (Thanks Ivlysse) and I am currently stealing artifacts out of your lair.

While reading your diary I was suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense I was poisoned, and wouldn’t you know it, I was suddenly hit with 22d6 poision damage, lost 4 con and 2 strength, and was nearly trapped by a sepia sigil before my contingent dimdoor teleported me away (Serves me right for wandering around in a mortal shell!) . However hard I scouted for magical traps I had no way of knowing the book was physically coated in poisons not belonging to my world, but thanks to my Theki root and my saved doses of Wildroot, I was cured in 12 seconds, and with my currently active ice troll heart, I regenerated the health within a minute or two.

Here’s where I contemplate on our lesson for today while I place your Golden dragon orb into my personal collection: Out of context problems.

For others tuning in this is how we define an outside-context problem: “a problem is one which is impossible to define except in hindsight. It is something so crazy and unexpected you can’t even imagine it until it happens. It is like a typical feudal society getting invaded by time-traveling robots or the paradox-ignoring automatons finding themselves turned into puddles of goo by microscopic gremlins from an alternate reality.”

I had no way of knowing your diary contained an otherworldly poison from another time, you had no way of knowing I would skip over your dungeon and instead take your slippers out of your lair and replace them with an identical pair with a glyph of Otto’s Irresistible Dance hidden and Nystul’d under each foot. But I can always have defenses against poison prepared and a contingent spell on the ready.

As you say; Magic is Insane. We are equally as insane if we think we can always be prepared for what an eternity of magic will bring us. But what we can do is prepare for the inevitable insanity with a broad-range approach to the eventual madness.

Contingency: Dimension Door seems like the best option, but i’d also pull your attention to ottilukes resilient sphere; a full protection spell on ourselves which could be used to protect ourselves even from something as devastating as a magically fabricated Delayed blast fireball that’s been gathering power for 3 years. [That’s 15768012d6 by the way]. Ottilukes sphere also has the upside of functioning within a private sanctum, and while costly, I can cast dimension door right as I drop concentration for it. This also lets me wheel my hamster ball of force toward whatever Mcguffin I actually showed up for, drop concentration, grab the item or person and vanish.

Now, the sods who I used that trick on couldn’t even comprehend the idea of it before they were vaporized, making it an out of context problem for them. However, they could comprehend “Massive fucking explosion” and plan accordingly. Now a normal person might think fire resistance would be enough for such an occasion, but half of 55188042 is still putting you in the “A thought someone once had but can no longer remember” category of existence. Anyone without full immunity or an instant get-out-of-jail-free card is lucky if they’re only reduced to ashes in the wind. Anyone who’s plan was “Going in with swords” is gone and even the highest of clerics can’t save dust without actual for real divine intervention. That’s part of lesson 1: Do not cheap out on defense, or offense, or anything really. Don’t die so hard you can’t be brought back because you wanted to save a few thousand gold pieces; go fabricate some linen or armor suits and make more gold that way if you have to. Bring immunity to fire. Like with this Efreeti chain That you left in one of the dressers, which I’ll Probably sell for something better.

Getting back to the point: The only person who was theoretically capable of surviving such an assault was the wizard. Disappointingly, they didn’t have any such plan and were turned into the same kind of disparate ash as the rogue who tried to steal the fabricated delayed blast fireball in the first place, but Me and you Osvaud, as real masters of magic, don’t have to suffer the indignity of being blown into a billion pieces, because we are prepared to deal with such eventualities. Fate may be cruel, but sometimes you have to be more cunning than Fate.

Maybe I don’t have a specific plan for when the alien fungus people from the astral plane want to invade my dream realm, but I do have a plan for “I have to be awake for 2 weeks” and “I need to hide myself somewhere safe”.

Here’s a list of eventualities You’ll come across as an immortal wizard and how you can be best prepared for such an occasion.

“I am about to explode / I am going to be shot to death”: Ottilukes resilient sphere, then dimension door to leave or use animate objects on some purple-worm-tipped needles from a pouch and have them stab the person. (Using your book for this one, Osvaud) Or blow them up with a catapult munition or summon a real cannon or whatever other tricky way you want to turn a threat into non-threatening pieces.

“I need to leave this immediate area within 6 seconds”: Dimension door. Always have dimension door.

“I need to leave this plane of reality within 6 seconds”: Plane shift, even better when you have your own demiplane ready to chill out in for the foreseeable future.

“I am infected with something I can’t cure normally”: Yes this applies to liches too Osvaud, that’s how you know it’s really bad. Getting a new body is typically more than enough to cure anything, so Clone or having your phylactery print you a new body with some soul juice. Stuff that infects your soul in some way is trickier; but is usually solved via greater restoration and/or wish. Keep ample glyphs of both in more than one strategic location you can access and others can’t.

“World Gone Wrong” Scenarios: Apocalypse now! Armageddon, Atropus has crashed into the materium, Mystra is dying, ect. These are more or less just majorly inconvenient if we can escape to a new plane or reality. The real test is what happens if magic stops working. This is why you should keep a stock of mundane supplies as well as magical ones.

Anti-Magic: This doesn’t always fit here but it’s worth bringing up. “Anti-magic” seems like it’d screw us entirely; but as a wizard you can easily gain access to perfectly mundane tools and equipment and weapons; and being in an anti-magic zone, you’re on equal footing with any other mages. The best solution to being stuck in one of these places? Firearms and Explosives. No one seems to expect to be mundanely blown into pieces by the wizard.

My Sanctum[s] are compromised: This one’s for you Osvaud! There’s a large range of options for this: anything from turning the place into rubble with the invaders inside, to full abandonment, to teleporting the whole structure. Assuming the worst-case and all sanctums are truely unrecoverable: Here’s how to make a back-up place to stay in 5 minutes.

– Teleport somewhere safe, a fresh demiplane is ideal
– Cast Galders Tower
– Cast guards and wards
– set up a glyph of wish and a glyph of greater restoration
– Open a bottle of smoke on the roof and leave it there

You now have a temporary place no one can see into to set up for your assumed revenge.

Finally: using divination and illusions we can attune our minds to theoretical eventualities and avoid having to exist without context in most situations in the first place. This isn’t foolproof because of the nature of out of context problems, but it’s a tool worth using. Be wary that your psuedo-omnipotence isn’t mistaken for the real thing, or you’ll fall out of context and be helpless next.

See you soon Osvaud