When you think about being a wizard, you probably think of all the rocks and dirt and stuff you would transmogrify into gold and precious gems, but that’s pretty stupid and shows a real lack of imagination. Once you have magical powers, money actually seems kind of dumb. Like why make the things you use to get things when you can just make the things and then have them?

Now occasionally, a wizard will get a lot of money, but 99.9% of the time it’s because they have nothing better to do, and they know money is a great way to mess with mortals who have an unhealthy attraction to the stuff. That’s why people always say, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but a bored wizard is even worse, so if you’re ever in hell, and you see a bored lady wizard, you should really do your best to not piss her off.” Which is pretty much the best advice anyone has ever given anyone.

Which is not to say wizards aren’t greedy, they just have a totally different set of priorities. In fact, there was once this one wizard named Warwick Bofit who came up with a plan to con other wizards into giving him a bunch of their magic powers, and for awhile, it worked really well.

What WB did was invite a bunch of wizards over to his pyramid, and after he got some ale in them, he was like, “Hey dudes, did it ever occur to you we aren’t using best wizard practices?”

And everyone was like, “Do what?”

And he was like, “I just feel like we need to diversify our spell creation if we want to yield long term upwardly mobile magical results. I mean, with a little streamlining, we could really change the whole mystical paradigm.”

Nobody knew what the fuck he was talking about, but it sounded really important and cool, so they all started pretending like it made total sense.

“Yes, yes!” they all cried. “Let’s streamline our diversification and get those magical pair of dimes!”

At that point he knew he had them, so he went in for the kill.

“Exactly!” he said. “You guys are so smart and totally get it! If you all give me your wands, I’ll just take a little bit of the magic out of each and invest it in a low risk/high return ritual. You should see at least a 10% power increase per annum.”

“Ah yes,” they all said to each other, “per annum, that’s the best way.”

“I wouldn’t do it without the per annum of course,” said one wizard stroking his beard.

“Oh yes,” another agreed. “Your annum must be per if you want low risk returns.”

“Of course of course,” they all agreed stroking their beards and occasionally each other’s for good measure.

Normally, getting a wizard to voluntarily hand you their wand is like getting a troll to let you cross a bridge after you’ve only answered two riddles, but in this case, all the wizards were so hopped up on business jargon and the thought of increasing their power, they gave Bofit their wands without a second thought.

“I’ll get these back to you next week!” he said, as he ushered the other wizards out the door of the pyramid. “And don’t forget to tell all your friends to invest their magic with me! We’re going to be powerful as fuck!”

As soon they were gone, Bofit did something very weird and clever, so pay close attention. He divided the wands into two piles and cast Cinergy, which took half the magic from one pile and added it to the other. Then the next day, he gave all the suped-up wands back to their owners and told the other guys that their wands would be ready in a few weeks. All the wizards with new, improved wands were so impressed, they told all their friends, who then took their wands to Bofit to get them powered up. Each time, Bofit would drain a certain percentage of the wands and add their magic to other wands, always making sure his own wand was in the good pile. He kept getting more and more wands and draining their power to improve wands he’d gotten earlier. Most of the original wizards even came back to reinvest their wands a second or third time. Of course, the more wands he got, the more he had to drain, and so on and so on. At some point, he even started giving people’s wands back with less magic instead of more, and clearly a wanzi scheme like that couldn’t go on forever.

Eventually, every wizard in the whole kingdom had given Bofit their wand, and he had nothing to drain to supe them up. He tried to put people off for a while by showing them a bunch of spreadsheets and bar graphs, but even that had its limits. After six months of total bullshit, a pissed mob of wizards showed up at his pyramid ready to blast it to holy heck.

“Come out here and fight us you fucking shyster!” they all yelled up at him.

“Ha ha ha you dummies!” said Bofit, coming out on his balcony. “It’s too late, my wand is like a billion times more powerful than any of yours now! Suck my dick!” And with that, he levitated his whole giant pyramid into the air.

Everyone was like, “Holy shit! We’re still mad at you, but that is impressive as fuck!”

Bofit floated his pyramid all the way to an island off the coast of a small European nation where they have really lax laws about transferring magic. He stayed there the rest of his life and continued to con wizards whenever he got a chance. The government didn’t give a fuck because he gave a percentage of the power to them, so whenever anyone complained they were like, “Sorry, we have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Yeah. That’s right. Sometimes (usually) the bad guy just gets away with shit and never gets punished. Welcome to reality.

As for all the other wizards, they shared their remaining magical power as best as they could, each wizard giving according to his ability and taking according to his need. That worked for a while and was pretty nice, until another dick rose to power and screwed everything up, which is just how things go I guess.