Hello young mages and wizards of future repute. Before I begin this week’s letter, I feel compelled to address the oliphaunt in the room (mostly because every young wizard who reads these letters seems to have written in asking for my opinion on it). Yes, I am aware of the rise of the new Dark Lord in the North. No, none of our work at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards has been impacted by the news. 

A common question I get from wizards soon to enter the professional mage workspace is what I, as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, typically pack and bring with me for a day at work. The temptation to pack all your own personal, highly curated spell components and magical foci is strong for young wizards, who’ve become convinced that their methods are without fault. You spend so much time in school personalizing every second of the spell casting process, only to enter the real world and be instructed only to use council approved and provided materials. All that being said, I bring a couple things with me from my personal collection wherever I go, and thus, this is what I pack in my bag for work.

Working with wizards is really not so different from working with regular people. In my time working at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards as a Mid-Level Mage, I’ve spent many hours simply observing my surroundings, taking note of different customs and endeavoring to memorize different pieces of jargon and nomenclature in order to set myself up for success in the long run. Through this observation I know that wizards at work are just like regular people at work: some are messy, some are organized; some are more efficient in the morning, some are more efficient later in the day; some talk loudly and lead the discussion, some sit back quietly and take vigorous notes. The list goes on and on, but in my observation I’ve noticed one thing that sets wizards apart from the average worker, and that is their immense distrust of “unlucky numbers.”

Most days that I work at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards in my position as a Mid-Level Mage, I’m astute, focused on the job at hand, and efficient, but everyone has their off days. Sometimes the workload is slightly lighter, and your brain is slightly more spent. On days like these, sometimes I sink lower in my chair, and without any pressing work to occupy my mind, my focus drifts to the conversation around me, between co-working wizards and between mages and their clients. Its a situation like this I present to you now, but before I begin, I want to make it clear I did not realize the full implications of the things I was hearing until it was too late (I have my off days like any breathing creatures) and I forbid anyone from writing in claiming I intentionally let my colleagues continue on in this situation to drum up chaos in the office. I get enough of those accusations from my supervisors. 

After my brief break from the monotonous activity as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, I am now settled back at my desk, and settled back into something of a routine. I teleport in, I take my seat, I prepare my ingredients and components, I send my company assigned familiar off to gather any materials I lack, I take a deep breath, and my thought are interrupted by the ringing of a call. I speak to the client on the other end and I learn about the strangest experience I’ve ever heard of. Rinse and repeat, day after day. Today’s letter involves one such strange experience.

After all the exciting events that took place in my branch of the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards in the last few weeks, I came to the conclusion that I needed a respite from my responsibilities as a Mid-Level Mage. I’m sure this will delight the many readers who’ve written in to tell me I “need to take a vacation” after reading of the exploits of me and my colleagues, but the more of those I read, the more clear it becomes that you, dear readers, are unaware of the nature of the time off granted by the Grand Council to the Mid-Level Mages, and so it is my pleasure to enlighten you. While many of you are presumably granted PTO (Paid Time Off) by your places of employment, we are granted PTQ (Paid To Quest).

Often times I burn with rage when I feel overworked and under appreciated, but never have those feeling felt so literal as this last couple of days in my role as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards. There’s no good way to preface this predicament other than to say it as it is: the demi-plane caught on fire.

For all my complaints about working in person in the demi-plane that houses my chapter of the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, there are those simplistic perks that turn my mood around. One of these perks is the cupboard open for all Mages to take snacks out of at their leisure. You’d be surprised at how much easier it is to deal with an angry client yelling at you about how his fire powers are “not hot enough” when you know that as soon as it’s over, you can walk over to the cupboard and access the treasure trove of delicious treats within. Management knows how cranky wizards get when left unfed, so I imagine their fears were on the verge of tripling when they heard what took place at the end of last week.

Perhaps in my last letter I was too hasty to lament the slow days of work in my position as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards. We have not had one of those days where time moves as quickly as a turtle, where boredom races around us like a rabbit, in many, many moons. The trade off for having a busy, entirely too stressful work day at the Council is that your brain is so occupied by the various magical requests that you hardly notice how the time flies by, and before you know it, you’re racing out the magically doors into the cold mountain night air, ready to begin your trek home. However, sometimes in these moments of stress, a mage can get sloppy as they try to move their tasks along, and sloppiness can lead to all sorts of magical disasters. Take the situation I experienced a couple days ago, and also yesterday.

Many of the questions I receive regarding my work as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards revolve around how us mages keep our cool when we are in the thick of it, when the requests of clients push our magical capabilities to their limits and there’s seven million requests to split among seven wizards. We are, of course, incredibly capable under pressure, and please refer to letter 4 for a more detailed account proving such, but I have to say, I think it’s far more impressive that we as mages are able to survive the slow, boring days.

Greetings future mages of great repute! Apologies for the uncharacteristically chipper attitude but as you well know, I have today off as it’s a kingdom wide holiday. Unless you’ve worked for a grand council like the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, you will never understand the immense joy of looking at your calendar for the upcoming week and realizing you have a day off that you forgot about. This morning I slept in three extra hours and decided to write you a letter about what a Mid-Level Mage does with an extra day off.

An amusing situation played out at work today that I thought you’d enjoy, as readers interested in the day to day work life of a Mid-Level Mage such as myself.

I fear no man, but for the sake of caution, no names will be shared as I tell you these stories of my co-workers, and I will try to keep identifying features to a minimum, but not so minimum that it impacts my ability to share what I want in the way in which I want to. 

My letters of the past fortnight have concerned the actual busy work of my position as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, but some of you have asked about the pros and cons of other aspects of my position, so today I will be telling you about my commute to and from work, which I consider one of the most important parts to consider when deciding whether or not you can accept this position yourself.

Last week I wrote to all you aspiring wizards about my general workload as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards, and our most common nuisance of a client, kings. But kings are not our only clients. At the Grand Council we service anyone willing to pay our fees and abide by our guidelines. We work with all sorts of royals: queens, dukes, lords and ladies, the list goes on; we work with warriors and heroes; faeries, elves, and villains (after lengthy contract negotiations, read and re-read over a thousand times); even the occasional member of the common folk that scrounges up enough coins to afford our rates. But my story today involves a different sort of client who I had the fortune of spending my entire shift assisting yesterday, and that client is the humble pirate.

If you’re reading this, you already know that I, Alexan Drytus, was recently promoted within my Mage role at the Grand Celestio Council of Wizards. I’m constantly being sent inquiries from young wizards on how I got this position and asking for networking tips, so I thought I’d lay it all out in a recurring letter format. Please understand that though I am happy to help provide advice, my updates must come after my duties in my new position as a Mid-Level Mage at the Grand Council.