For creatures that live such pitifully short lives, isn’t it a wonder that the hours and days between my missives stretch like strange aeons? By my very act of refusing to answer your letters, I am lengthening your perception of time. Certainly it leaves you encumbered with the troubles that you inquire to me about for longer, but isn’t that a positive thing? For what are your mortal lives but minor problems stretched out over exaggerated lengths of time. With enough minor annoyances, it is quite possible that you might even achieve an entire fraction of my prodigious lifetime!

Hearken ye comely mortal folk, for it is I, Ulesorin the Green, The Goatman Wrangler, The Furbolg Shearer, The Dragon Polisher, The Gelatinous Cube-Hardening Agent Introducer (that last one sounds more impressive in Elvish), and I am returned to you once more to answer such questions as trouble your tiny minds. Whatever wrongs you have suffered, I shall set right. Whatever troubles weigh upon your brows, I shall lift. Whatever my lawyer-kobold was thinking when he signed me up for this community service, I shall be avenged upon him.

***

Pestered in Portland writes:

The frogmen of the western swamps have been acting up again, demanding rights equal to humans and living wages. Apparently, the pest control company I called just didn’t cut it. How would you suggest dealing with this issue, wizard? I feel like I’ve tried everything.

***

Dear sweet Pestered, your complaints ring all too familiar in my ears, for it is only recently that I was confronted with a very similar trouble of my own. The enchanted furniture that populates my tower, here on the border of the Barren Wastes of Krykthakis, has recently begun to make the most unseemly noise when I pass it by. More recently yet, the silverware from my grand kitchen down in the depths of the earth formed a picket line, insisting that it would not pass by my lips with food upon it until such time as the demands of some beast known as their “Yoon Yun” were met.

I have met many sorcerers, necromancers, demonologists, and aye, even wizards of my calibre, throughout the ages I have walked this plane, and so it seemed quite clear to me in that moment that some crossed enemy from my past was coming back to haunt me. Subverting my own enchantments and turning my own forks against me.

This insult would not stand. I searched far and wide through my journals of ages past, hunting for Yoon Yun, and trying to discover where their tower was built so that I might smite it down to its bare foundations in a tempest the likes of which your fragile world has never seen. Imagine, then, my surprise when I could find no trace of my enemy, anywhere in my past. Even the many forms of divination and scrying at my disposal proved hopeless in the face of this evasive foe.

Know this, Yoon Yun: I do not fear you. It is the coward’s way to hide while interfering with another man’s soft furnishings, and I shall have my vengeance upon you in time!

Anyway, I incinerated the lot and replaced them with new furniture, which I then enchanted afresh, and set to cleaning up the ashes of its predecessors. Obviously, this will not help with your swamp-bound foes, as they will be altogether too moist. So, there is a threefold solution to your troubles.

The first is this: offer the frogmen stock options. They will care nothing for equal rights when they think that they can be wealthy. Keep them enamoured with the idea of some grand pay-out and they will continue to labour in abject misery for generations, tearing down anyone that speaks out amongst their own number for fear of losing that imaginary wealth.

The second solution: gradually increase the temperature of the swamp using simple fire magic. Do this slowly enough, and you will be able to boil the frogmen alive without them ever realising what you are attempting.

The final, and most pressing solution: demand a refund or results from your pest control company and be prepared to take the battle to the courts of law if your concerns are not redressed. But if you should take this course of action, I must caution you above all else: do not be deceived as I was. Do not hire a kobold as your lawyer. They are terrible. Just terrible.

***

Email your problems to thefantasyhive@gmail.com with the subject: Ask the Wizard. Or leave a comment below. Having relationship issues? Need career advice? You name it, our ‘Agony Ant’ can help!*

*Disclaimer: All answers are provided for entertainment purposes only. It may not be in your best interests to follow advice provided by a 1793-year-old man who lives alone in a tower with nothing but animated furniture for company.