Greetings to you my distant friends. Well, perhaps not friends. Acquaintances? Kobold! Fetch my thesaurus, I need a word for people that you take care of but do not particularly like. Children? No. I have trouble enough with my own draconic spawn. Minions? They lack the necessary obedience for such a term.

Greetings to you my distant wisdom-recipients. It is I, Ulesorin the Green, returned to you once more to expound upon those lessons which I have thus far taught you in a manner unlike apprenticeship but not unlike a distressed mother duck attempting to steer her train of ducklings away from the area of pond that invariably contains some sort of large reptilian awaiting a snack.

What would you have of me this time?

***

Dear Ulesorin,

I have been following your advice column for some time now, and it occurs to me that rarely are people even polite to you, never mind considerate of your own feelings. So I just wanted to ask, how are you?

***

Dear Wisdom seeker. 

I am afraid that you have gravely misunderstood the purpose of these missives. I have been employed as an Aunt of Agonies by those people you call the Fantasy Hive to assist you in the resolving of your petty mortal troubles. While at first I may have been forced to undertake this as community service following some rather unfortunate disagreements with those supposedly beholden only to the law, rather than to the coin-purse of that thankfully deceased, putrid malevolence known to some as my ex-wife. Though, I will admit that I have warmed to my duties of late, to the degree that though I am no longer compelled by legally applied geas to complete our communications, I am nonetheless continuing to offer up my immense breadth of experience and supreme intellect for your assistance.

This is not a place in which I might vent those worries that trouble me, and hope that you petty mortals might have some guidance that might resolve them. That is in fact a complete reversal of our roles.

Who among you could possibly understand the woes of Ulesorin? The grave sorrow that I must contend with each day?

Everyone that I have ever known or loved, dead as doornails due to the passage of time. The only ones that remain are those other wizards that I attended college with, and I have to tell you, you will never encounter so wretched a group of ingrates and bastards as Wizarding Alumni. Come Longest Night, how many of them do you suppose send a card to commemorate the turning of the year? Not a one! But when they have some hairbrained scheme to defeat a dark lord or lay low a dragon, who is the first to blow up my scrying orb demanding assistance?

But Ulesorin, I hear you cry, surely you can take some solace in all of your beautiful children. The half-draconic legions currently ravaging the Western Kingdoms. The very same beautiful children who betrayed and ejected me as their supreme leader at the earliest opportunity? The ones that hunted me for months at the behest of their mother and attempted to eat me until I drove a spear up her colossal, but curvaceous behind?

Nay, there is no solace to be found there. All that I have that I can truly call my own is this tottering wizard’s tower where I dwell entirely alone, except for my new apprentice. A kobold of such limited intellect that it took him three attempts to fetch me a thesaurus, first presenting me with two different types of aquatic thunder lizards from my menagerie, before finally realising that I wanted a book. A book of such weight and girth that when the little fool managed to wrangle it off the shelf in my library it fell upon his head crushing him to death instantly.

And who shall have to clean this sticky mess up, and rebind the thesaurus to remove those stains from its cover? It is I Ulesorin, for I have not even an apprentice to rely upon for such menial labour anymore.

Woe is me.

***

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 1794-year-old man who lives alone in a tower and claims to have magical powers.