Kereminde
@kereminde
"Temet nosce" This is the only warning: I'm into a variety of games and writing. I post weird stuff here as an amateur, mature stuff elsewhere. BattleTech, tabletop roleplaying, Pokémon, and similar hobbies are fair game to be represented/discussed here.
If we're talking without additional equipment? It's probably the sorceress Evalia de Lune. Shadowvixen, sorceress, troublemaker... Only because she specializes in transformative and illusion magic. This is a combination which makes it extraordinarly difficult to fight with normal means.
I thought the whole point of what I responded to is that Bill *wasn't* in jail but should be... guess they got him! Probably because they found where he'd been keeping the bodies stored. Really have to give props to that lab tech who caught him.
Except for one in particular, come to think of it... you won't find it in pottery!
A TV show you're (not) positive no one remembers but you ... every prophet in his house.
No seriously. Seven quick rounds of combat... with four other Mechs firing on it. Poor thing would be sentenced to being a Hangar Queen after this if it was a campaign. :)
There's also someone doing a rebuild, I think, using more modern software to allow you to play it in VR. Also... "no, there is another". ("Hey kid, ever wanted to pilot a Corellian freighter between starfighter runs?")
Well, "start with a bang" limits me some, and "don't slow down" is also a limiting factor... most stories do have lulls after action scenes, after all. But the closest I can come up with is a "Star Wars: X-Wing" novel.
Lastly, not at all least, a series of books which switched on my brain. An idea of different worlds which may be out there, ideas around possibilities which were just the other side of a page. Roger Zelazny's Amber novels. Other things convinced me I could do it, this series had me wanting to try.
Earlier than that, there was a collection of short stories by another author I really admire a lot. I've been reading their work for a couple decades now, and am constantly there for their work - it's just that good at speaking to me. This book got me trying to write short pieces just to try it.
Most recently, there is an author I genuinely respect who put a series of short stories together, then pieces of a novella, and finally a full novel all in the BattleTech universe. The Fox Patrol stories by @swankmotron.com truly, seriously, inspire me to keep trying. Eventually I'll find something.
"But it's only $650-" "I don't care. Because we don't have display space, we don't have the money, and if you get it I will hate myself while having fun building the damn thing. No!" ... I mean, sure it's cool but... $650! I don't have that money. (That's "I could have my company of Locusts" money.)
Honorable mention? A series I read in middle school which grew on me, but I left alone when the library didn't have more books.
Another look at some scenes which live in my head and bubble up into my mind now and then. Especially from other creatives... @thephilfoglio.bsky.social 's Girl Genius offered this one up some time back in a side story, and it stuck rather nicely into a place beside Clarke's Third Law.
If you absolutely must have young-adult wizards in your life... I got a suggestion instead.