So, I got a comment from Khizzara on that last mailbag that kind of got me thinking. See, she looked at the picture Sarlin sent with her letter about running into Dontrag and Utvoch in Ashenvale, and how it looks like they have their names floating over their heads, which they actually DON’T and it just looked that way because Sarlin did some kind of thingy-whatsy with the picture after the fact. Which is kind of a dumb thing not to recognize right off, especially from someone like Khizzara who’s supposed to be a mage and smart and stuff, but maybe her int buff isn’t working or some shit. Or maybe Spazzle just got the brains in the family. Whatever.

Anyhow, though, that comment got me thinking about how handy it would be if those two DID have their names hovering over their heads, because let’s face it, Khizzara DOES have a point about how nobody can tell the Wonder Twins apart. And granted, in my case, that’s at least partly due to me not really giving a shit, but still. It’ll save at least a couple headaches.

I figured I’d see about getting some actual return on my investment in all these mage lessons Shayari’s been getting from Faranell over in the Undercity, so I gave her a new project to work on: casting a glamor spell (she liked the sound of that a lot more before I spelled out what I meant) on Dontrag and Utvoch that actually WOULD make their names float over their heads. Turns out, that kind of a spell wasn’t even all that complicated to put together.

Hold your horses. You know what usually happens around here when something looks like smooth sailing.

So Shay tried her spell out yesterday, and at first everything seemed to be going fine. “Dontrag” hovering over Dontrag (I think), “Utvoch” hovering over Utvoch (I believe), and, so far as the spell was to be believed, 70% less confusion about which of those idiots was which, and a residual 30% reduction in how much I needed to smack them around. Which I know is a lot less than the 70%, but come on, they’re still dumb and annoying, right? NO JURY WOULD CONVICT ME.

So that seemed to be going fine. But then, after a little while, the spell started going haywire. As in, it kept putting the names over Dumb and Dumber’s heads, but it started switching them around — putting “Dontrag” over Utvoch and “Utvoch” over Dontrag. Now, mind you, I didn’t really notice this myself right away, largely because recognizing the problem would require me to care enough about which of them is which, and I mean, if I could just LOOK at those two and know who was D and who was U, I wouldn’t NEED the damn glamor in the first place, right? But at one point while Shay was tinkering with the spell, Taktani bounced by, and don’t ask me how but she always seems to be able to keep those two idiots straight. I don’t know, she’s a cat most of the time, so maybe her kitty-sense tingles or something. Point is, the names started switching around. Why, I don’t know. Maybe Shay forgot to cross some T’s and dot some I’s setting up the spell. Maybe the sheer AURA OF FAILURE that surrounds those two is so potent that it even makes magic break down after a while. Maybe they’re just so damn indistinguishable that even the UNIVERSE ITSELF gets confused eventually, magic or no. Don’t ask me, I just work here.

Thing is, that wasn’t even the worst of it. Because, see, obviously the glamor was visible to EVERYONE, right? So the Wonder Twins themselves could read each other’s arcane name tags, but then, when the spell started going wonky and mixing them up, THE IDIOTS THEMSELVES started getting all distressed and confused and thinking THEY had it wrong, and maybe they weren’t really who they thought they were. And this led to like an hour and a half of Dontrag worrying that he might actually be Utvoch, and Utvoch getting an ulcer thinking he’s been living a lie when he should have been Dontrag, until finally I had to bonk their damn heads together to shut them up because who needs to to listen to that shit.

So while they were out cold, I had Shay lift the damn spell. It’s just not fucking worth it if it’s not even going to work half the time, and just gives those two one more thing to yammer about. Hell, who the fuck would have guessed that one little would-be hocus-pocus convenience would result in a pair of blithering mental defectives having a full-on existential crisis?

So yeah. Back to the drawing board. Moving on.

More soon.