Background
Character Name: Rincewind
Series: The Discworld (book series)
Point in canon: The end of Eric
Character Background and Personality: Despite being a wizard and longtime student of the Unseen University, Rincewind is a failure at magic-- an abysmal one, at that. This is partly due to the fact that, on a bet, he once opened the most magical tome in existence and got one of the Eight Great spells lodged in his head and he couldn't remember any spells once it jumped in (there was a lot of speculation as to why this was. Rincewind maintained it was because other spells were too scared of it to stay). The other part of the explanation is that Rincewind is simply talentless for it. Though the spell has since been removed he's been unable to do even the simplest of cantrips. The most he was able to do was unlock a door with his mind, and even that left him pale and weak with the effort. While he's been shown expressing a desire to have the power of some of the great mages in history, his inability to do magic doesn't bother him much. For one, it makes him less likely to draw attention and thus safer (safety is a high priority for him). For another, he's always harbored an idea that there was something greater than magic, a more orderly way of doing things. Something better, though buggered if he could tell you what it was. Besides, he knows he's still a wizard. He's even got it written on his hat (though it's spelled incorrectly). This is one of his few points of pride-- Rincewind takes great offense if anyone suggests that he's not a wizard, or that he could simply stop being one if he wished. "A wizard isn't what you do," he once said. "It's what you are. If I wasn't a wizard, I wouldn't be anything".
Being bad at magic in a dangerous world like the Disc means he has to have some other talents to have survived for so long. That's his talent. Rincewind is, above all, a survivor. He'd be the first to admit that he's a failure at most everything, unreliable, yellow with cowardice to the core of him and, quite frankly, a rat, but he manages to face (or run away from, considering on how annoying his conscience wants to be and whether there are people forcing him to remain) hundreds of different dangers and always come out relatively unscathed. He's saved the Disc from certain peril at least twice, though usually with great reluctance. Rincewind's idea of a wonderful life consists of long, glorious stretches of boredom. He considers adventure to be a synonym for danger, and heroism to be a synonym for insanity. The trouble is that he's a favorite of the Lady, one of the goddesses of the Discworld (we would know her as Lady Luck) and hated by Fate, one of the gods. Combine that with a knack for getting dragged into situations he'd have been better off left out of and one can see how he's managed to have been captured, chased and almost killed a hundred times over. He's been everywhere from the Rim (the edge of the world) to the Hell Dimensions and has had danger stare him in the back of the head loads of times.
As mentioned, Rincewind has little to no magical talent, but he is a wizard, selected for it when he was in the orphanage in his village. This means that he can both sense and see magic (noticed by the color octarine, the color of magic, which is said to be the most astonishing color in the spectrum. Rincewind thinks it looks a sort of greenish-purple) and that when he dies Death himself will come to claim him, rather than sending one of his lackies. He also has a talent for languages: "Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four." When faced with danger, his first option is always to run. Failing that he'll do whatever he has to in order to get out. His fighting style is described as: "Without skill or fairness or tactics but with a great deal of whirlwind effort. The strategy was to prevent an opponent getting enough time to realize that in fact Rincewind wasn't a very good or strong fighter, and it often worked." (He once went up against an extremely powerful sorcerer with only a half-brick in a sock.) Rincewind isn't book-smart, and can be slow on the uptake (one of the running gags is that he often confuses certain vocabulary for other words), but he's a clever bastard in a pinch. He's one of the few characters in the series with a good deal of common sense, and is often the source of accidental wisdom. But his basic skills are base cunning and an ability to detect danger normally only found in small rodents. He's quick to lie and quick to cheat, but more to get himself out of things than out of any underhandedness-- at the core of him he's still a good person, and his conscience has managed to to send him back into dangers that he'd rather have run from.
--
THE LUGGAGE: Rincewind is perpetually followed by a magic chest known as the Luggage. It's shaped like a regular wooden chest, but has hundreds of tiny pink human-shaped feet and (sometimes) flips its lid to reveal a large mahogany-colored tongue and a lot of white teeth. I say only sometimes, because the Luggage is made of sapient pearwood, which grants it a small number of abilities. Firstly, it's multi-dimensional. Dirty laundry can go in and the next time you open it, you'll have clean laundry. Or, it can eat someone, and the next time you open it, you'll have clean laundry. A person could put as many things as they want inside it and the Luggage will never be full. It's also very resistant to damage, and impervious to magic. The Luggage is enchanted so that it will follow its master anywhere. And that means anywhere. Hell, heaven, other dimensions, whatever. It's one of the running gags through the series. Though it can't talk, the Luggage usually gets its messages very clearly across, managing to stare/glare/glance without eyes and be very menacing while doing so. Its personality is a cross between loyal dog and homicidal maniac. It likes, for example, to terrorize bar patrons into feeding it potato chips, and doesn't hesitate to bite/eat/trample people who try to harm its master. It appears to have a weakness for beautiful women. It's not conventionally tied to Rincewind, but seems to have chosen him as his master anyways. Goodness only knows why.
--
Once he comes to terms with the requirements of Micro, Rincewind will try to find a nice safe patch of boredom and stay there. Preferably in a library or bookstore, as he likes books.
As is often the case with him, that boredom likely won't happen.
Sexual Orientation: Predominately heterosexual. He's argued with his libido and made enough comments to give indication that he likes the women folk. However, Rincewind and pain never got on well, and if a man offered to help him with the chip he wouldn't object too much. But once he gets over flushing horribly about the experiment he'll try and find a woman first (wizards are forbidden from being with women, so despite a bit of dabbling in his youth he's somewhat sexually repressed).
Sample Post: Of all the times the wizard had awoken to find himself in a strange new place, this one was, at least, the most non-threatening of the bunch. This was not to say he wasn't terrified, of course. He was. Dearly. Fear was all but swaddled around him in a reassuringly familiar blanket. But there were levels of fear, and this one was low enough on the ladder that he didn't need to tear around the room in a panic or curl into a ball on the floor. He could deal with other emotions, such as confusion about where his hat and robe had gone off to.
Those items located (and nothing else, which wasn't surprising, as Rincewind was hardly ever in one delightfully boring place long enough to have anything else) and donned, he could focus on his second concern. How he'd managed to show up here when he'd been on his way back to Ankh-Morpork, for example. "Well I'm not opening the door yet," he spoke aloud firmly. "You can just forget about it. I've learned my lesson. You open the door, and that's when all the trouble starts. There'll be a guard on the other side, I suspect. Or better yet, let's just throw some big mad beast on the other side, shall we? Some horrible, slavering monster. It's never 'Oh look, a fluffy rabbit' or 'Oh look, a delicious plate of mashed potatoes'. ...And if ever there were either of those things," he continued, settling on the bed, "I suspect the potatoes would be poisoned, and the rabbit would be the sort to eat people."
Rincewind would have continued on in this fashion, had it not been for the voice in his head (which might have been waiting for him to finish before realizing that if it didn't speak up he likely never would). This wasn't much of a surprise either, and as it started he cut it off with a terse thought of Listen, will you, I've had more than enough conversations in my head to last me a very long lifetime, so if you'll just--
He stopped. 'Stimulating exercises'?
There was a long stretch of silence. Rincewind considered its message thoroughly.
Er, he thought hesitantly, his ears reddening. You wouldn't happen to mean something like push-ups, would you? ...No? Is that a no? Oh. Well then. Right. Thank you.
Bugger.