Bartholomew

Bartholomew knows the group is in combat. He isn’t stupid. He is, in fact, the most intelligent creature known to exist.

“Who cares,” screams the crude man in steel-plate swinging a rude looking cudgel to smash in the frontal lobe of the two-legged small dog-like creature assailing him. “Just do something magic and aim it at something ugly.”

Indeed.

Bartholomew feels pressed between not wishing to ruin the work he’s been at all morning, and helping. There is only so much room in the ole noggin, after all. If he stops now, he may never complete his magnus opus, a treaty on the use of metaphysics in magic, and the philosophy behind the ethics of the, so-called, natural-laws in science.

He had spent the morning thinking about an old wizard who refused to allow a local scientist the true results of his experiments. Cruel bugger wanted to put fungus in the body to fight off illness. So the wizard taught him a lesson and constantly changed his results. Funny man, that scientist. Lost his mind. Eventually moved toward mating giants and trolls and was killed by a local ranger guild.

The little elf in black dyed leather screams, “Barty!” and shoulder bumps the wizard to safety just before a spear chucked from the fist of a near-by Kobold splits him in half.

Almost by accident, Bartholomew unleashes a fount of fire from the tip of his staff that roasts the hideous laughing creature into ash.

My! Very unladylike, my dear, screaming and assaulting me. Where was I? Oh yes, I would send the man condolence letters mocking his attempts to wield the natural world without magic to control the results. Wizards exist for a reason, I’d tell him. We are the thinkers in this world friend. No one needs a scientist for anything, except maybe the masochist who wants a headache.