First appearance: Coriander Society, Fate of the Faithful Part 1 (A Crossover) · watch it on YouTube
John Carmichael introduces himself as an “ex-wizard, coriander agent, private investigator, and reluctant follower of a very particular dragon goddess.” He arrived in The Void with his partner Asena, chasing their nemesis Ralzamon through a tear in reality. He carries a sentient bronze revolver, a briefcase that holds everything, and a gift for illusion and flirtation. Over five chaotic adventures he became the brains, the mouth and the frequently levitating gunman of the Lyrus-led resistance against The Arbiter. He also flirted a supervillain into helping him rob a bank.
Story
Into the Hanging City
In Coriander Society, Fate of the Faithful Part 1 (A Crossover), John, Asena and the elderly Lawrence Booker Green leapt after Ralzamon from the world of Yord, after a hand reached through a gateway and dragged the nearly defeated villain away. Ralzamon was nowhere in sight when they landed on a bridge in Prexmarin, the Hanging City, which dangles from colossal chains. Lawrence had lost his shoes along the way. A brawl was breaking out in the market square, and John’s first move was to wrap himself and Asena in illusions of local fashion. Asena’s first move was to run straight at the trouble and ask the thugs where Ralzamon was. Every one of them attacked her.
The thugs’ leader was Hathim, a blood berserker of Tiamat whom John recognised from an old adventure. Praying aloud to the Dark Queen of Dragonkind, John drew on the corrupting talisman he calls the red kiss and wrapped Asena in ice. When he learned Hathim was immune to cold, he switched it to lightning, and Hathim fried himself on the first swing. John’s shadow then sprouted wings that existed nowhere else and terrified many of the brutes. He pulled a piece of coral from his bag that became a water trident and flooded the square. A knight’s spell levitated him twenty feet up and then forty, so he spent most of the fight upside down. From up there he shot a fireball bullet through a portal that Lyrus helpfully sliced open in front of him. He sang a plea not to be blown up by his own fireball, and a screaming monster happened to block the blast. Then he summoned mirror-image Johns, wiggled through a midair dance, and emptied his briefcase of a wrench, a rubber chicken and enough inflatable life rafts to carpet the courtyard. Rallying himself with “John, you’re a fucking wizard,” he dropped an anchor and hauled himself back toward the ground. Lyrus killed Hathim by chopping his head off through a portal. Later in the fight, John’s gun, Krontaka, missed a shot and dragged him ten feet toward its prey “like some kind of invisible dog.”
Afterward John looted the dead knights’ armor. That offended Lyrus, even as his own soldiers were already looting behind him. Lyrus handed him Hathim’s head, which went into the bag. John and Asena also bought every wooden spoon a small boy was selling, thousands of them, to cover a private word between them. He wondered aloud whether the Void gathers souls on the brink of death. He also realized that Asena’s “weird dreams” about an arena and a Grandmaster had been real all along. He still refused to believe her that Christmas is a “non-denominational corporate holiday.”
The Seer, the leak and the vision
In Coriander Society - Fate of the Faithful Part 2 (A Crossover), John spent two hours inking a Celtic-knot spell tattoo into Lyrus’s palm as a thank-you. Breakfast was Frank’s stew of boot leather and pineapple, which John made edible by magically flavoring it like steak. Then he magically cleaned the entire forge. The Seer, the Faithful’s blind old blacksmith, insulted Krontaka’s craftsmanship, and the gun sent John a pulse of indignation. The Seer also gave John a prophecy: one path would take him home, another into “a duty thrust upon you,” and someday he might have to choose between “what you want” and his honor. John handed over a sword from the tombs on Ashen to be forged into a knife for his cat, Chester. He also taught Lyrus to fire his oversized Ogre Revolver. Lyrus promptly shot through a wall and winged someone on the other side.
Slipping through rainy Prexmarin in disguise after disguise, John learned that the Faithful’s missing spy, Kenny, was pinned down in a safe house. Kenny had been asking after a silver ewer lost in The Tumult that could carry a strike team through the Ethereal. John also worked out that there was no mole in the Faithful. Ralzamon’s amplified psychic powers were simply reading everyone’s minds. Back at base, he flirted with Baptiste at the door, running a finger up Baptiste’s longest dagger and telling him the disguise would last “probably about as long as you could stick that within somebody.” Then he tried to borrow the ewer the Seer was making, and reached for the “wizard sight” he had lost to look through the Seer’s eyes. The vision showed him the Arbiter on an icy throne, fusing a resurrected Josiah Parsons with the dying spirit of Ralzamon into one empowered general. The new Ralzamon then turned and looked straight at John and Asena.
“As long as you and your faction succeeds, we win… hell is coming for these voidless bastards. We’re hell, by the way.” — John Carmichael, to Lyrus
The rescue began with John disguised as Kenny in a gambling den. He charmed a guard and made the guard look like Kenny too. It fell apart when Circe, Master of Magitek, saw through the illusion with her all-seeing goggles. She had arrived with the armored, fire-mouthed Ganyu Sinmal. John opened the fight by firing a fireball bullet at Circe. Every ninja in the alley exploded. Circe, in her elemental-proof blouse, did not.
The heist
In Coriander Society - Fate of The Faithful Part 3 — A Crossover, John fired “three warning shots to the face” that cracked Circe’s goggles. He winked at a bear-folk gambler who had bet on him, which started a bar fight, and shot the last ninja off a roof. Then he put an arm around Circe’s waist and asked if she wanted to see his tech. When Ralzamon tried to crush Circe’s mind for disloyalty, John threw his shield gauntlet over her. When a tentacle from the beast beneath the city slapped at him, he kicked it away: “Hey, I’m busy here. I’m walking here.” A rousing speech about Ralzamon being “master of absolutely jack crap” sealed the deal. Circe switched sides on the condition that John keep Ralzamon out of her head and get her off-world.
From there it turned into a bank job. John kicked in a door “back in his old breaking and entering days” and Popeyed a can of spinach into the shrunken Asena to restore her size. Circe then overcorrected and made Asena huge. John shoveled the treasury’s gold into his briefcase, offered a quarter ton of TNT against the monster, and escaped through Kenny’s coin-flip waygate. At headquarters he turned Kenny into an illusory sheep after Kenny insisted “I’m not a sheep.” Then the party swam a river of titan blood that made everyone sing, and John sang everything. At the falls he bottled vial after vial of the blood. When the party found the ewer cradled in a glowing plant, John swapped in the Seer’s replica just as enemies cut through the door. He poured titan blood into the real ewer, and the party slipped into the Ethereal right under the noses of the shackled priest and his candle-wax-faced companion.
Into the Shadowlands
In Coriander Society — Fate of the Faithful Part 4 (A Crossover), the Seer and Lawrence divined Ralzamon’s hiding place in The Shadowlands. To rally everyone first, John delivered King Théoden’s speech from atop Lyrus’s shoulders. A hologram horse wore Lyrus’s face, and John kept falling off. The speech was inspiring, John was not. The Seer presented Chester’s finished knife, and the cat carried it in his mouth. As the party arrived, the Shadowlands crept into John’s mind: shadows crawled like the flesh of the Void Dragon he carries, and the trees whispered in a language he should not have understood.
John’s illusions carried the infiltration. He tested the fortress’s “Goblin Disintegration System” with a fake goblin and watched it get vaporized. He walked the party up to the gate under a dome of camouflage, and once Circe had shrunk everyone, he made them invisible through his infernal talisman. To distract a beholder-turned-sentry, he dressed Weebo, a little Modron from his briefcase, as a decoy. The sentry dropped poor Weebo into the abyss. Wiggling through the bars of the inner gate, John prayed: “Tiamat, please make this work. Please, I have work tomorrow.”
When Lyrus came face to face with a Draconic Death Knight, he threw tiny John 125 feet across the keep. In midair John tore a flight tattoo off his leg and it became dragon wings. He terrified the garrison, deflected a ballista bolt with a shield spell, and threw that same shield onto Lyrus at a crucial moment. Under a priest’s fireball he whooshed through the explosion yelling, “I am John Carmichael, destroyer of worlds and annihilator of your stupid keep.” Lyrus won his duel, and the Death Knight’s dying hellfire exploded over him.
The fall of Ralzamon
In Coriander Society — Fate of the Faithful Part 5 (A Crossover), John caught a fireball with his talisman and fed it to his patron, risking his soul to do it. Then he swept down and gunned the red-bearded priest out of the fight. He taunted Ralzamon until the villain rose glowing from the pit, and he held off the psychic assault through sheer will. Ralzamon’s next trick was to wear the face of someone John had not seen since his last mission on Earth, his beloved Carmen. John hesitated for only a single shot. He then threw Asena at Ralzamon wrapped in icy armor, and delivered his verdict:
“How dare you take the form of a loved one… You’ve become that which you hate, Parson, and I’m going to destroy you. So just lie back, think of Yord, and just know that your spirit will return there soon.”
His red kiss amulet whispered “kill, maim, destroy,” and he refused it. Then he emptied a technically empty revolver: four bullets carrying twelve magic missiles. They tore through Ralzamon’s psychic visage “like bullets through a windshield.” What was left, Josiah Parsons, Asena let fall into the pit. As something huge woke in the depths, John and his three mirror images poured out the ewer and opened a curtain into the Ethereal. John went through last, tossing a flashbang at his feet.
Back at the forge, John told Lyrus he believed Ralzamon would now work against the Arbiter from the inside. He handed out farewell gifts. Kenny got a ninja disguise and Frank got a vial of acid, which Frank drank, belched, and declared “pretty good.” Baptiste got a Lacunas vibro-knife, the sleeping Seer got a hypno gun, and Lyrus got a superior healing potion. Lyrus gave him 400 electrum in return. While the Seer slept, John quietly swapped the real ewer for the replica, gave the fake to Lyrus, and kept the real one in his case. Then he asked Lawrence for “a table for four and a half.” The half was Chester. Lawrence’s spell carried them home to Yord, to the Crystalline Cavern where Ralzamon’s psyche had been stored.
Personality and Abilities
John is a charmer and a showman. He flirts with almost everyone (Baptiste, Circe) and trades winks with the Seer, and his idea of an inspiring speech is playing metal on his Magitek phone or reciting Tolkien atop a werebear. He prefers trickery and “discretion” to straight fights, though he admits he doesn’t always take his own advice. Under the jokes he is weary and self-critical: “I’ve been making choices against my honor for quite a long time.” He is from Earth, insists on Christmas, and cried himself to sleep over infinity at the age of ten.
He lost his wizard status and can no longer “soul gaze,” and now draws power from a pact with Tiamat. Her sigil blazes on his coat when he calls on her. He specializes in killing fiends, speaks Infernal, and can unleash a dragon’s fear, sprout dragon wings, and split into mirror-image “shadow clones.” His illusions, cast through a duel-disk-style rig with a floating camera, range from disguises to full camouflage domes and fake walls. His spell tattoos hold one-off magic, and he can ink them onto allies. His gun Krontaka, “Island’s Bane,” is a bronze revolver forged from an ancient spear and a slain devil’s blood. It hungers for fey blood, sends him its emotions, and fires spell bullets. His case of carrying has produced life rafts, an Acme anchor, canned spinach, a Modron and a quarter ton of dynamite. Two talismans tempt him with corruption, and he resisted the red kiss’s whispers in the final battle.
Relationships
- Asena: his partner across worlds. He does the talking because, by her own account, she gets them into trouble.
- Lyrus: friend and brother-in-arms. John inked him a tattoo, they shared a stew and a shoulder ride, and they parted with a handshake and 400 electrum.
- Circe: a villain he flirted into an alliance and protected from Ralzamon. Their dates were “first… second… third.”
- Baptiste: a mutual, knife-based flirtation. “All of my stabbings are personal.” “I know.”
- The Seer: he trades winks and insults with the old smith, who eventually admitted Krontaka served John well.
- Ralzamon: his and Asena’s nemesis, whom he finally shattered in the Shadowlands.
- Tiamat: his patron. He calls himself her “reluctant follower.”
- Kenny: John impersonated him, turned him into a sheep, and gave him a ninja disguise.
- Lawrence Booker Green: a fellow traveler from beyond the Void, whose spell brought John home.
Memorable Quotes
- “John Carmichael, ex-wizard, coriander agent, private investigator, and reluctant follower of a very particular dragon goddess.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 1)
- “When we first met each other, I could barely afford to buy a pen. And now we’re just dropping hot stacks on wooden spoons.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 1)
- “By the way, love your tech. You want to see mine?” (Fate of the Faithful Part 3)
- “Hey, I’m busy here. I’m walking here.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 3)
- “You pitiful fool! Your measly human weapons cannot harm me, for I am John Carmichael, destroyer of worlds and annihilator of your stupid keep.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 4)
- “Tiamat, please make this work. Please, I have work tomorrow.” (Fate of the Faithful Part 4)
Appearances
- Coriander Society, Fate of the Faithful Part 1 (A Crossover)
- Coriander Society - Fate of the Faithful Part 2 (A Crossover)
- Coriander Society - Fate of The Faithful Part 3 — A Crossover
- Coriander Society — Fate of the Faithful Part 4 (A Crossover)
- Coriander Society — Fate of the Faithful Part 5 (A Crossover)