TL;DR: The reformed antagonist of book one, conscripted by the game's code as its pre-assigned "chosen one" — and the only trapped wizard who looks like he's enjoying it. Jimmy wears the tan tunic and the gold sword for nineteen chapters of suspicion, gets his magic restored in chapter twenty-two by Martin's side-load patch, stops the pendulum, and at the climax refuses to kill the antagonist. The party isn't sure whether the mercy is real or theatre. The book is not sure either.

Spoiler level: full book. This page assumes you've finished An Unwelcome Quest.

Snapshot

Jimmy has spent two books being the wrong shape of person on purpose. In book one he was the exiled villain who ran the wizard fraternity like a politician until the truth came out. In book two he was the man on probation, careful, watched, performing rehabilitation under federal-agent eyes in Seattle. An Unwelcome Quest drops him back into the company of the wizards he used to manipulate, in a costume the game gave him, with a role he didn't ask for — and asks the room to decide what to do with him. The book never lets the reader settle.

Role in the story

Jimmy is the trapped party's wild card and the second-most-present character in the book — eighteen of twenty-eight chapters carry him. He arrives in the clearing in chapter one already in the game's "chosen one" costume, which is suspicious in itself. The other wizards spend chapters two through twenty trying to decide whether Todd briefed him in advance, whether he's just a convenient stooge, or whether the game's data hooks gave him the role automatically. Phillip pulls him aside three times across the book — at the inn in chapter nine, on the road in chapter twelve, after Todd's monologue in chapter twenty — and the conversations are the closest the party gets to a read on him. The answer, as far as Phillip can tell, is that Jimmy is enjoying being the chosen one too much to be entirely on Todd's side, but not enough to be entirely on the party's either.

In chapter twenty-two, Martin's side-load patch hits Jimmy's file. Magic flickers back on mid-pendulum-swing. Jimmy stops the trap, frees the party, and three chapters later refuses to kill Todd when Todd is cornered. The mercy lands him on probation again in chapter twenty-six, with limited powers and the careful watching of every other wizard in the room.

Personality in plain English

Theatrical, controlled, prideful. Same calculating Jimmy who ran Leadchurch like a campaign in book one, who navigated the federal agents in book two, and who now strikes poses at the front of a marching party in someone else's bad video game. He has always known when he is being watched, and he is being watched constantly in this book — by the trapped wizards, by Todd's NPCs, by his own narrator. His one consistent tell is that he plays to whichever audience is in the room. With Phillip he listens. With Todd he postures. With Tyler and Gary he takes credit. With the camera, he holds the smirk.

His worst habit is that you cannot read the difference between his strategy and his vanity. His best is that, when the moment comes to actually use the magic Martin gives him, he uses it the way a friend would. The book is honest about which of those is the more reliable signal.

What he wants

Out of the game. To prove — to Phillip especially — that the probation has taken. To be the man who saves the day, on camera, in a way the other wizards can't deny. Underneath all of that, possibly: a clean run at the second chance he asked for at the end of book two.

What he fears

That Todd is right about something — anything — and that admitting it will reopen the question of whether his own exile was just. That Phillip's quiet attention is judgment rather than trust. That the mercy he extends to Todd in chapter twenty-six is going to be the wrong call.

Key relationships

• Phillip. The book's most-charged unfinished business. Three private conversations across the book, all of them about the same thing: can Phillip trust him? Jimmy works hard to perform the answer. Phillip works hard not to be performed at.
• Todd Douglas. The two of them are mirrors — modern reality-hackers who chose different exits when the file caught up with them. Todd's monologue in chapter twenty is partly aimed at Jimmy specifically, and Jimmy's refusal to kill him at the climax is partly a refusal to become him.
• Tyler and Gary. The trapped wizards Jimmy condescends to most easily. He takes credit for their good ideas in the inn at chapter nine and in the crossroads reunion at chapter eighteen. They notice.
• Martin. Off-screen for almost the whole book. The side-load patch in chapter twenty-two is the first thing Martin has ever done for Jimmy that wasn't a trap. The two of them never share a scene, and the trust the patch implies is the more interesting for that.

Visual identity

He is the cover's leftmost figure. Inside Todd's game he wears a tan or khaki sleeveless tunic with a brown leather belt and brown leather wrist-bracers, brown breeches, brown leather boots, and a small gold pixel short-sword at his side — the cover-canonical loadout. He is hatless inside the game, his auburn / reddish-brown hair pixel block visible as the head sprite. New this book: a single-pixel vertical scar along the right cheekbone, from his book-two prison time, present under both the in-game tunic and the book-two streetwear-and-hoodie outfit he returns to in chapter twenty-six. Default pose: hands on hips, slightly cocked head, thin pixel-mouth tilted up at the right corner. When his magic comes back in chapter twenty-two, the orb-glow he produces is a slightly bluer-white than the rest of the wizards' — Jimmy's signature, the cool-cyan tint where Phillip and Martin are warm-white.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Jimmy (canonical — the most common form)

Discussion questions

1. The mercy Jimmy extends to Todd in chapter twenty-six is the book's moral pivot. Was it genuine restraint, calculated performance, or both at once — and does the book think the difference matters?
2. Phillip pulls Jimmy aside three times. We never see the contents of those conversations on the page. Why does the book trust us to imagine them rather than render them?
3. Jimmy and Todd are mirror images. The book gives them similar arcs — exile, isolation, return — but lands them in opposite places. What is the book saying about which of them was salvageable?
4. The chosen-one costume is Todd's casting decision, not Jimmy's. To what extent does that excuse the postures Jimmy strikes in the role, and to what extent does it merely reveal who he already was?
5. The other wizards never quite trust Jimmy after the mercy ruling. The book seems to think they're right to withhold trust. Are they?