TL;DR: Returning from book one as the home team's trap designer and comic relief. Engineers an elaborate dragon snare. Falls into it himself. Gets levitated out by Tyler with a polite carpenter's calm. Spends the rest of the book wearing a single comic-book bruise under one eye and most of his dignity in a slightly different place.

Spoiler level: full book. This page assumes you've finished Fight and Flight.

Snapshot

The Leadchurch wizard most reliably ridiculous. Gary's job in book one was to be the third friend at the table. His job in book four is upgraded — he's now a working wizard, designs the dragon trap of chapter nineteen, presides over the fake-demon ceremony's actual macro work in chapter twenty-three, and contributes the "illusory fire" line that the quotes page attributes to him. The work is real. The dignity loss is the running gag.

Role in the story

Gary is paired with Tyler as the home team (chapter seven). He designs the rope-and-pulley dragon snare that becomes the chapter nineteen set-piece — the trap is humane, sophisticated, baited in the right place, and triggered by his own foot on the disguised board. Tyler levitates him out. The bruise stays. He's at the council debate over Jeff (chapter twenty-four), the portal-weapon prototype (chapter seventeen), and the deliberate-public-defeat (chapter twenty-six, where his contribution is to "blow" a protective shield with a flat-pixel illusion of sparks that obviously don't do anything). His signature is illusory fire — flat-color flames with no smoke and no heat, which is the visual joke version of his whole approach to wizarding.

Personality in plain English

Casual, collegial, jokey. Designs things on chalkboards. Falls into things he designed on chalkboards. Friendly to a fault, sober in moments that matter. His worst habit is the engineer's habit of believing the design will hold if the design is clever enough; the book disagrees with him explicitly and at length. His best is that he is the only character in the book who never sulks about being wrong. He gets up, brushes the dust off, and goes back to fix the trigger pin.

What he wants

The home team functioning. Tyler protected. A trap that works. A pint at the Rotted Stump after the trap doesn't work. The bishop's ceremony to land convincingly enough that he gets credit for the macro work without anyone in the village asking why an exorcism would need terminal-green glyph-pixels.

What he fears

That the next trap will be the one that hurts a real villager. That the illusory-fire trick will stop landing — that someone will eventually figure out the flames don't burn, and the whole bishop-deception will collapse. That the council's hesitation on Jeff will set a precedent he'll have to live with the next time a wizard makes a mess.

Key relationships

• Tyler. Field partner. The home team's dynamic — moral conscience next to practical engineer — is the book's most stable two-person friendship.
• Kelly. Through Tyler. Gary doesn't pretend to bond with Kelly directly, but he stops trying to set traps for her around chapter nineteen and the book treats that as growth.
• Phillip. Affectionate distance. Phillip relies on Gary's macro work without ever quite trusting his designs.
• Martin. Old friend. They share most of the running tavern gags in the book.

Visual identity

Mid-thirties, light skin tone, medium-stout build, a soft round face, a short scruffy brown beard — deliberately shorter and rougher than Phillip's. A deep-brown conical wizard hat with no stars and no stripes, distinct from every other wizard's. Plain wool robe in muted forest-green with brown belt, brown trousers, brown leather boots. A wooden staff with the standard glowing white pixel orb. Pewter tankard frequently in hand. From chapter nineteen onward there's a single dark-purple bruise pixel under one eye that the book never lets him fully recover from, and dust on his robe shoulders that the book is delighted to keep noticing. His signature spell is the smokeless orange-and-yellow illusory fire — the lack of smoke being the gag's load-bearing detail.

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.

• Gary (canonical — the most common form)

Discussion questions

1. Gary's dragon trap is sophisticated, humane, and the wrong tool for the job. The book lets him fall into it himself. Is the slapstick punishment proportionate, or is the book grading him on character rather than work?
2. Gary contributes the "illusory fire" line. It's a joke. It's also a real description of what most of his magic is — convincing, harmless, designed to land an effect rather than actually do anything. What does the book think about that approach to wizarding?
3. Gary's bruise persists. The book never lets him recover it. Is the bruise a small kindness — a visible cost — or a small cruelty?
4. The home team is the team that actually figures out the dragons-are-sheep frame first. Tyler gets credit; Gary's role in supporting Tyler is less visible. Is the book underrating Gary's contribution there?
5. Gary is funny first and competent second. The book treats both qualities as load-bearing. Pick a moment where one quality saves him and one where it betrays him.