Eventually, he does manage to fall back asleep. And eventually, he does wake up again, and his hangover has been muted down to a small ache at the top of his head, but he's had migraines haunting him for years so he's used to it, it's nothing bad.

...except for how he didn't exist until yesterday, that is. Of course.

Now he's in a funk again. Getting drunk was—maybe not a good idea, but at least he didn't drink so much he blacked out. He does remember calling a cab shirtless, and he remembers that the driver sounded slightly put off by it but agreed to drive him anyway.

That... gives him a small idea...

But he'll think about it later. For now he needs to take a long, hot shower to get rid of the grime. His skin feels clammy and disgusting and he should probably put his clothes in the laundry machine, but he'll do that later. For now they go into his inventory and he'll shower.

After twenty-five minutes including using the toilet, that shower, and a brushing of teeth, he's feeling like a new man, ready to face whatever the world has to throw at him.

So of course the first thing he'll do is use his computer.

His Simmit threads got more replies, but they're all between useless and actively trollish. It's actually kind of funny to watch automaton-people trying to troll—he's not sure what he expected, exactly, but it was definitely more creative and intelligent than this suite of poorly-strung-together sentences trying to be insulting. He almost feels tempted to keep that there for his future amusement but eventually decides to go ahead and delete the threads.

Next he checks his bank account. The food and the wine went for... §763. Huh. Less than he'd expected, but he's not complaining. He'll still need to get a job, though, however the hell that works, but... if he's the only actual person around... he might be able to pretty handily beat the market in many ways.

And he'll have access to magic. He's still feeling just as person-like as he did yesterday, and either it is some magical effect that'll eventually get him somehow or it's got nothing to do with the Realm of Magic at all. In any case, it doesn't seem like he has any reason to expect spellcasting to be especially dangerous.

He draws his clothes from his inventory and puts them in the washer, then decides to add his bedsheets to it, too. Maybe you shouldn't do that but right now he doesn't care. He turns it on and goes back to his bedroom.

Another outfit—and he briefly considers his idea from earlier—but no, if the Sages have any veto power over him getting magic, he wants to at least not upset them. Jeans and a T-shirt, like always, and shoes that are good for walking, then...

...he should eat something. And when he walks into the kitchen he realises he never put the welcome food into the fridge. The way he notices it is by the smell. Holding his breath, he gets rid of the contents of the trays—man, he does not remember whose trays these are—and puts them in the dishwasher.

Okay, so, no leftovers. He's not sure what time—11:43AM says his phone, okay, not that bad given the givens. And he can have some cereal just to fill his stomach for now. The mansion at the Realm of Magic had a kitchen, he's sure he can get more food if he wants it...

...but he's feeling paranoid, so he places a couple of apples in his inventory just in case. They'll not last as long there as they would in the fridge, but it's not like apples are expensive.

Okay, now he can go. Phone and wallet in his inventory, keys go there too once his door is locked, and he can follow along the riverbank at a leisurely pace.

The portal is right where he left it, and after checking it for limb-eating again just to be sure he steps through it and finds himself staring up at the big house once more.

He finds the Sage of Practical Magic there again, in a different room than the one he saw her in yesterday, and greets her with a, "Good afternoon, Sage Lane."

She looks up from her stirring and let's go of the gigantic ladle—which keeps going without her help—to give him a small wave. "Hello, Peter. You can just call me Cara."

Man it would be so fucking nice if today everyone miraculously sounded real.

"I think I want to become a spellcaster after all. Can you tell me more about the specifics?"

"I can cast the Rite of Ascension on you to turn you into a spellcaster."

Here lie Peter Tarleton's hopes and dreams, beaten to death by a nonsensical reality.

"What kinds of things can spellcasters do?" he tries.

"Spellcasters can cast spells, make potions, enchant items, and bind familiars."

He just has to ask the right questions. "What are familiars?"

"Familiars are animals, magical or otherwise, bound to spellcasters. They can aid in casting, lend their magical reserves, and even protect from death."

...alright this might actually get to be too much stuff to ask about. If she could be trusted to be useful she'd probably tell him only the most relevant parts but this is what he has to work with.

"Are there any books with all this information about spellcasters?"

"We have many books here at the manor with more information. You may peruse them at your leisure."

Downright obsequious.

"Thank you, Cara. I'll get back to you."

And she seems to take this as an end to the conversation, so she returns to her potionmaking.

He... probably can't check the books out, can he. Well, that's alright. He'll walk over to the nearest bookshelf and...

...well, the book called An Introductyon to the Arcayne Artes is probably a good place to start!

Peter told Cara he was ready to be turned into a spellcaster but there are books and they are very informative so he's going to be informed. And it feels much less awful for books to not respond to him like people should because books should not be people so that's fine.

(The books also sound off, still. They are simplistic and uninspired and dry. But simplistic and uninspired and dry books can still be soothing in their own way.)

The next few days are spent hopping between his house and the Realm of Magic to learn more. Despite the extra ys and es inserted places they shouldn't be—Peter is pretty sure even in Old Simlish stuff wasn't written that way—they're readable enough. And despite the number of books and the time he spends reading them, their actual informational content is not very high. Something like the frame skip in his car trip from earlier seems to be happening, here, where subjectively not a lot of time passes but by the end of it his clock has advanced by more than it should have.

Spellcasters, as Cara said, can cast spells, enchant items, brew potions, and bind familiars. However, the three latter categories are really just especially important and useful spells that got their own names, so it can all be reduced to the one thing.

In order for you to become a spellcaster, an existing spellcaster needs to cast the Rite of Ascension on you (no, it's not clear how the first spellcaster came to be, next question). Once that has happened, your magical potential is unlocked, and you get both an extra sense for it and an extra sort of primitive mental action that is just in itself a sort of empty canvas—you can do magic without having the magic actually do anything, and it's onto this empty canvas that you paint the effects you want to have in the world. That's what a spell is.

Despite the relatively freeform way that works, spells are still discrete, individual effects. This is because once a spell is invented it enters the collective consciousness of all wizards and can be learned by anyone who's practising their magic and in a receptive frame of mind. So a wizard who wants to invent a spell will focus on creating the effect they want and will bind a set of steps, gestures, and words to said spell; once that happens, they can just execute those steps to cause the effect to happen, and that's more-or-less that; and thenceforth that spell is available "out there" to be learned by anyone who's trying to learn.

However, not just anyone can learn any spell. There is an underlying tracking of how powerful a spellcaster is, which is not dictated by which and how many spells they know but is correlated with it. Subjectively, more powerful spellcasters are ones that are more in tune with their magic, understand it better, have better intuitions for it, and have more experience with the mental motions needed to have the effects they want. It's almost like a muscle, and it does atrophy with sufficient disuse, but people who have trained that muscle more and more effectively can use it in more powerful and creative ways. And every spell lies somewhere along that gradient of power, in a way that's intrinsic to what the spell does, so for a spell to be learnable at all the spellcaster needs to be powerful enough to cast it.

No such thing as wielding power beyond your reckoning. If you can wield it, you can reckon it.

Enchanted items are objects that a spellcaster has turned persistently magical with a specialised spell. The most basic enchanted object just about every spellcaster has and uses is the glimmerstone, a nifty little thing that Sages give new casters as a freebie which permits free teleportation to the Realm of Magic from wherever they are and then back. This is so that people don't have to always come all the way to a specific portal to get here—and though the book implies there are other portals to the Realm of Magic elsewhere, only the one in Glimmerbrook is mentioned by name. But other common enchanted objects are magical foci, especially wands (which can help with spellcasting by serving as a lens of sorts that focuses and directs magical intent), flying broomsticks or other appliances (for fast and fun transportation), and, of course, potions.

While most enchantment spells are pretty powerful and complicated, potions are as a rule simpler and more accessible. Technically a potion is any enchanted consumable that applies an effect, temporary or otherwise, on the person who consumes it. Like regular spells, there are specific sets of steps that need to be performed and, in this case, ingredients to be added in specific quantities and orders. Once the potion is completed, it never gets spoilt even should its ingredients be the kind of thing that does, and it will apply its effects on anyone who consumes a dose, although how much "a dose" is and what happens when you consume less or more than a dose at a time varies per potion. Their recipes universally seem to yield an integer number of doses.

Next, familiars. Animals, magical or otherwise, can form a bond with a wizard that provides benefits for both. Each familiar bound to a wizard gets a cosy pocket dimension for itself, as a subset of the wizard's inventory that's personalised just for them. Furthermore, a familiar will never die for as long as their wizard is alive—even should their corporeal form be completely destroyed, they'll reform safe and sound in their pocket dimension. In exchange, a familiar can absorb some spellcaster charge if it's out while the spellcaster is casting spells, it can increase the power of their spells, and it can also take their place should they be about to die for any reason (and then be reconstructed inside their pocket dimension).

Finally, spellcaster charge. It's simple enough, and works as Cara explained: if you do too much magic in a row, you accumulate charge. The more of it you have, the more powerful your spells are, but the more likely they are to spontaneously fail. A failure can range from a simple fizz to a full blown persistent magical curse that needs to be specially removed. Death by spell failure is uncommon but not unheard of; death by too much spellcaster charge is more commonplace, especially amongst novice wizards who don't heed the Sages' warnings. Wizards do get an innate intuition for it, though, and they can reliably tell when their charge levels are getting dangerously high. There are ways to quickly discharge into the environment (which does sometimes itself have some effects, many persistent magical features of the world can be traced back to discharge), but doing that too much can also be dangerous, and the safest way to ensure you're free of charge is just waiting it out—a day at most is enough to get rid of it all.

And most importantly, there doesn't seem to be some terrible drawback to being a spellcaster that explains why most people aren't. No, probably the explanation is just that most people... aren't. No one challenges the status quo, and the status quo is "there aren't that many spellcasters".

There are other books he hasn't gotten to, in-depth explanations of various spells or studies about what happens when multiple spells that do the same thing exist or catalogues of known magical animals or what-have-you, but that can wait. He thinks he knows what he needs to know to become a spellcaster, and so he will... talk to Cara.

(He has talked to people over these few days he's spent here at the Realm of Magic. They continue to be That Way^tm. It's just upsetting, but he's an extrovert and he will literally die if he spends whole days without talking to anyone, even in this much-reduced form of talking.)

Cara is easily found once more, this time writing something into a journal, and he knocks on the doorway (no doors to these common rooms, it seems) to announce his presence. "Sage Lane?"

She looks up from her journal and vanishes it into her inventory with a smile. "Peter! Please, you can just call me Cara."

Yes, and this is possibly the eighth time you have said this with the exact tone of voice.

"I would like to have the Rite of Ascension performed."

"Splendid! Right now?"

He steps fully into the room. "Yes, please. What do I have to do?"