Background
For some bizarre reason, many fountain pen ink reviewers write pangrams as sample text. Pangrams are useful for learning to type, but they're somewhat absurd for demonstrating fountain pen writing - it's not as if the fountain pen will write differently depending on the letter of the alphabet. Anywho, it's a common practice.
So, when I started doing ink reviews, I decided to have fun with these pangrams. One of these pangrams is "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." Eventually, this morphed into stories about "the fifth wizard", who was given a name by the user "yazeh" on the Fountain Pen Network.
Characters
Quintus / Quint / Quin - the fifth wizard
Makhabesh - a male sphinx (emphasis on the first syllable, second emphasis on the last syllable, with the "ah" between them de-stressed; the "kh" is a "hard h" - sort of like clearing your throat; both "a" characters are pronounced like "ah"; also, the consonant-vowel grouping is unusual: MAKH - abesh - with a pause / break before the "abesh", rather than the more common grouping of: ma kha besh)
(Ptero-Pterodactylus on DeviantArt drew Makhabesh as imagined from Part 2: The Oily Adventure. Image can be seen here. Thanks, Ptero!)
The other wizards: Primus (in charge), Secundus, Tertius, and Quartus
Marsell, the Oily Sorcerer of Bicbiro (Bicbiro is a city) (For you non-fountain pen people, ballpoints use oil-based ink. See this Wikipedia page about Marcel Bich for more.)
Enketa - Makhabesh's sister
Mom - Makhabesh's mother
Map
Here's a map of the wizardlands. It's not necessarily to scale (both overall size and distances between locations), but I needed something to show the relative position of things and bound the region where our adventures happen.
NOTE: The story was getting too long, so I broke it up into one article per part with navigation at the start and end of each part.
> on to Part 1: Quintus, the Fifth Wizard
Quick Links:
The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 2: The Oily Adventure
The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 3: The Old Goat Adventure
The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 4: The Quest to Find Happy Silkworms
The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 5: The Quest to Heal the Source of Magic
The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 6: The Voyage Home