The Quizzard

Player: @First Player

NAME: Garth Ellis
ALIAS: The Quizzard
AGE: 27
OCCUPATION: Dishwasher
BIRTHPLACE: Paragon City
POWERS:

• INDEXOMANCY
  The ability to cast magical spells via trivia facts or random knowledge.
  

Garth Ellis never set out to be anything more than the reigning trivia champ of the Rusty Pelican Bar & Grill. His superpower, before all the weirdness, was remembering the sort of facts that make everyone else roll their eyes and mutter “nobody needs to know that.” He was a dishwasher by day, a trivia-challenge menace by night, and the kind of guy who could overhear a documentary in another room, retain fifty percent of it, then deploy it two years later during an argument about it.

One day, he was on a smoke break outside the bar when the world hiccupped. Colors inverted. Clouds broke into polygons. Everything pixelated, stuttered, and for 3.17 seconds, Garth thought he was losing his mind. And then he was falling. Through a psychedelic and kaleidoscopic funnel of light, as floating plaques hovered like lazy satellites, each displaying bits of information—basic facts, random statistics, tiny scraps of knowledge. He reached out to touch one and the second he did, reality blinked—everything went dark and then he woke up in the alley with a mild headache.

For a few days, nothing happened. Then came the incident in the cereal aisle. Garth sneezed—an ordinary sneeze—and felt an involuntary compulsion the likes of which he'd never felt before. He blurted out that “cereal mascots are older than most American states” and his bookshelves re-arranged themselves in alphabetical order.

The turning point—the moment he decided to be a superhero—came during a perfectly normal grocery run. A fleeing bank robber crashed through the automatic doors of Mighty Mart, waving a gun. Garth panicked, shouted the first fact his brain tossed him—“Sharks existed before trees!”—and the air shook. A shimmering wave rippled out, knocking the robber flat and pixelating every cereal box. Shoppers applauded. A teenager recorded it and posted it on youtube. It got a million views.

So he picked out a cape, chose the most ridiculous name he could think of, and became The Quizzard—a trivia-slinging wizard whose spells run on factoids, curiosity, and the universal truth that sometimes randomness really is a superpower.

🧙‍♂️Indexomancy

Garth’s spellcasting works like a chaotic duet between intention and trivia. The facts aren’t the spell—they’re the ignition key. Whenever he channels magic, his brain coughs up a random tidbit of information, and blurting it out opens the conduit. What actually happens depends entirely on whether he’s focusing hard enough to steer the surge.

If he concentrates, he can shape the magic into something predictable: fire, shields, telekinetic bursts, levitation, whatever form his willpower can wrangle. The spell still launches on the back of whatever strange fact pops out of his mouth (“A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance!”), but the effect matches the intention. The universe humors him… as long as he stays focused.

If his mind slips—even a hair—the magic defaults to randomness. The fact he speaks becomes the only stable part of the process, and everything else goes delightfully sideways. “Penguins have knees!” might create a swarm of spectral penguin-shaped force fields. “Goldfish can’t close their eyes!” could generate a blinding flash. It’s all powerful, but wildly unpredictable.

This makes Garth a dangerous combatant: when he’s calm, he’s competent; when he’s stressed, he’s basically a magical slot machine that summons whatever the universe feels is funniest at the moment. His training is less about memorizing spells and more about meditation, focus, and learning not to panic.