Dear Osvaud,

This is Osvaud. I can prove it by relaying a personal, private detail from our past that you’ll never forget (no matter how far gone we become). Remember that time we dominated the dragon to act as a mount and how awesome it was? Okay, now, recall how we neglected to prepare a feather fall spell, thinking that we’d just cast fly if we needed to?

As it turns out, you fall more than two hundred feet in about the same time as it takes to cast that spell. Everybody saw you shatter on the ground like an egg dropped from orbit because of a little turbulence in the middle of your speech.  You had to kill Sir Scaly and, like, three whole towns just to burn that particular rumor mill.

That brings us to today’s topic: mistakes.

They happen. You’ve made many, and you’ll make many more. That whole regrettable exercise in falling damage is only our most embarrassing and educational error. However, it was an experience that seared onto our soul the importance of preparation and practicality. Whenever you make a mistake, own up to it, and try to take something away from the situation. Don’t rage about it or blame anyone else. Even minions.

I mean, really, Osvaud… nobody loves you more than me, but you could have just cast fly. You didn’t need to tool around on a dragon because it made you look like King Awesome of Awesome Mountain. Hells, you could have cast extra-long all-day fly paired with an illusion of a dragon, but no no no… you had to go all out for no good reason.

Immortality didn’t really make us a whole lot smarter or wiser, but it did give us a lot more freedom to make mistakes exactly like that. We have the opportunity to learn from them without our last words being self-deprecating curses. Figure the average mortal makes like one or two big flubs in a lifetime that they go to their grave regretting. If we can go a century or two without some titanic screw up, then we’re doing pretty well.

That brings us to the draw of the handicap or intentional mistake. It isn’t enough anymore to win, we’ve got to succeed with style. It’s easy to throw a few meteor swarms around and go about our day. After doing it more times than we can count, we want to see how many creative ways we can kill burglars with unseen servants. Basically, the most efficient solution isn’t always the most entertaining. The key is not actually screwing yourself when having fun. Make sure you can always whip out the big magic if you need it, and try to build in a safety net.

Finally, while you should never blame minions for your failures, you should know that it is okay to take out frustrations on them. After all, that is one of the real benefits of having minions in the first place.

Although, in hindsight, I do miss Sir Scaly.

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