whittling down the crowd

Oi!" you manage to say. You wish you were still in bed.

"OK, let's get this over with," you say in you normal voice that your magic booms over the crowd.

"As you can see from the bevy of beautiful, buxom servants and rivers of gold flowing from my tower, this is a great gig!"

The crowd looks around confused, but you do hear a few chuckles. Very few people know how you actually live. You rarely let people in past the greeting hall, and you only have one servant, a gnarled six hundred year old troll named Hunch. Sure using your magic, you've used guile, disguise, and mind manipulation to bed princesses and priestesses as well as tavern maids and milk maids, but that was more in your younger days. You haven't had so much as a three coin tramp in seven years.

"First, no one over the age of 22 and no one under the age of 16. If that's you, scram! And don't be lying about your age. I'm a wizard after all; I can tell!"

You wait till some of the crowd thins out, but not enough for your liking. There's still too many. You turn around and Hunch is behind the wall, unseen by the crowd, and he has a hot toddy. You duck behind the wall and slurp it down. You never did figure out how he knows what you want when you want it, but you're the fifth wizard he's served, and when you ask him, he just shrugs his gray shoulders and attempts a grin which looks more like a gash ripped through a lump of granite.

Looking down, you see two of your thirty or so cats at your feet. Smiling, you lean down and scratch them behind the ears. You have them sit on either side of you. You turn back to the crowd. "Good, now line up single file and march past me and continue around the tower until you make it back. This takes a while as some of the prospective apprentices jostle for position then they start to walk past you. If the cats hiss at anyone, you tell him, "thanks but go away."

This process whittles down the crowd to a dozen. You have them line up. There are 8 men, 2 women, 1 male elf, and 1 female elf. You sigh and invite them into your receiving hall for the next test.