The Longest Journey
- "I can pull a rabbit out of a hat."
"I can pull a hat out of a rabbit. What is your point?" - ―April Ryan and Roper Klacks[src]
Roper Klacks is an Alchemist who lives north of Riverwood in a floating castle. April first hears about him from Captain Horatio Nebevay, who tells her Klacks has captured the wind, so no ships can travel. Though several attempts have been made to defeat him, none of them have succeeded. To free the wind so she can get to Alais, April travels through the woods to find the Alchemist.
From Lorhan, one of Klacks' victims, April learns the Alchemist has been capturing everyone sent against him. Using his magic, he has been trapping his attackers in stone and then stealing their souls, keeping them in a large crystal called a Soulstone. This Soulstone gives him immense power. However, before she can help Klacks' captives, April has to negotiate the interior of Klacks' castle which is an elaborate labyrinth complete with gargoyles, shifting staircases and paving stones, and a strange mirror that shows April a dark 'mirror universe' version of herself. Getting through the castle is made harder by Klacks' disembodied voice teasing April most of the way: she gets annoyed and describes him as sounding like 'Richard III on crack'.
As a child, Klacks was his neighbourhood hopscotch champion 3 years running. He studied at the Alchemist's Academy, where he was a member of the tic-tac-toe club for 5 years running. His secret passions are spelling and cooking.
Klacks loves his calculator
Klacks himself is a flamboyant, dramatic character who loves taunting his victims. He even decides to amuse himself when April arrives by letting her challenge him to a series of contests - including a spelling bee, a cooking contest and a game of hopscotch. He also teases April by saying that their encounter is a 'Kodak moment' - he knows a lot about Stark and is later revealed to be a Vanguard agent, although he as good as admitted he was planning to betray them once Stark and Arcadia was united. It isn't clear if his capture of the winds is part of some greater masterplan or if he's just doing it to show off.
While speaking to April, Klacks mentions that he knows something about her parents, but doesn't elaborate.
Finally, April challenges Klacks to a mathematical test - his mighty intellect against her pocket calculator. When she keeps beating him, Klacks gets angry and demands to look at the calculator, quickly becoming fascinated by it. After he starts playing with the buttons, a strange blue light emerges from the calculator and sucks him inside it. Exactly what happened to him is not known.
In TLJ, Dreamfall and Dreamfall Chapters, Roper Klacks is voiced by Ralph Byers.
Dreamfall
- "I don't believe in judging people by their appearance, but that guy looks a bit evil. Ish."
- ―Zoë Castillo[src]
Now a reformed character, Roper Klacks turns up in Marcuria's Magic Ghetto, running a market stall called Roper's Spells & Philtres which sells potions and magical ingredients. April Ryan is surprised and a little apprehensive at the sight of her old nemesis, but he assures her that he is now completely rehabilitated, with the help of WWWA. In fact, he is grateful to April: she defeated him so soundly that he started to reexamine his life.
In answer to the question we're all asking, Klacks claims that he had to learn advanced trigonometry and multiply the square root of pi by the volume of his 'mathematical prison' to escape the calculator, but we still don't have an explanation as to how he got in there in the first place. He was trapped in there for five years.
Klacks has written a book - Farewell to My Wizardin' Days - about his experiences as an evil wizard, including sections such as '10 reasons not to build a flying castle' (on p.42). However, there was a slight problem: during the printing process, a charm got caught on page 108, and whenever that page was read, the book exploded. Klacks now has the last copy in existence, de-charmed and safe for reading, which April uses to barter passage to the Dark People's Library.
In gratitude for her help in turning his life around, Klacks also gives April free alchemical merchandise from his stall, such as acid, a smoke bomb and a sleeping potion if she asks for one. However, he does tease April about a certain pamphlet that was popular in Marcuria for a while after her adventure, entitled 'April Rye-bread and the Rod of Joie'. As an aside he confesses that at one point he tried to trap a Dark Person in stone back when he was evil. We can only guess what happened, as he simply concludes: "Not the best idea I've ever had..."
Dreamfall Chapters
- "Why? Why does everyone wants to talk about April Ryan? She was just a weak little human who stumbled onto things she didn't-- No, no, no, no, I must apologize, You see, April and I had some...disagreements in the past. I'm past that now. I'm a different person."
- ―Roper Klacks
Roper in Dreamfall Chapters
Roper returns in Book Four: Revelations where he is now a puppeteer of his own puppet show The Fingerings(which is a biased story of him and his defeat at the hands of April Ryan). Zoë Castillo finds the retired wizard and ask him about April Ryan in which Roper has a difficult time hiding his disdain for April. She asks him about the soul-stone and reveals that the stone was stolen by the Yaga or the Wicked Witch of the North as most of people of Marcuria know her by that name. He points out that Yaga has a lair in Riverwood.
He then proceeds with his puppet show however his show is interrupted by the Azadi led by Commander Vamon and Onor Hileriss, he's then arrested on the charges of teaching occult magic via his puppet show and is dragged away by Azadi guards.
Kian Alvane discovers that, at one time, Roper was the feared Necromancer King of Ge'en. Ben Bandu reveals that Roper and the Gribbler were servants of the Yaga.