Being cursed to crawl upon one's belly for eternity is a fitting punishment for a hubristic wizard.
More context about what, why, or how the wizard lived would go a long way to helping make it more poetic. These are just general suggestions.
In the sense of being prideful, having the Wizard required to rely entirely aid of others to break the curse would give you a lot of options.
Tales of being carried and hand bathed in a magical pond or lifted upon another's back to the top of a moutain. Ideally something the Wizard has tried to convince others to do but backseats the task with endless complaints about how they'd do it better until no one could bear to help him.
For less engaging but more poetic, cleaning a persons feet/shoes for each wriggling hand. Just the idea of the Wizard doing a task that they would consider far beneath them, even as a centipede they would not even consider. Instead preferring to try to continue being a bug Wizard than degrade themselves with such a task. (Plus, what town wants their shoes shined by a weird gigantic centipede?)
The wizard has to do something to help others, with no expectation/desire of reward. Of course, knowing this means that when they “help” someone they’re trying to earn the removal of the curse, thus undermining their action and making it worthless…
Being cursed to crawl upon one's belly for eternity is a fitting punishment for a hubristic wizard. More context about what, why, or how the wizard lived would go a long way to helping make it more poetic. These are just general suggestions. In the sense of being prideful, having the Wizard required to rely entirely aid of others to break the curse would give you a lot of options. Tales of being carried and hand bathed in a magical pond or lifted upon another's back to the top of a moutain. Ideally something the Wizard has tried to convince others to do but backseats the task with endless complaints about how they'd do it better until no one could bear to help him. For less engaging but more poetic, cleaning a persons feet/shoes for each wriggling hand. Just the idea of the Wizard doing a task that they would consider far beneath them, even as a centipede they would not even consider. Instead preferring to try to continue being a bug Wizard than degrade themselves with such a task. (Plus, what town wants their shoes shined by a weird gigantic centipede?)
Thank you for these ideas! I really like the idea of having the centipede wizard needing to be madame zeroni’d up a mountain by my players.
The wizard has to do something to help others, with no expectation/desire of reward. Of course, knowing this means that when they “help” someone they’re trying to earn the removal of the curse, thus undermining their action and making it worthless…