The secret to immortality is very simple.

Just don’t die.

He never had the makings of a court wizard

I played a homebrew dark steampunk fantasy campaign years ago where my character used to be a wizard. his backstory was he cast a spell to transform himself into a huge warrior one time as an experiment but when he did, it made him too dumb to remember how to change back. He still thought he was a wizard though, so he would cast “spells” by throwing whatever wasnt bolted down at people. My favorite “spell” he cast was teleport. We were being chased by some thugs in a car and i teleported into their car to stop them by just jumping out of our van and onto the hood of their car. I rolled high so ended up going through the windshield and landing in the back seat where i clonked the driver out.

Cut off my funding?! I cast Molotov Cocktail.

Modern wizards pore over ancient tomes (old forum posts) and write spells for eldritch beings in arcane languages (program computers) and are fueled by power potions that give them unnatural abilities (coffee)