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Episode 280: Omens of Chaos Q&A! image

Episode 280: Omens of Chaos Q&A!

Goblin Lore Podcast
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast! Taya interviewed Seanan McGuire at the launch party for her new book Strixhaven Omens of Chaos. They discussed the primary characters and the behind the scenes development story of the book. This conversation is mostly spoiler free with the discussion limited to the character information already revealed. This was followed by a very amusing audience Q&A. Thanks to Crow’s Nest Comics for hosting this event.

Warning: Some Adult Topics and language cause it's Seanan :)

We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources including how to join our Discord

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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.

If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.

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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)

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Transcript

Introduction of Event and Author

00:00:29
Speaker
start of this event. Woo! In case you don't know what it's for, it's Trickshaven Omens okay owin's of Chaos with Shawna McGuire in New York Times bestselling author. You know her. I'm not going to do introductions.
00:00:43
Speaker
um for those For those of you who in. oh ya more people ah for those of you who didn't see the update um hey come on in We got a chair here and ah we got one more chair in the back. I'm going to pull out after I finish the introduction. I love your hat. That whole outfit is fantastic. Do you like dolls? Yes. Have you seen the new Monster High Moon spell magic dolls? Because you look like one. Oh, thank you. Like seriously. Pull those up for, pull those up, Natalie.
00:01:18
Speaker
Anyway, um well so oh yeah so we don't have books. and you can As you notice, the only books in front of Shana are two copies of the last last book that she did an event for here, or in our old Fremont location, and an ARC because someone forgot to leave room for Jesus, aka forgot to take into account for Easter when shipping out all the books to independent bookstores on the West Coast.
00:01:44
Speaker
So... They're going to get here tomorrow. They're going to get here tomorrow. yeah We tried to, we did try to see if we could like, figure out like um folks were talking to like ups and we're trying to figure out okay like you can you put it on a plane instead of a truck or whatever unfortunately because of physics we weren't able to get the books today out of today um to make up for some of that number one we have magic gathering goodies for everyone so before you leave make sure you come by the counter and
00:02:18
Speaker
be like and ask me for bonus magic the gathering promo cards that's the first thing the second thing is if you order if you pre-ordered a um a copy of omens of chaos for pickup that you were intended to pick up today or you order one today we'll give you free shipping or you can come back and like pick it up like but uh if you want free shipping just let me know i'll take down your address and any personal Any personalizations that you would like on your copy, whether you bought it today or you're pre-ordering and planning on asking Shannon to do that for you, let me know before you leave and will put it in the spreadsheet that I will use to have Shannon sign our books because she has graciously agreed to do that. She's going to bring them my Between the books getting here tomorrow and leaving for book tour.
00:03:12
Speaker
um We also... Speaking of, I guess, animal people, I don't know. ah We also have Lauren Eclipse character cards. So you too at least can get something that Seanan wrote in Magic signed today. So make sure I've got a stack of them here. I will actually leave in front of Seanan in case she wants to talk about it. Make sure you grab one and have Seanan sign it for you.

Recording and Podcast Introduction

00:03:40
Speaker
that else sorry go ahead On that note, we're also, um as you can see from the mics and the complete lack of speakers in this 500 square feet room, we're actually recording this because Taya is part of the garvan Goblin Law podcast. And so we're going to be recording this as part of the podcast.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yay. Thank you. Woo. So um we're going to just, I'm just going to let you start doing your thing here. And um like I said, i will grab a I will grab a couple more chairs out, but we are unfortunately out of chairs. So we do have standing room. Feel free to sit on the floor. Feel free to.
00:04:20
Speaker
Lean against? I don't know. Figure it out. Exist. There's no fire marshal here, and our maximum room capacity is infinity persons. So we're we're good.
00:04:33
Speaker
Yeah, so i and I'm going to go grab some chairs. I will close the door for the recording quality. um that Feel free if you're like, I need some air, um head on head on out. We do have a ventilation fan and some air purifiers running as well.
00:04:48
Speaker
Can we get any close to i don't you did not have to record i'm getting nothing from the street okay great we we can pretend we're outside this is an outdoor event shakespeare in the park without shakespeare or the park or i may run and hide when you're screaming my name oh yeah all right yeah yeah it's one show up there and we have two more you it or not like there a finish eleven
00:05:21
Speaker
all right so hi everybody uh i'm taia from the goblin lore podcast where we talk about magic story and mental health and um generally go off the rails within the first three minutes of an episode um we've had shaunen on several times uh she's always a fantastic guest uh and we're here tonight to talk about your new book uh strix havens omens of chaos ah which I had the pleasure of reading. Thank you for the advanced copy and is absolutely fantastic. I think we'll be keeping this talk fairly spoiler free. ah
00:05:57
Speaker
You know, we know some of the public information about the main characters. We can talk about that. But, ah um you know, I just I have a couple of things I want to talk about and then we're going to do some audience Q&A.

Seanan's Experience with Magic: The Gathering

00:06:10
Speaker
um But first, ah you want to tell us how you got tapped to do this project? So I am Seanan McGuire. i have absolutely no chill and about as much common sense as a Muppet snake. um I pretty much started asking them to let me bring back books five minutes after they hired me to write some short fiction for Innistrad Midnight Hunt.
00:06:30
Speaker
And after harassing Grace Fong until she left the company, I began harassing Roy Graham. And one day Roy was just like, Seanan, money where your mouth is. Do you want to write a book for us? I think he understood well enough that any other magic author who was given the job, if I was not, would be hunted for sport. And he didn't want them to end that way. So...
00:06:52
Speaker
Great. And, um you know, one of the things that, you know, I was kind of surprised, I'm politely surprised when reading the story is that it it doesn't, you wrote the, you got to write the new Strixhaven students as part of the Lorwyn Eclipse story, but this book actually follows a whole different set of students that came earlier. so originally, Omens of Chaos was supposed to come out right about concurrent with Bloomboro. Mm-hmm.
00:07:17
Speaker
But because there were some staffing changes, they wanted another editorial pass, and that slowed down our publication rate a little bit. And since the book hadn't been announced to the public, it wasn't like anyone was going to get mad about that.
00:07:28
Speaker
ah So we wound up slipping from Bloomboro through Outlaws of Thunder Junction and just kept on slipping until we hit Secrets of Strixhaven. um It has been really great because we have the synergy with all the marketing. Everyone's already focused on Strixhaven. Everyone has learned how to pronounce Arcevios. It's wonderful. But also people keep assuming that this is somehow connected to the secrets of Strixhaven story. It is not in any way.
00:07:54
Speaker
Arsenault Rivera wrote the secrets of Strixhaven story and did a fantastic job. That is not the same narrative. It's not the same students. This actually takes place about a year before Lore when eclipsed. It is the first transplanar student group.
00:08:08
Speaker
And this is how they learned how to not kill Tam, basically. Yeah, ah which is an important lesson because they try really hard to kill these students. Oh yeah, they sure did. There are active murder attempts. um but the So because you are writing a book not connected to the main narrative, did you get more leeway than you do on a normal magic set when you're making characters that are already part of the set lore?
00:08:36
Speaker
So on a normal magic set, I have approximately 5,000 words per chapter and between five and seven chapters. The most I've ever had intentionally was Murders at Karlov Manor, which was 10 episodes long. So that's 50,000 words. This book is 127,000 words long.
00:08:54
Speaker
So I had almost three words for every word that I had in Murders at Karlov Manor, which is already phenomenally lengthy. And the thing about working in that kind of constrained space is you don't have room for detail.
00:09:06
Speaker
You don't have room for a lot of nuance. If I were writing Crow's Nest into Magic Story, Wing would not get to have her cats because for purposes of having an event in the store, the cats do not matter. They have to be removed from the environment. So that is hundreds of words that I can save by just not describing them.
00:09:26
Speaker
And so I got to have all those words back. People could have cats, people could have tea, people could have preferences. And that did apply to lore native characters as well as the new canon introduced characters. So Alondra, we knew from Jumpstart. Alondra is one of our students. She has a card in Jumpstart 2022. 2022, Alondra Skydreamer. That is all we knew about her was this one image which implied she was from Chandelar, we didn't know for sure.
00:09:54
Speaker
And now she actually gets to be a person. And kind of a snippy one. It's great. I had a wonderful time. And has a wonderful Drake pet. Yes. He is not a pet. He's medical equipment. Yeah. yeah Very much an emotional support Drake.
00:10:10
Speaker
I feel like when your emotional support animal is keeping you from actively casting chain lightning on the rest of the classroom, that does actually step up to service animal. Yeah.
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, um she's a very powerful mage. If I were ranking the students from Omens in power order, Alondra would come first. She is the most terrifying of the five.
00:10:35
Speaker
But she is not the most div versatile of the five, and she's not the one who has worked the hardest to master what she can do. So... Yes, very, very much Prismari chaos energy in her.
00:10:48
Speaker
So it was very good fit for that school.

Character and Story Development

00:10:50
Speaker
um So would you like to talk some more about the other characters, major characters? Well, there are so many characters. It's 127,000 words in a moment. Well, let's talk about five students. We have the five students because, of course, you have to have one student for each of the colleges at Strixhaven University. Our Lorehold representative is Kequia Akosa, which is Teferi's granddaughter. She's originally from Dominaria, and she is elected to go to Strixhaven rather than Talaria because Strixhaven actually asked her rather than just assuming she was going to show up. I might have squeed when I saw that she was Teferi's granddaughter. She kind of wanted to go somewhere where she wouldn't be, Teferi's granddaughter, where she could just be Kequia and actually be allowed to do stuff. She is the first psychometrist that we've had since Dak Faden died. Rest in peace, Dak. So she touches things and she understands their history and where they came from and what has happened to them. She is a little more attuned to dead things than living things, but she's working very hard likes a desert biome. She shares her room with Jumeera, who is Angrath's older daughter. Angrath and his younger daughter, Rumi, are currently looking for a new plane to live on. because their plane was lost during the Phyrexian invasion.
00:12:07
Speaker
And they're checking out Innistrad at all places. They're checking out Innistrad because that is where they were told they could go. They are basically taking whatever stable omen paths they can find that don't have an onerous ticket price to use and checking to see if the plane on the other side is a place they feel they could live. And what they are really looking for is a place that is accepting of Minotaur, but doesn't have a whole bunch of super prejudicial assumptions about Minotaur. One of the points we were able to make with Jamiro was just the sheer number of microaggressions that humans in the multiverse throw at other sapient species. you know Even the card game itself, which I love, is in some ways a microaggression against these sapient species if you assume they exist, because humans are allowed to appear in any color.
00:12:53
Speaker
right but merfolk are always blue yeah show me a red elf like if elves are a fully intelligent species of people why are they all in one color are we saying they do not have the complexity of thought to appear in other colors only humans are special like that and of course because humans are the ones that really exist only humans are special like that but we are inside a universe where all of these people exist you do have to address the fact that people assume jimira is stupid because she's a cow. They assume she's just here to lift heavy stuff because she's a cow. She is very clearly socially signaling things at all times and no one can tell what saying. love those details of putting into her jewelry how significant her jewelry is to what she signifies but nobody there understands any of it. And part of why it stresses her out is her culture's dead. Yeah.
00:13:40
Speaker
Like the number of people that made it off of Anzahar is probably less than 20. And the plane is gone. So unless she has a daughter that she can teach how to do the horn ornamentation to, that's over. It's a dead end. Same for Rumi.
00:13:57
Speaker
um And she is our Quandrix representative, actually. She is in blue-green, which is an allowable color combination for Minotaur, back to homelands. Then we move on to Witherbloom. We have Sagante. Sagante is an essence mage from Fiora originally. Our explanation whenever people asked during editorial why he was being a dick to other characters was he's from Fiora. He's culturally an asshole. yeah That is literally his culture.
00:14:26
Speaker
um And, you know, he has a great time. He does a lot of flower arranging and occasionally poisoning people. Yeah. um With the flowers. With the flowers. The flowers are important.
00:14:38
Speaker
And our last main character, our last of the Central Five is Eula Blue, who is our Silver Quill representative. And Eula... I know how fake this sounds, but I swear to God, no one pointed out to me that her name is short for in the user license agreement until after the book had been announced. It went through so many editorial passes and nobody said that.
00:15:01
Speaker
But, you know, my pseudonym is Mira Grant, which did you know that there is a Mental Illness Research Association grant? 90% of my Google results for Mira Grant are telling me who has just won Mira Grant. And I'm like, this is cool. This is great.
00:15:16
Speaker
Love it when people tell me this stuff. Eula is a shield mage, originally from Capenna. Her family lived in the neighborhood, which I have forgotten the name of because I'm very sorry. No, she didn't live in Park Heights. She lived directly under Park Heights. Yeah.
00:15:34
Speaker
No, it's it's like the messia or something. Oh, the mess. Yeah. Um, is it the mess? Yeah. Okay. Uh, her, her neighborhood was directly under park heights, the highest level of new and as we all know from the fire action invasion park heights got dropped.
00:15:50
Speaker
And when it got dropped, it smashed into her neighborhood and wound up knocking the whole thing all the way down to the Kaldaya. But it did kill Atraxa. It did kill Atraxa. And I'm sure that Eula thinks that was absolutely a viable exchange, given that the Pyrexian invasion ended like 20 minutes later. Yeah.
00:16:10
Speaker
Oh, the Mezio, sorry. And she is she's a shield mage. She is here to see how fast she can sell her soul to the first person that will say we have money. Yeah, that that is not the brokers. No, it is not the broker. She does not want to be a broker.
00:16:26
Speaker
oh A lot of these students face family pressure, you know, her being, you know, one of them. But, you know, coming from these famous families in a lot of cases, they all have some kind of family pressure behind them. Segante's main reason for attending the school is to, you know, get away from his family. His main reason for attending is not getting assassinated. He really thinks that being assassinated would put a crimp in his day. Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker
um which it absolutely would uh but um i like how you brought that all into the the character background that you know gave a lot of them a good reason to attend school off plane from where they're at
00:17:09
Speaker
and ah So when you um were developing these characters, i know kind of like going back to like when you're given a set story, you have a limited space and you're given characters that are specifically going to be in the set. When you're writing your own large story like this, were you given more leeway with developing the characters? I was given an absolutely way. Nobody really stopped me from doing much of anything. um oh if the recording is picking up an interesting noise it's because wings cats can hear us having a party in the main room that they are not allowed to participate in um i the only things that i got any pushback on
00:17:49
Speaker
were ah basically setting up those initial where you're from because i had to get approval on each of the planes i was using we did have to decide which of the planes angrapp and family were from so uh jimira can blame me for the entire for the total destruction of her home plane just because there were a lot of places her home plane could have been she could have been from dominaria she wasn't but uh that opportunity was available to her short so how does it feel to gotten to destroy a whole plane in story They let me throw Timbald off a bridge. and This just feels like that. a bigger um
00:18:24
Speaker
know um As you were going through the process of writing this book, what were kind of what were your big struggles with the story being so much bigger than a normal magic story?

Plot Challenges and Character Development

00:18:35
Speaker
So the book was originally commissioned as a YA. It did wind up getting re repurposed to adults, thank God. But it was per it was originally commissioned as a YA novel in the dark academia subgenre, which means there are kind of canon events that it have to happen. Much like if you're in a romance, there has to be a happy ever after or the audience will eat you. In a dark academia, you need either an academic decathlon a final project that will allow you to graduate and become awesome or a masquerade ball so you can't escape all of these things.
00:19:10
Speaker
And that meant we had to restructure the plot several times to make sure that it fit around those events. At one point we had an editor who who did not last, they were not one of my primary editors, we had an editor come in who wanted there to be some suspense about which colleges the students would wind up in.
00:19:31
Speaker
They wanted suspense. and I'm like, there are five students and five colleges, there is no suspense. what are you on about and they had me do a draft where um Sagante and Eula both appeared to be considering other colleges and it was the most let's insult the intelligence of the reader thing I had done the entire book just like the girl who is continually casting ink shield is pretending she might go for prismari there there's no color in common there this is not going to work no um so that that was that the main thing there are things i don't write and at one point they decided and i think they were right to do so and in retrospect i'm glad they did but they decided one of those things needed to be in this book and they didn't go okay seanan we know this makes you profoundly uncomfortable as a writer we'll bring in a pinch hitter to do it for you no they're just like hey seanan we need you to write this
00:20:29
Speaker
I can normally go through a chapter in like two days. It took me two months. It threw off my schedule for most of a year. i am grateful now that they did it. I am never doing it again.
00:20:41
Speaker
It's release day. Look how vague I can be. Yeah. So, um, kind As you were writing for each of the schools, um how did that impact your development of the characters? You know, knowing, you just said, like, there you well, somebody wanted to have some suspenses what school they were going to, but really knowing from the start, you know, that these students were going be aligned with the school, how did that work into developing them from the beginning? Well, I knew their are color identities, which really kind of locked them in.
00:21:13
Speaker
um And the the school was part of their development from the beginning, which is part of why that let's let's add some suspense came off so much as insulting the intelligence of the reader. It'd be like having me walk up to your commander knight and Taya has played with me plenty, knows that I will avoid the color white at absolutely all possible options. I won't play white if i don't if I have any other choice in the matter. You know, walking up with my normal quiver and everything's great and then putting out a swords to plowshares playmat and a whole bunch of white deck accessories and just making it look like I was going to go hardcore paladin magic the gathering.
00:21:48
Speaker
And this is building suspense towards something you know is never going to happen. just, no, don't like it. So I knew their schools and that meant that their characters were informed by their schools basically from the beginning. Now, sometimes it was difficult to demonstrate that because you can't have five people all talking at the same time all the time.
00:22:09
Speaker
Jameera has very good reasons for wanting to go Quandrix, but most of them are, I hate planeswalkers and I want them all dead. um And so getting that across without just having her be a cackling villain was was fascinating. She's not actually the villain of the piece. And honestly, if anyone gets to hate planeswalkers, it's her.
00:22:26
Speaker
But yeah. Yeah. um you I bet she'd have some choice things to say about Azor.
00:22:38
Speaker
Keeping an Angrath locked on. a Oh, so have you ever read the Bureau 13 books? No, I have not. she would have a lot of fun things to say to azor and the fact that you know sphinx are big they're not as fast as minotaur and they are susceptible to goring
00:23:00
Speaker
um cool uh is there anything you know specific about the book that you want people to know So, one, thank you all so much for pre-ordering or purchasing or whichever. If you haven't yet, please do.
00:23:16
Speaker
The only way we get to keep having physical magic books is if this does well enough that Wizards of the Coast decides they're going to let us. There are no contracts. There are no guarantees. We just need those sails to keep going forward. That is the most important thing I can say about this book.
00:23:32
Speaker
ah Two, there was never a point where they were like, oh, this is this is too Starfleet Academy. This is too woke. We need you to pull it back. They're like, okay, Seanan, just intensify the thing. We know you're going to do it anyway.
00:23:46
Speaker
Oh, look, everything's on fire now. Alondra, who obviously we've we've talked about this in the book, Alondra is the first canonical

Unique Traits of Magic College Students

00:23:56
Speaker
magic character with an anxiety disorder. That's why she has Orestes with her. He keeps her calm.
00:24:01
Speaker
And that's very important because the approach we took with Mage students was if you are going to have the potential to go to magic college and actually learn anything, it is because you have a one-card deck.
00:24:13
Speaker
Everyone that can do magic in Magic the Gathering starts with a single card and probably a land so that they can cast it. And if you're lucky, your card is useful in some way.
00:24:24
Speaker
You got giant growth. Congrats. You got life bond. Congrats. If you're unlucky, your card is chain lightning and everyone is afraid of you. um And if you're triple lucky, which Eula actually was, you get a card that is perfectly suited to keeping you alive in your environment. Mm-hmm.
00:24:42
Speaker
I did have my friend, Shivam, who read the book, ask me, what the hell is so important about shield magic? Because that's what Yulahu is our primary narrator has. If you are growing up in New Capenna, having the ability to not have your little sister get shot is kind of the best spell you could possibly have.
00:25:01
Speaker
Just throwing an ink shield between her sister and the drive-by shooting. Also, her entire family would have died if not for it, because she basically threw a bubble around them when Park Heights came down and they Plinko machined their way down to the bottom of Nucapenna.
00:25:15
Speaker
Like, Eula has been inside the horse Plinko. She doesn't want to do it again.
00:25:27
Speaker
yeah I'm just, I hope everybody enjoys this book as much as I

Importance of Sales and Future Writing

00:25:31
Speaker
did. ah you know, So far, with the exception of a couple people that have accused me of using ChatGPT to write the whole thing, because I can't possibly have typed that fast. like to stab them on your behalf. I would like to stab them a lot. I'm like, y'all do understand the speed at which I've been publishing since long before ChatGPT plagiarized my entire body of work, right?
00:25:52
Speaker
No, apparently not. But with the exception of those folks so far people have been very positive they've enjoyed the book. There is no obligation to enjoy the book I'm not going to get mad at you if you don't enjoy the book, though I might get mad at you if you like come on blue sky and go at Seanan McGuire you're a fucking hack and I hate you, then I then i will be hurt and possibly throw things.
00:26:13
Speaker
But other than that, you know, just please read, please, please purchase a copy if you can. It's what's going to enable us to hopefully get more Magic the Gathering books. I desperately want to write the sequel, which would be called Omens of Convention and would basically be Magic the Gathering's Great Gatsby. It's set entirely on Capenna during spring break.
00:26:33
Speaker
And thing things I did, because I have no chill, I wrote an etiquette guide to New Capenna. which to do, I read five 1920s etiquette guides and then synthesized their points of commonality, stripped out most of the gender-related bullshit, added in some magic-related bullshit, and then just called it, you know, the finishing guide to New Cabena. It's not canon, but I can make it canon if you get me a sequel. LAUGHTER
00:26:59
Speaker
there There is a lot of discussion between Ulla and Sigante about etiquette on their home planes throughout the book. Because they are from the two heavily Italian-inspired planes, 1920s Chicago and Medici-era Rome?
00:27:13
Speaker
Or Florence, actually. Florence. And people tend to be like, oh, well, if it's Italian-inspired, it must be the same place. Innistrad and Duskmoren, that's the same place. Lorwyn and Eldraine, that's the same. Mm-hmm. So I really wanted to give them the opportunity to find the places where their assumptions were wrong.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, and they're both places you do not want to get your etiquette wrong. Exactly. That is how you get your etiquette dead. yeah
00:27:40
Speaker
Well, is there anything else you want to talk about before we open it up to Q&A? I already did the the frankly um sort of pathetic plea for people to keep buying the book. I have difficulty expressing how much fun this was. And how great it was to actually be able to spend time on a plane and not be in and out while counting every word like I was writing a Sestina.
00:28:05
Speaker
And I desperately want to write the sequel. I would love to read that sequel. The Spring Break sequel would be fantastic. I want to write the sequel, but I also want us to do well enough that we can open magic books to more than just this group of people. I want other writers writing things that I don't get to write and I want to not hunt them for sport unless somebody gets the Calhoun book and I don't. um And I want to write a genuine horror novel set on Duskmourne.
00:28:31
Speaker
Because when the Omen Paths opened, that completely fucked over every survivor living on Duskmourne. Prior to the Omen Paths, Valgeboth could muster up the strength to open a door to another plane maybe once a decade and maybe get two or three people to add to his livestock before it shut again.
00:28:48
Speaker
Once the omen paths opened, he has DoorDash. So prior to the DoorDash deliveries, they had to actually care for the survivors on Dusk Morn a little bit. They were livestock. You can't eat all your livestock or you starve.
00:29:05
Speaker
So it was genuinely possible if you stayed in the safe zones and you followed the rules to have a life. It might be a shitty life, but you were alive. You could have children and raise them without it being a completely selfish bastard and and but impulse to have. You like there was the potential for joy on Duskborn. And then the Omen Paths happened.
00:29:24
Speaker
And suddenly you are extraneous to needs because the DoorDash driver gets here at seven. I'm going to eat you first.
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah. Full-length story on Duskborn. I want to expand the Children of the Carnival setting from the side stories and just go all the way.
00:29:44
Speaker
I want to upset Chris Cox with the number of people I I'll see see if he gets upset about the number of woke characters in this story.
00:29:59
Speaker
I would love to see that. That would be hilarious. Except for the where would make me very angry. Yeah.
00:30:07
Speaker
Great. Well, I think that that kind of covers what we can get into in the book without any spoilers. Without major spoilers. Yeah. So please ask questions. My normal threat, which is if you don't ask questions, I will start mechanically explaining individual cards from my commander deck. does not work with this audience. So if you don't ask questions, I will start telling you facts about the Screwfly containment wall.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yes. Yes. um would you say it's different in your writing process when you're writing something for like a pre-existing universe versus when you're writing something that you created completely on your own? do you find it more freeing out of those limitations or do you like your They are kind of one in the same. I mean, in both cases, I usually will explain how writing works for me by like watching medical dramas. How do I keep the characters straight? Well, I can watch Chicago Med and then watch an episode of The Pit. And I don't expect Dr. Robbie to show up at Chicago. So it's the same way with writing them I know who the cast is sometimes it is easier with a pre existing IP because I don't have to figure out.
00:31:17
Speaker
A lot of stuff you've got that framework it's the same kind of of assistance that you get from writing urban fantasy versus high fantasy you have certain things already in place. At the same time, with a pre existing IP like magic I have to question myself a lot more, because I know that I am writing for people who would happily put me into a mulcher if they were given the opportunity. The number of people who have told me that I am a fake geek girl that I am lying when I say I play magic that I have never played a game of magic that I don't own any cards. is substantially more than zero. Natalie, who has watched my cards cascade and eat the bedroom floor, can tell you that they are very wrong. Taya, who has kicked my ass in multiple locations, can also tell you they are wrong. But I have never really developed a thick skin.
00:32:05
Speaker
I have the very autistic adult thing of like, I take everything extremely seriously. i take all criticism very seriously. And if it's untrue, it's hard for me to move past it. So I am aware of those people whenever I'm writing licensed IP. And I know that if I slip up at all, they're going to get me.
00:32:23
Speaker
Part of why I worked quite so hard to promote this book ahead of time and encourage pre-orders, which is not normally a thing I do very well, I don't like to self-promote, is because i am aware that in about a week When a lot of these people finish reading the book, my star rating is going to go down by about two.
00:32:44
Speaker
Because there are strong queer themes in this book and there are central queer characters in this book. And there are people of types that some of these folks would like to not have in magic fiction at all. And I am not being coy because anyone's identity is a spoiler, but because things are set up so that you find them out at a certain pace.
00:33:03
Speaker
um And I know that some of these folks are going to hit that. They're not even going to finish the book. They're just going to whoa, bullshit. One star.
00:33:12
Speaker
I thought this was going to be Hogwarts. What the fuck is trans shit doing in here? um And so like you think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. um And so that awareness is always there. But to a degree, that's there with my own stuff, too. So.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yes. So this novel does not have to do with the add a forthcoming statement set and it also does not directly have to do with the original statement set. So it's just characters from Strixhaven, you know, having an adventure. So it's like expanding that story. um And it's been eight years about since the last magic novel? Seven. seventy Seven years, okay. So, but all previous magic novels directly tied into like a set.
00:34:02
Speaker
If you go all the way back to the Harper Collins stuff, very the very original stuff, magic started yeah Magic started out as much more like this, where it was stories on the planes and inside the multiverse, but it was not directly tied to a set. yeah Yeah. but so So your hope is like if there are future novels going forward, that it continues to be like not directly tied to these stories because we have the online sources that do that.
00:34:29
Speaker
And this these would be sort of like supplemental. Yeah, I would. there's There's more here. I would like the central Lord to remain as free as possible. I don't want anyone to have to pay to understand reality fracture. I don't want anyone to have to pay to understand the firexian invasion. You know, it seems important if we want the game. To be as open as it has the potential to be that those big events remain free. That being said, i would also, i would 100% be there with bells on if they were like, Sean, we want you to take all the 1 and March of the machine and rewrite them with additional material to be novel length. I would, I would pay them. Not that my agent would let me, but but I think that that would be a great compromise between keeping the big events free and wanting to have these books. And also possibly the only way that we could do books that were directly tied to sets. Because back when they were still doing the block novels, Lorwyn and Kamigawa and such,
00:35:25
Speaker
You have the combination of they are heavily padded. There's a lot of stuff in there that is just repetition, that is trying to fill out word count because the story of the set did not sustain that much text.
00:35:36
Speaker
And they were not nearly as as tight back then. you know These days, when I am brought on to write a set story, I get a world guide. It tells me who everyone is, who the legends I have available to me are, what they look like, what their pronouns are, everything.
00:35:53
Speaker
And then I have to write to that. And even then, because of that 5,000 word constraint, things get dropped. Sometimes things will get taken out between me turning in the final version and it being published. And there's nothing I can really do about that. With a book, they legally cannot do that. ha Which is is fantastic for me. But yeah, I would like these to continue mostly filling in the spaces that the set stories don't have time for. There's a big old multiverse out there and stuff is happening in every part of it all the time.
00:36:25
Speaker
good
00:36:29
Speaker
that take like the bones of the story that were presented in the set and story yeah and sp them out sounds one of my my dearest wishes is to know why they were able to get nahiri to agree on the new phyrexia strike team why the hell did she agree to go on a team that included nissa yeah without doing murder right I think you can do it because she is core white. You just appeal to her sense of the greater good, but you have to show me that. And there isn't room in the web series always to show your work.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yes. Everything is in the book.
00:37:12
Speaker
minimumized you know to be able to follow along everything is in the book We genuinely, the idea was that it should still be appealing and interesting to folks that were invested in Magic Story. And I seem to have managed that. I couldn't say I had until people started going, oh, this is great. But I seem to have managed that, but also be accessible to people who the only thing they knew about Magic the Gathering was there are wizards.
00:37:36
Speaker
so It is very standalone. um There's some inside information. If you know some of the characters in the ongoing story, you'll recognize them, but you don't need to have any of that knowledge to enjoy this book. Yeah, there are some things where, like, there's a point where Bryson, who is one of the other Strixhaven students, he's not one of our core five. is talking about having known Will and Rowan Kenrith while they were at school. And he's like, I hope they're okay. And within the context of the book, that's all you get. That's all that matters. And if you've never read any magic story or you're not familiar with the Kenriths, that's like, well, yeah he has friends. He hopes they're okay. And if you are familiar with the Kenriths, you're like, oh God, Bryson, I'm so sorry. Buddy.
00:38:18
Speaker
yeah he's a sweet summer child. so
00:38:23
Speaker
Natalie. You have, as you've said already, a lot of series and a lot of books that you've written before and a lot of amazing characters in those books. And I was wondering if you would take a moment and think about some of those characters in your other books and what trick-saving colleges they might go into, if you hadn't already thought about that.
00:38:40
Speaker
So October Day, who is the lead character of the Toby Day books, would 100% be in Witherbloom because she is an essence mage completely in magic terms. um Over in Encrypted, Verity would wind up in Prismari because she is all about big feelings and having no control whatsoever about what's going on around her.
00:38:59
Speaker
Georgia from the News Flesh series is about as quintessentially Silverquill as you can get. i don't I guess Henry from indexing would make a decent lore hold character.
00:39:12
Speaker
And that just leaves me with Quandrix and Dodger, who is literally the living embodiment of math, would just come in and become the biggest mean girl Quandrix had ever seen, which would be great for her.
00:39:25
Speaker
And for those of you that are not familiar with my other work, none of that made any sense whatsoever, but it kept the screw flies at bay for another 30 seconds. So Natalie is happy. Natalie was my ride here this evening. She is one of my dearest local friends. And so she's been to a lot of these events and knows what happens when you don't ask questions. And she would like it not to happen near her ever again.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yes. I know you're contact with a lot of other magic writers. Do you have any idea how they feel about novels? Are they as chomping at the bit as you are to start cranking out hundreds of thousands of words? don't think any of them are currently as chomping at the bit.
00:40:03
Speaker
because honestly tie-in novels don't pay well enough to chomp at the bit, um which is not a complaint. I was happy with the pay scale they offered me. Hopefully it gets higher if the books do well and they see that there are profits there. That said, there are several other magic writers that I know would not refuse a contract unless it was a contract for for Dusk Mourne. I'm pretty sure all of them would be like, no, Seanan has my home address.
00:40:31
Speaker
She sounds like she's kidding. She is not kidding. So, but I know a couple of them at least would be happy to have a go at writing books. A couple of the others, because Magic Story has been attracting more and more established authors recently, you know, folks that already have novels and series under their names and are kind of doing this the same way that Brandon Sanderson did Children of the Nameless, where it's just a fun thing to do on a weekend.
00:40:56
Speaker
I think some of them would decline books just because wizards can't afford them.
00:41:01
Speaker
Wizards could afford me because as long as I am writing for Magic the Gathering, my cards are tax deductible. And that is... That is not a small thing. you
00:41:15
Speaker
So, yes. Have you played Caves of Cud? Caves of Cud? Yes. No. What is that? No.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's a robot. Okay. Old school robot. like so dungeons exploring. And it sucks because you're miserable whole time because have go out of your money.
00:41:41
Speaker
And you can dismember your arm, you can mutate games. It's very fun. And it's so good at making its own stories. I recommend I'm not sure you're miserable the whole time. It's very fun. Really falls into the zone of things I enjoy. Um, but I, I appreciate the recommendation.
00:42:03
Speaker
That would be like playing white. Yes. Yeah. You mentioned, more accessibility to, uh, the series bringing more people in through these supplementary works. Are there any characters that you'd like to put into a future one, like you mentioned, um,
00:42:17
Speaker
during the summer or spring break set, is there any character you want to give like the marketable plush kind of treatment? Like any character you want to give any special treatment to you and hopefully see a kind of situation come out of it In my perfect universe of sunshine and zombie puppies, we would actually be able to get an Arrestees plush.
00:42:34
Speaker
That is Alondra's medical equipment. He is a young Drake from Chandelar, so he's one of those blue and red flappy things. And he keeps her from freaking out and electrocuting everyone around her, which I think is a very important service to provide. And i love him.
00:42:50
Speaker
I love him so much. He was not in my initial outline other than just Alondra has anxiety and needs to deal with it. But the cart the Drake was on the cards. It's like, okay, well, this works. By the time we hit the end of draft one, I was literally getting editorial notes that were, if you hurt the Drake, I will hurt you.
00:43:06
Speaker
um So in the does the dog die spirit, no Orestes does not die. i am not that silly. And I would love it if the book did well enough or if the series did well enough that we could get that lewd treatment of here's an Orestes plush. Here is a paintable mini, you know, whatever. That would make me so happy and it would make my house so cluttered and and very bad. I would also honestly like it if we would have another go so Hasbro owns Magic the Gathering.
00:43:38
Speaker
It's right there. Hasbro's a toy company. Could we have some dolls, please? It's been while. that It's been a while, but I don't care. like My ability to care is is not very strong, but I would love little dolls in their Strixhaven uniforms. I want a black and white Eula Blue. I just want to mess with things. Be great. so Does that answer your question? Yeah. Oh, good.
00:44:05
Speaker
Yes. So this is not a question, but I've been reading magic stories all the way from the original novel of Arena right up until I read the sentence that Chandra had always liked men.
00:44:17
Speaker
So of a big, big thank you for bringing magic stories back to being in print and having them be career as he yeahp it It took a fight. I do want to know, Greg Weissman, and he has apologized for this, but Greg Weissman did not write that because he was trying to do erasures or be an asshole. He wrote that because he was given the wrong information.
00:44:40
Speaker
the character bible that he was given he was actively told and he has said this on his blog this is greg weisman's actual disclosure he was told to establish in the book that chandra only liked men that was an instruction from the outgoing story team no one involved in that is still at wizards of the coast the people that are there are not making that kind of choice anymore um but yeah this is this is not that um I found myself in the very odd position at various points while well promoting this book of having to kind of defend War of the Spark, not because the book is good, not because I want to defend the things that it did, but because they threw Greg under a bus and then just left him there. I do think that one important thing about writing for any licensed IP, if you're going to do a big project, if you want to do a book, if you want to do more than just like a one shot, is you should care about the IP. I'm not saying you should be Jay and Ellie and know absolutely everything, but you should know Chandra does not just like Dick.
00:45:42
Speaker
You know, you should know that this is not where we want to go. And so I am very grateful that people are receptive and I'm glad that you're here.
00:45:59
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:03
Speaker
Any favorite like established characters you have? moving up to book um it will spoil I mean, Professor Vess is still at Strixhaven and I was actually just on weekly MTG today and one of the things we talked about is I have learned from doing Magic Story that every character is someone's favorite. It doesn't matter if I hate them. It doesn't matter if I want to put them into the mulcher. That is somebody's favorite. That is the character they identify with. That is the character that makes them happy in their heart. And so while the story will still do bad things to characters, because that's the nature of having a story, I try to approach every character as if I were writing them specifically for someone that I know and love for whom that character matters more than anything. And my friend Kira, K.R. Sant Rivera, Loves Liliana the way I love Nihiri.
00:46:53
Speaker
She loves Liliana on a level that I cannot fully comprehend, even as I enjoy Liliana. So I write her for Kira at all times. And there's a poll point where Liliana is getting to serve tea to the students and is asking them, how do you want your tea? And being able to actually be a proper hostess as she would have been back at Vess Manor before everything fell apart. And that was just really delightful for use of a pre-established character. Wing.
00:47:27
Speaker
So Yuga is main protagonist, point of view story. And she, no like not to spoil anything, but like, it's not a spoil, but she doesn't really know anything. She's one of the people who didn't know the multiverse existed, and in the meantime, we have a very strand of, Kepir, who already knows about the multiverse and has her stories from her grandfather. So we had all these different points of view about, like,
00:47:59
Speaker
kind different people who knows different levels about the multiverse. in the original cancer yes that there are these multiple viewpoints that was very important because people tend to treat all information as universal and like kekia shows up for school with an actual strickshaven student handbook it's 30 years out of date half the information is bad but she has her student handbook she knows what things are she knows the colleges she knows what a campus guide is Eula, on the other hand, it found out there was a multiverse 15 minutes ago and is absolutely appalled by the existence of Chandelar. Just like, we're on a different world. What the hell?
00:48:40
Speaker
I don't like this. You know, that sort of thing. Alondra basically is treating everything as just a trip to the surface world. Humans are weird. It's fine. The hell.
00:48:51
Speaker
um And having that balance gave me a lot of good points of conflict. You know, kecquea obviously knows about planeswalkers because of her grandfather. She's always known about planeswalkers. Jameera also knows about planeswalkers. They have a very different perspective on the existence of planeswalkers.
00:49:08
Speaker
Jameera buried her mother while her father was trapped off plane. Kekwe got presents. You know, so that is built into the structure of things.
00:49:22
Speaker
In a sort of hypothetical world where we get cars of these, you know, five characters. Any possible dude wants to be the artist.
00:49:33
Speaker
They're all dead. oh I mean, sadly, i have been doing Magic the Gathering way too long, and my initial response is always Quentin Hoover. If I can have anybody, I want Quentin Hoover. But Quentin Hoover is super dead, and I don't think that Necroncy to get art is actually considered a viable approach. I would love to see Johannes Voss draw Eula. I think that'd be fabulous.
00:49:55
Speaker
um I have forgotten Wiley Beckett would do a really great job at Alondra. I love Wiley's Merfolk. um chris ron for sagante would he just he draws the most beautiful men um i don't know who we have right now that's doing good minotaur because you want her to still look like a sapient person and not just a cow but you also want her to have that level of you want her to look like a hard four on the harkness scale right
00:50:26
Speaker
um And we've seen Kekwe actually because we got a digital wallpaper that you could get if you placed a pre-order and I don't remember the name of that artist but since that is actual official art of Kekwe that we have just seen, i don't want to be all like yes this other person would be perfect.
00:50:44
Speaker
Screw you.
00:50:49
Speaker
I have no idea what time it is. What time is it, Wing? It is currently 7. Schwenke. We have 10 more minutes. Okay, if we could just talk for 10 more minutes, then I can sign stuff for you and say goodnight, and everything will be happy. So please ask 10 more minutes for the questions, because the screwflies are coming.
00:51:12
Speaker
Ha ha ha ha
00:51:17
Speaker
How you had a tapeworm? That's Yes. So this is not your first story about students in the schools having going on adventures. How would you compare it to the way we're children?
00:51:34
Speaker
I would not because none of these students are here involuntarily. I love the Wayward Children books. They make me very happy, but they are very classic portal fantasy.
00:51:45
Speaker
This is not portal fantasy. It's secondary world fantasy that involves a whole lot of fun juggling because every single one of these characters has come to the secondary world by going to Archavios.
00:51:59
Speaker
For them, a normal world is Chandelar and its levels of ambient magic. It's Nuka Penna and it's indoor plumbing. you know, having them to balance that. Whereas the characters in the Wayward Children books are all back on Earth, which is where they are originally from, having been on portal adventures, and they hate it here.
00:52:16
Speaker
Also, this is a lot longer and people get to fuck. ah Wing. Two questions. Number one, does Sargeos end up playing?
00:52:28
Speaker
No. not even vegetable They have some indoor plumbing, but they don't have indoor plumbing in like the luxury hotel sense. You can get a bath, but they are still doing chivalrobes.
00:52:42
Speaker
Second question, and this is something I've been meaning to say since reading the first way of children. As a former high school teacher, I appreciate you for being one of the very few, in fact, maybe the first author seen who writes high school and college age students who actually ah want to are interested in sex. Because from personal experience, both as a teenager and as a teacher, if you need children at a magical school, oh they are going to want to perform magical with children. I just did a podcast with Shivam, who's come up several times tonight, his ears are burning, um where I was like, you know, there's a thing, there's a concept that we talk about a lot on TV tropes called power perversion potential. And that is basically the concept that most humans, if given magical or superpowers, would figure out how to use them for fucking in like five minutes flat.
00:53:41
Speaker
I am ace enough that I would be the last person to figure it out. But even I would eventually be like, oh, wait. Shield magic can be used as a form of contraception.
00:53:55
Speaker
If 100%, if your shields are tightly controlled enough, which Eulas are, you could 100% basically build yourself a condom or a dental dam out of very thin shielding.
00:54:06
Speaker
And then, poop, you just have this little orb of sperm floating away. be a great day pink shield yes um so i did sit down and figure out how each of them could use their powers for for better fucking um alondra is also ace chandelar merfolk are not that big on sex they are your haylene they are much more fish than the mammal so alondra's like yeah no I don't, there is no one here who could inseminate my eggs. I'm not going to lay them. What the hell?
00:54:37
Speaker
ah But for everybody else, I sat down, I'm like, okay, how, how, how can we make this work? Ooh. Yeah. I bet it does feel good if Sagante does one hit point of damage to your epidermis and then restores two. I bet that is the most amazing, like, it's like ice play, but with decay. Yeah.
00:54:58
Speaker
We're giving whole new meanings to edging here. it's um You can use most of the geometric lines that Jameera does for bondage. you like ah But so I figured out just how fucky they could get and then did not get remotely that fucky because I have no interest whatsoever in writing that.
00:55:17
Speaker
But yeah, you can't ignore sex out of the lives of teenagers and young 20-somethings. It doesn't work. I want to thank you for that question, Wing, because that is great podcast content. I'm glad that your podcast not cheap. Let's talk about the horse plinko machine. It's just a whole thing.
00:55:40
Speaker
um But yeah.
00:55:44
Speaker
i am I am glad to thank you. I appreciate you appreciating me. It is about to get me book banned in like every library in the world, but those people can eat a sack of snakes. So... That would bad for the snakes, so... Yeah, we've got plenty we don't need
00:56:06
Speaker
need. I saw your hand, we got about a four minutes left. Yes? So it was a very long time magic player who just found out that there's a story. Uh-huh. This will be my first magic book. What should I do next?
00:56:21
Speaker
I would go to magicstory.com and just start reading the modern magic story that is on the website. I mean, i know that sounds very reductive, but a lot of the older books, if if you actually try to go back to the beginning, which some people will recommend you do, were written during an era where female characters existed to be warm, wet holes with which to reward the men.
00:56:42
Speaker
And I'm not particularly interested in reading that. I understand that they were writing what the market wanted at the time. I'm not blaming those authors. but they have not necessarily aged amazingly well. And if you don't care yet, I think it's going to be hard for you to get into those stories. Modern Magic Story, I think its current incarnation began with Eldraine, First Eldraine. First Eldraine is probably a good breaking point, but if you want to start with the post-Phorexian invasion is also a good point. That picks up the current three-year arc of where we are in the storyline. So it's all free on magicstory.com. And you can hop on there and just look for something that looks interesting to you. Do you want to read about the fairy tale plane? Do you want to read about the biomechanical horrors?
00:57:27
Speaker
Do you want to read Seanan who hates biomechanical horrors having to write about the biomechanical horrors? You know, it's a whole thing. I, Phyrexia is actively my least favorite plane in the multiverse. I i do like body horror, but I like body horror when it is contained. I don't like body horror when it is everything.
00:57:46
Speaker
It should be an appetizer, not the meal. And so me writing Phyrexia was an exciting adventure, but I did an okay job, so I'm pleased with myself. I think we have room for one more question.
00:58:02
Speaker
I have two questions. Where did you get that dress? Oh, I hate to say it. It was on Amazon and it has pockets. I don't actually like pockets in my dresses because I have ADHD and I put things in the pockets and then they cease to exist. And this has on multiple occasions resulted in me packing my photo ID in my suitcase when getting ready to leave a convention because it was in the pockets of the thing I took off in order to pack.
00:58:27
Speaker
So that's that's super not fun. I drain my pockets as soon as I come into the house. is it we' outside onces inside the house because are also very neurochiical yeah I think we're all very neurotypical in this room. We're magic players. We are the most straight neurotypical demographic in the entire world. Just ask Chris Cox. He'll tell you. Yes. on It's a fish. I mean, my opinion on Dan Dan is that it is a perfectly practical Arabian Nights card. If you mean the format, I have never played it. um i am glad people are having fun. That is my opinion on any format I don't play is I'm i'm glad you're having fun.
00:59:06
Speaker
Are you playing standard? Glad you're having fun. Playing modern? Glad you're having fun. Playing Canadian Highlander? I have some questions, but I'm glad you're having fun. Really what I wanted is someone to play Cold War with me.
00:59:20
Speaker
Yes. If you could get a new plane for just the purpose of having a great story from it, What would you want to do with that? Like if they said, hey, Sean, give give us a new plane. I kind of already did. It was called Duskborn.
00:59:33
Speaker
So I already, they've already made kind of my planes. Duskborn is my whole. It was made for me. Wang, you had your hand up? I think I'll just ask one only one novel. How much of a good movie
00:59:56
Speaker
um If I had to write the all would be one will be one novel, for one thing, it would have to be a collaboration because there is no way I could just rewrite all of the other magic story authors work without at least involving them. But beyond that, I just want to flesh things out. And and Tybalt's death was very glancing.
01:00:15
Speaker
Very glancing I would love to be allowed to flush out more but i'm afraid that tibble fans because every character is somebody's favorite would come for me with hammers in the night. So really I think the thing that we get the most increased word count is there is a side story from arch of the machine. in which Jisa and Jeralt Sasani happened to Phyrexia. And I would just like them to happen to Phyrexia for another eight or 9,000 awards. I think that they deserve to happen to Phyrexia a whole lot more than they got to. That was my favorite story in the entire Phyrexia three set arc.
01:00:51
Speaker
I mean, you send your offer perfect? They are in the strongest greatest heroes. They have saved the world more times than anyone else. It has always been an accident and they would be appalled if you pointed out to them that they are in the strongest greatest heroes, but they are straight up in the strongest heroes.
01:01:07
Speaker
And considering that Sorin Markov is not allowed within 500 yards of a school, it is not a high bar to clear. So Thank you all so much for being here tonight, I really do hope if you have not already obtained a copy of the book that my battling will convince you to obtain a copy of the book.
01:01:23
Speaker
Obtain to obtain 12 I really don't care, i have no shame about saying this, because I don't benefit the way that I do if you obtain copies of a book I actually own royalty structures are very different for IP novels. And I think we'd have to sell like 500,000 copies before I got any more money. So I can just say this and not feel like I am being self-serving.
01:01:43
Speaker
Please buy book. Make more book happen. Yay book. Hello Podwalkers, you have been listening to the Goblin Lore Podcast. Goblin Lore can be found on Blue Sky at GoblinLorePod or by going to our link tree for all of our links, especially to our Discord and our discounts.
01:02:03
Speaker
We welcome all feedback through social media or by joining our Discord which is very active. And now goblins, I just want to remind you that goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.