Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 34: Ravnican Relief with Renee (@mtgreiunicorn)
125 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our thirty-fourth episode, your friendly neighborhood gob-slugs get prepared for Magic: the Gathering's War of the Spark when emergency planner Renee (@mtgreiunicorn) arrives at ground zero and realizes how utterly outdated their disaster plans are.
In a flipped-order episode, Renee gives invaluable advice for how to prepare for emergencies big and small in our lives (and points Alex and Joe to where they can find more), and then breaks down what a guild-run response to the planar disaster unfolding in MTGWAR would look like.
____________________________________________
We have launched our new Patreon! You can join currently at the $1 "Goblin Bangchuckers" tier, which gets you access to our private Discord server where you can talk all things lore, life, and love with other goofy gobbos like yourself. Additional rewards and tiers will continue to be added, too!
____________________________________________
Remember: we've reached 400 followers on Twitter and will announce the lucky winner soon! Keep the word of mouth going; at 500 followers, we will do a random prize draw for two lucky followers!
____________________________________________
You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle).
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Disaster Preparedness on Ravnica
00:00:26
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. This episode we are talking about the disaster on Ravnica, the war of the spark that is coming and how you can be prepared yourself to handle this impending, you know, not to be dire or anything, but impending doom.
00:00:46
Speaker
And we have a special guest here with us to help us talk about this disaster preparedness, emergency preparedness and disaster relief. And I'm going to let her introduce herself in just one second. But first, as we do with everybody and every episode, we have a burning inquiry to start the show.
What's in Your MTG Bug-Out Bag?
00:01:05
Speaker
And that is, what is in your Magic the Gathering emergency bug out bag?
00:01:11
Speaker
My name is Renee. I am an emergency planner with different levels of government at different periods of time in my career. You can find me on Twitter at MTGRayUnicorn. I've also been playing Magic the Gathering for a very long time and well, just about any other game known to man. And actually gaming has helped me with my job immensely just as much as anything else has.
00:01:40
Speaker
I think I'm finding a way to create like spark in a bottle so you can crack it open and planes walk away. Just a breaking case of emergency. Yep. Yep. You are not a planes walker. It's just like break. You don't know where you're going. You don't know what's happening anytime you do this, but you can just do it and go. You might walk into a bigger disaster. Who the heck knows? You just have to make sure you have that in the fine print. Yeah.
00:02:10
Speaker
legal disclaimers. Well, I'm Alex Newman found on Twitter at Alexander new M. And so what's in my MTG emergency bug out bag? You know, I was, I told everyone I was going to come up with a more serious answer.
00:02:27
Speaker
but I didn't today. So I'm just going to go with my goofy answer and, and that would be a juju bubble, um, relevant to a recent episode about the, uh, the legacy that we released, but coming, come on it. I mean, it has a cumulative upkeep, so it isn't good for long, but you can pour a lot of men into it and get life back. So in case of emergency, I can get a bunch of life, uh, you know, just out of nowhere. It seems, seems like a good, uh, you know, quick thing to pop and, and use in the case of emergency.
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes sense. That's it is something that yeah, it's not like you're you won't you won't use it in like a get lost in the wilderness sort of situation. This isn't in like your camping kit, but it is it is like, oh, no, the worst is about to happen. Crack this open. Good to go. It's your go bag. Like we're going to talk about those. But yeah, it's it's what you have to kind of get out and go and
00:03:27
Speaker
you're gonna drive to the next city over. Or get on your whatever plane you're on type of mobile. Maybe you have a Thopter drone, who knows?
00:03:44
Speaker
I guess the bummer would be as if you were in just like a total city plane like Ravnica, because then the next city over is just- It's just more Ravnica. It's just more Ravnica. We're still here. Well, there's like wasteland outside of Ravnica. That's true. The Rubble Belt, they say that that's one place to go.
00:04:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. And I am Joe Redman. You can find me on Twitter at Fyndhorn. That's F-Y-N-D horn. And I wanted to be, I really want to be serious also, but I'm not going to be. I've got to, I'll be real honest here. I've got a bag of a pound and a half of gummy bears sitting right next to me right now.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I'm trying real hard and failing to find any reason to not have that as part of my emergency go kit. You can use gummy bears to have him prompt you puppet shows. Yep, yep, entertainment. Yeah, no, I mean, that's something that is totally valid is snacks and especially things that will last a while, like gummy bears or any kind of like
00:04:53
Speaker
Cheetos or crackers. Um, you can store them in your car. Yeah, there you go. In the real world. Um, so if your car battery dies in the middle of winter, you know, you kind of okay. I mean, it's not the healthiest of foods. Definitely. Maybe you have like some planters, peanuts somewhere or something, but, um, you know, at least it's something that's better than nothing, but it's also good for kids. Like, you know, think of, think of what kind of,
00:05:21
Speaker
environment you'll be in and what kind of audience you're catering to like, maybe I'm gummy bears are one of my favorites for sure. But uh, you know, I'm not thinking of them for puppet shows, but that might be a concern for you know, a elven parent on
00:05:45
Speaker
Ravnica that has to entertain their kids while they see the world crumble around them. Right, absolutely. It's a delicious distraction, that's for sure. Then you eat them and like, here, this is how we're all going to die.
00:06:05
Speaker
I found the mouth of Mr. Bolas over there. That's a perfect pivot in my mind to move from a lovely lighthearted topic to our real world discussion.
Shifting Focus to Real Disaster Preparedness
00:06:20
Speaker
Longtime listeners of the show will note that we are kind of flipping the show order this time.
00:06:25
Speaker
Um, we're still receiving, you know, I don't, I don't want to make this sound too goofily, you know, uh, like this is the real world, but we are still receiving reports of what's happening on Ravnica as the show is being recorded because
00:06:41
Speaker
the war of the spark spoilers are still coming out so we're not entirely sure of the full extent of Ravnica but we do have a lot of stuff to talk about for the real world due to your expertise Renee there's a lot to dig into about what
00:06:57
Speaker
we do with disasters in the world, whether it's a natural disaster, a man-made disaster, what we can do with emergency preparedness for ourselves, you know, what the impact of all that stuff is on a theoretical level, there's a lot to dig into. So we want to devote the majority of the episode to that, to start with.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I think the maybe the broadest question to ask is what is emergency preparedness? So emergency preparedness and the broadest term is the ability to be prepared for and respond to any type of disaster. Now, when you hear the word disaster, you're thinking you're large scale hurricanes or earthquakes or
00:07:47
Speaker
any kind of active shooter type incident. But that's not necessarily just all the things that we think about. A disaster starts and ends at the local level. So even though what everyone sees on the national news is your kind of stuff that happens with FEMA, at least in the United States, and then, you know, other agencies around the world, what
00:08:14
Speaker
What really happens is you have your local responders, your fire, your police, your mayor's offices, your public works, they're responding. And even those guys are secondary responders. Typically your first responders are actually citizens. So the goal of emergency response in a lot of cases is actually, or emergency preparedness in a lot of cases,
00:08:39
Speaker
is really to get out there and inform the public how they can best handle and respond to an emergency, whether it's a fire, a car accident, somebody having a heart attack, just anything that's in their community. It becomes a disaster once the community can't handle it. So once it becomes larger than that community's fire,
00:09:02
Speaker
department or police department or those two resources combined, being able to handle it, it goes to the next level. So whether that's a county, or a township, or a state, you know, every government area is kind of organized differently. It goes to that next level, it then becomes bigger and bigger and goes up a level and up a level and up a level. In the United States, it goes through a bunch of declarations, you can have state emergency declarations,
00:09:31
Speaker
A lot of people are probably very familiar with those for flooding, hurricanes, winter storms. They're very common there. We know about that here in Minnesota for sure. Yeah. Wildfires in California and the Southwest, that's pretty common. Landslides up in the Northwest in certain areas. So all of that kind of comes into effect.
00:10:02
Speaker
where a lot of people don't necessarily think about is how they can do this on a daily basis.
Roles in Disaster Response
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that's the next question here. That's perfect, is what do we do individually? Because what you're saying is an emergency can become a disaster, but there are
00:10:27
Speaker
tons of myriad smaller potential emergencies around us on a day-to-day basis, not to, you know, sort of blow it out of proportion for anybody who's got sort of anxiety about things. Like, I think even, like you said, a car accident, you know, you could be driving on your way home or on your way to work or to the grocery store, whatever, and just all of a sudden, you know,
00:10:51
Speaker
You get t-boned or something, a pothole happens and your car splats. That's not a technical term, I'm sure, in the business. But that sort of thing where there's much more mundane emergencies, right? So what can we do? Even if you're the person who witnesses something like that, just calling 911 and knowing how to respond somewhat
00:11:21
Speaker
calmly is really important. Knowing what to pay attention for. The advent of cell phones is great because everyone can respond just about all the time. But your cell phone is this very finicky thing. So sometimes you'll get bumped over to the wrong county because of the GPS locations. So when the 911 call taker
00:11:50
Speaker
is asking for where you're at, make sure that you're trying to give them a street sign or a road that you're on, if it's a major highway and what direction you're heading or what exit you've just passed. That's come in really big handy. In Delaware, where I live, we have state
00:12:12
Speaker
Road Route 1, which is different than US Highway Route 1. And they run about parallel to each other, except that US Highway Route 1 doesn't hit Delaware at all. But it goes through Maryland, which is the next state over. And then there is Kent County, Delaware and Kent County, Maryland, and those two share a boundary. And I was on US
00:12:43
Speaker
Route 1 and somehow bumped over to a 911 call taker in Kent County, Delaware because that's where my cell phone is registered to. And I was like, yeah, I'm on Route 1. And they're like, but where? And I'm like, I don't know, it says mile marker like 30. And they're like, that's not on Route 1. That's like way up in Newcastle all the way. And I'm like, no, no, wrong state. Hold on. Yeah.
00:13:10
Speaker
Just being aware of your surroundings is really important. Beyond that, CPR classes, any kind of free courses, a lot of your YMCAs will offer those types of items, or the American Red Cross will also offer them for a small fee, but they'll get you certified. And that can be really helpful with your
00:13:39
Speaker
work because then you actually know how to use the defibrillation devices at your work. That can save somebody's life if they're having a heart attack. You can also then direct people to call 911 while you're administering the CPR or the AED, which is beyond helpful because a lot of people will actually just freeze during an emergency.
00:14:06
Speaker
People tend to think that everyone runs and scatters and we found actually that people will just freeze and stop what they're doing and look for direction.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yeah, so that's an interesting question too, I guess. What do you recommend about how to kind of go through that sort of doing, I guess, the mental reps of like preparing for an emergency situation? You know, there's not really any way to like
00:14:38
Speaker
practice the shock of an actual emergency you know you can do i i i remember from being in boy scouts you know we do cpr courses and and uh... you know sort of emergency preparedness type scenarios in in sort of role play situations nothing yet really prepares you for that moment when somebody does you know this this happened at one of our summer camps where somebody does swing a hatchet and accidentally cuts the tip off their finger
00:15:08
Speaker
You know, like, and you see it and you go, oh crap. And you just feel every muscle tense up. So what, what, how would you recommend that somebody prepare mentally for those situations as well?
Mental Preparation and Training for Emergencies
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, so it's.
00:15:24
Speaker
It's really hard to do, but the repetition is a really big portion of this. There's actually another emergency manager that's very well known in the community, Jay Annelli on Twitter, who's really big in the Vorthos community, like the Vorthos guy. Of the Vorthos guest, yeah. Yes. That guy, he's also an emergency manager, so him and I
00:15:52
Speaker
talk quite often about this kind of stuff. But to us, the biggest thing is kind of getting people into that mindset of getting into a routine of repetitions like check your like, do you know when to check your smoke alarms and smoke detectors? I actually, I don't every six months. Yes. So the best time to do it is actually like,
00:16:21
Speaker
Um, when we spring forward or fall back because you're already having to reset your clocks. But now that people are not having to reset clocks, cause they're all automatic people are forgotten. So it, but that's a really good time to do it is this, you know, when things are already changing, just go through and just check the batteries.
00:16:48
Speaker
I'm not looking at the smoke alarm on my own wall and I don't think I see a red light on. That's concerning me. You might want to change the battery or even take it off and look at the date on the back. If it's older than 10 years, it probably needs to be completely replaced. Yikes. Yeah. At my work, just as a random story and maybe this contributes,
00:17:13
Speaker
There's a big we're doing a big just preparing for situations like active shooter or something And one of the big things they talk about a lot is how have a plan always have a plan It's like our department has the plan figured out and everybody's gone through it and we all have to make sure that everybody knows what the plan is and
00:17:29
Speaker
And the sort of funny now but not funny at the time reason that all of this is happening at work is because they have, you know, we have like a storm alarm and we've got the fire alarm. Well, there is an alarm for a situation like an active shooter or something. And it accidentally got triggered by the system in the middle of the workday and no one knew why and what was going on. And so 1500 people in our office are
00:17:57
Speaker
kind of freaking out, especially because there is a daycare on site. And so we have parents trying to get to the other building to get their kids out of the daycare and all of this other stuff. So it's like, okay, now we know. So our work was like, okay, now we know we need to have this all prepared and do the education and make sure people understand how to respond to the instructions and what it will be like. I think just a month or two ago, they actually went through and they had a new message created and they're like,
00:18:27
Speaker
multiple times weeks beforehand like we are going to Play this message just listen to it. So, you know, it'll sound like nothing's going on We just were gonna play this and so we kind of just in the morning was like, okay Then they even announced over the other over the overhead. We are going to play this message This is just so you are familiar with what it sounds like in the event of an actual emergency we would play it and it would be followed by instructions and so as a
00:18:53
Speaker
getting to see a little bit of that preparedness at work has been well it's been great just to see a do it and have that in place at work but also to have that the idea of how that's done how those preparations are put in place it makes a lot of sense yeah then you have that awareness of what is going to happen in those moments when it goes then you go okay this is this is that yeah and alex brings up an excellent point of that kind of self
00:19:23
Speaker
advocacy, a lot of people don't realize what to be prepared for until something happens, like his work was kind of going through.
School Disaster Plans and Family Preparedness
00:19:37
Speaker
But that doesn't mean that you can't go and ask your work or whoever's caring for your child during the day, whether it's another like home daycare or
00:19:50
Speaker
school or, you know, even a university, you can go with your child and actually put them in charge of asking and getting that information. And kind of going through and finding that information out and coming up with a plan with the rest of your family once you have that information. The last thing you want to do, especially with schools, if there is an active shooter on site is go to the school.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, the school is going to be on lockdown. There's going to be a lot of people, uh, around it. There's going to be a lot of controlled area. You're not going to really be able to get to the school and more than most likely your child is going to be sent to a different location once they have been cleared. Um, so just going to the school is going to get you caught up in traffic and most likely going to get you sent to an area where your cell phone service is not going to be so great.
00:20:46
Speaker
So staying at home, waiting for instructions. If you know the area where they're going to try and send students, that might be a good place to go. Typically schools have now gone to sending out messages as to if when they're going to start busing students over to that location. A lot of work locations have now come up with this kind of plan as well called continuity of operations.
00:21:14
Speaker
So if you have a main location where you work and then your office happens to have another location a little ways away, if there's something that happens during the day, they'll actually send you over to the other location. Just let your family know, hey, you know, this is our other location. I'll let you know if something's going on. That way, you know, they hear XYZ building on ABC block is
00:21:41
Speaker
fire they can know hey we're going to rendezvous over here just wait don't don't swarm the scene it also stops responders from getting to the scene if everyone goes there so um it and I'll tie this back to magic in a little while but if everyone is getting there that doesn't need to be there it stops the people who kind of can do something from getting there which is not a
00:22:11
Speaker
not what we want to see. One way and one tool that location or localities have come up with or actually there's two things that localities have come up with really like help citizens become more empowered.
CERT Training and Building a Personal Emergency Kit
00:22:27
Speaker
There's the Citizen Corps and that is a program kind of enacted by FEMA and it's a program made up of a bunch of different
00:22:37
Speaker
kind of smaller programs. The biggest one is known as the Community Emergency Response Team. And that program, also called CERT, that gives you typically about two weekends worth of training. And that covers everything from like, how to apply a tourniquet and other basic first aid to how to kind of do some basic search and rescue in your neighborhood.
00:23:05
Speaker
and like how to use a fire extinguisher. It's pretty amazing how many, on my volunteer firefighter side, how many adults I run into that don't know how to use a fire extinguisher. Like, please go watch a YouTube video on how to run a fire extinguisher. Yeah, it seems like a good way to have a little bit of preparation. Like, realize you have to pull the pin out. Yeah.
00:23:33
Speaker
I get to a fire and people are holding the fire extinguisher with the pencil in. They're like, I was trying to squeeze and it wasn't going anywhere. And I'm like, oh boy. But there's also in the Citizen Corps, there's Fire Corps, there's Citizen Police Academy, which kind of is your neighborhood watch type groups. There's RACES, which is the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Services. So your ham radio operators.
00:24:03
Speaker
And they set up emergency communications during a disaster when a lot of our other kind of typical communications go down So those types of things kind of give people a lot of control during disasters When I was gonna say just sort of on that note that sounds like I mean even as you were talking about You know parents not wanting to flood you're trying to say, you know, don't flood the scene, you know, even if you You know
00:24:32
Speaker
You're concerned, yes, that's understandable, but don't flood the scene. It sounds like, excuse me, that part of that is you don't want to add to the already present stress that you're feeling with more stress. So finding those ways of controlling the situation seem to be one of the best ways that you can handle this stuff.
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, don't don't make a secondary disaster is what we say in emergency management. Um, so we try to give people ways to kind of control their anxieties and make useful like, I don't want to say usefulness of themselves, but make useful outlets for their anxieties. Um, like,
00:25:22
Speaker
grew up in this world so like this is the one thing in my life I'm not anxious about but like I am terribly anxious about school preparation so like that I am I have like books by my side and I'm always like checking my school email and all that kind of stuff but my teachers have tried to give me useful ways to
00:25:53
Speaker
my teacher's way of helping the rest of the population in my world. The other thing that I really want to mention that a lot of people don't realize is out there, that's really important. It came about in the 80s.
00:26:11
Speaker
So it's older than I am, which I always like rubbing in people's faces because the guys who run it are always these really old guys. And they're like back in my day. And I'm like, I wasn't born. Are the local emergency planning commissions? And almost every community has one. Because almost every community has a dangerous chemical either being transported through it or being produced in it or being held within it.
00:26:42
Speaker
These were created due to the emergency planning community right to no act of 1986. You get to know a lot of laws. So these planning commissions have to have some citizen representation. They cannot just consist of the chemical company and government.
00:27:11
Speaker
So that there's some sort of transparency with the public on that. Yes. And the citizenry actually gets notification once a year about their existence, where it's supposed to. But a lot of that we're finding because these older individuals are running them is through newspapers. Oh. It's not necessarily through mediums that people of
00:27:40
Speaker
You know, either even Gen X, millennials, what are the ones after the millennials? God, now I sound old. The I generation or Z's or whatever they are. I've heard those both. I don't know the actual definitions, but if we just make a big list. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the ones that were born from like 95 on forward that are adults now.
00:28:09
Speaker
Oh, that's a weird thought. Isn't it though? You can hook into that typically through your local emergency management office, which is another way to kind of also get hooked into your cert teams. Um, you can find those guys typically on Facebook. A lot of times they maintain their own Facebooks. Um, not all of them have Twitters or at worst, if you go to your local governments page, um, or state governments page,
00:28:38
Speaker
And you can, and here's where it gets confusing, you can either type in CERT, C-E-R-T, or you can type in CERC, C-E-R-C, and you'll either get to the community emergency response team or the LEPC groups. So either way, you're going to get somewhere.
00:29:03
Speaker
and those again are C-E-R-T or S-E-R-C. Yes. Okay. I think that kind of like that gives you a very broad overview of kind of a lot of the stuff. That's yeah that's fantastic. Yeah. I would have I guess I have one last question on this then is if you were to give one one recommendation one nugget of advice to somebody who's saying
00:29:33
Speaker
After listening to this, I'm concerned that I'm not concerned enough about my emergency preparedness. What's one simple thing that somebody can do to just make themselves more prepared for those simple day-to-day emergencies? I say simple, but there's more common day-to-day emergencies. FEMA has designed a really great website called ready.gov.
00:30:03
Speaker
And it's pretty universal worldwide. It was very United States-centric for a while, and they realized that it was being referred to throughout the world. So they kind of more genericized it. It has on there a whole kind of outline of what to do. So it breaks it down very simply of be informed, plan ahead, and take action.
00:30:32
Speaker
one of the sections under plan ahead is to build a kit and to me that's kind of the most important ideas in emergency preparedness is to have a kit for yourself because if you have to go to a shelter or you have to go to a friend's house during an emergency they might not have everything you need. I know for certain
00:30:58
Speaker
My parents do not have the medication I need if I have to go somewhere. I know for certain if I have to go into work and work for two weeks straight at 12 hour shifts or 24 on, 24 off, they aren't going to have my medication. So my medication and my prescription number are written on a piece of paper that is kept in a bag.
00:31:28
Speaker
so that it's ready to go with me and I can order refills that can be delivered to me at work if I need them. For more basic things, there's also like how much water you need a day per person in addition to pets for both water and sanitation needs. What kind of like weather radios would be good for
00:31:54
Speaker
all hazards type stuff because there are certain bands of radio channels that will work almost regardless of what happens. Kind of what you might need beyond that basic stuff. So we tell people if they're evacuating due to a hurricane to take their important documents like their deed to their house or insurance documentations, social security cards, anything like that. That way they can start the recovery process faster.
00:32:27
Speaker
It lists all of that out and you can print it out and actually highlight what you think is most important, medium importance, and what you don't need at all, and then also write down other ideas and start to build that up. Some people just have it all on a backpack, which is great, and then they know where the other stuff is and they can just grab it and go. For instance, all of my really important documentation is just in a tiny little sealed container,
00:32:55
Speaker
that my spouse can kind of grab and go on their own since I won't be around more than most likely during an emergency. And that contains like our pets vets records and the house information since now we have to worry about that. That was a new thing we had to reevaluate the whole box because now we have a deed we had to worry about. So you know that was
00:33:25
Speaker
That was something huge was like we had to think about like, okay, this is my bag to go to work for a disaster for multiple days or multiple weeks. What is your bag for here to go and take care of animals and a house and that kind of stuff. So it's all about your environment and your, your needs, the needs of some like Hobbs with a kid that's like newborn.
00:33:54
Speaker
It's going to have very different needs than somebody like who has a toddler who has somebody different than like a 10 year old. So they have to continuously reevaluate their go-kits.
00:34:08
Speaker
That's awesome. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And as I just am poking around this website, there's a lot of really easy to figure out headings for ready.gov. And, you know, it seems like pretty detailed stuff of like, Hey, you know, involved in a flood click here, you know, um, and we'll, we'll link that in the show notes. This seems like a really great resource. Yeah. And we normally, you know, we like to have a actionable advice on the episode and I'd say that's some really good actionable advice right there.
00:34:39
Speaker
Boom. Yeah. I try to be useful. Appreciate it. Speaking of useful, let's talk about some useful tips and what we're seeing is the disaster unfolds in the middle of Ravnica's burgeoning war of the spark.
War of the Spark Trailer and Ravnica's Crisis
00:35:01
Speaker
We've just started getting previews only, what, three days ago, four days ago?
00:35:08
Speaker
And things don't look good for our friends here on the city plane of Ravnica. Alex, do you want to sort of talk us through what we're seeing in terms of what's happened to one of the most beloved planes of magic? Yeah, well, I mean, and everything all started off at PAX. And as they usually do at PAX, especially PAX East, they had a big panel talking about the set, but they started it off with
00:35:37
Speaker
The trailer for the set, which, yeah, there was a lot going on. If you have not seen it, I think just YouTube, War of the Spark. We get to see Liliana mostly in focus, but a few other people who are present and definitely a city that is not in good shape after Bolas shows up. So we've got, from the story standpoint, the last, what, couple of years, most of the sets have tied into
00:36:07
Speaker
bolus's big plans and for years he was kind of in the background, he was doing stuff with Elara, he was doing stuff here and there, but now this new plan is coming to fruition. So he was in Ixalan getting the Eternal Sun, was in Amonkhet getting an army of Eternals. We got Tezzeret who was in Kaladesh getting a planter portal and I mean you add those three ingredients together and apparently it equals Invade Ravnica.
00:36:36
Speaker
So we've got Bolas marching an army of Eternals into Ravnica and setting up a planeswalker trap. I think that's what we're seeing on the cards and it's been really, really cool the way that they're doing the spoiler season this time around where they're going to just show all the cards, which is normal, but usually it's like, okay, we're going to show a bunch and then
00:37:04
Speaker
You know, the week before the pre-release, here's the rest, just the rest of the set. Go look at it if you care. But now they're very intentionally releasing waves to tell the story as these weeks go on. And yeah, the early story doesn't look good.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, and so I think the first card that we saw in terms of sort of depicting this disaster unfolding was Emergence Zone, which is the uncommon land that just creates colorless, but its special ability is tap one, tap it, sacrifice Emergence Zone, you may cast spells this turn as though they had flash,
00:37:45
Speaker
Cool, stuff flashes in, except for that's the planar portal opening right in the middle of where the Chamber of the Guild Pact used to be in the heart of Precinct 9. And to Amonkhet. Yeah. You can see them bolus horns in the background. With the sun. Oh yeah.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's a bit ominous there. So Renee, talk us through maybe what if we were down at ground zero of this incident happening in precinct nine, what is going on with these people probably? What is the Ravnican disaster response? Nothing good.
00:38:35
Speaker
This is what we call a bad day. In the in the event of any zombie invasion led by a mad dragon. So we actually have zombie response plans, because they make really good pandemic exercises. Oh, that's cool. So like,
00:39:00
Speaker
That's not the problem here. The problem is the portal. That's where the problem comes in. The zombies are fine. I know how to handle the zombies. The portal is the issue.
00:39:15
Speaker
Things you don't expect to hear when talking about disaster management. This is why podcasting in this community is amazing. I mean, I'm going to be asking for some USAR, which is Urban Search and Rescue Teams for sure, preferably type one, which is how we like actually rank things in the United States. So I want the best of the best.
00:39:43
Speaker
Honestly, those are probably either going to come from Celestia or Gruul because they're the ones with the animals that can actually hunt and find people from rubble. I have this seriously thought out. What if we get you something like 36 Plants Walkers? Does that sound like a good search and rescue team?
00:40:07
Speaker
No. Fair. That sounds like a wild card of unknown magnitude because who knows what those planes walker skulls are like they're coming from all over the place through this planar bridge like potentially especially this guy with horns. Right. So it's like all focused on the zombies you're like no no the problems are the portals
00:40:50
Speaker
I feel like this erratic visionary dude and I have a lot of things in common because I feel like he's standing from the top going, aha, the zombies seem to all be walking from the portal. Let's take care of that. I might be wrong though.
00:40:58
Speaker
and all these planeswalkers for god knows where.
00:41:06
Speaker
I do like that. Well, and I think an interesting card, and you mentioned this in our pre-show prep, Alex, but the rising populous card, this is the human that, this is awesome design, first of all, but whenever another creature or planeswalker you control dies, put a plus one, plus one counter on it.
00:41:26
Speaker
And in this image we see that was illustrated by Thomas, I'm gonna mispronounce the last name, sorry, Yedrusek, I think. He illustrated this crowd of people with images of their loved ones or their guild leaders or whoever sort of mobbed together and just looking for the people that were lost. And I think this is a really incredible
00:41:55
Speaker
image because it kind of shows that sense of these people are the ones being affected. This story seems to concern planeswalkers and it's about this big war and all this stuff, but no one's really remembering that it's people involved. There's not a disaster response team that's helping make sure these people get out of the way and get to safety.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a that's a thing I think that gets missed in fiction a lot. They like to, you know, focus on the big set pieces with your superheroes or your whatevers doing the big things and fighting the big disaster or fighting the big enemies. And a lot of times you miss out on what's actually happening to the city and who are the people that are getting caught in the middle of all this. Yeah, it's and I think they're
00:42:53
Speaker
From what we've seen, because as you've said, Joe, as we're recording this, we've only seen a few days worth of cards coming out. But it looks like there is going to be some look at the citizenry, some look at the common folk who are caught in this, and some of these other things that are going on. But it's also a Teferi card and has one of my favorite flavor texts on the set so far. But Teferi's time twist,
00:43:21
Speaker
Exiles a creature brings it back which is kind of a neat like we're gonna protect you which really is something he did during the invasion which Short term helped out long term has led to problems But his the flavor text the safest place for you is not now. I Love a good turn of phrase and when he can take turn take time terminology and turn it you know referring to it as a place and
00:43:47
Speaker
it's a uniquely to fairy thing, at least in the realm of magic, and I enjoy that. Absolutely. Let's sort of fast forward through this event, and let's assume that there's a Ravnica after this to rebuild from and rejuvenate, or even maybe sort of as this event goes on.
Guilds' Roles in Ravnica's Disaster Recovery
00:44:10
Speaker
Rene, I know that you said you thought about this a lot, so what
00:44:15
Speaker
What guilds would be involved sort of in the disaster response teams? You said search and rescue is probably going to be Selesnya gruel sort of endeavor. What's the next phase and who sort of jumps in to help out with that? So everyone kind of has a lot of differing roles, which is very typical.
00:44:46
Speaker
Your Azorius group and Orzhov group, they're your regulators, if you look at it like that. They're your guys who are actually writing the plan, code enforcement, if you think about- It's like standards sort of thing. Yeah, building codes, all of that sort of thing.
00:45:08
Speaker
So that's important both before the disaster, although nobody kind of plans for a portal opening up on it. That's a little beyond just anything. That's like physics not found, 404 physics not found. And then afterwards, like how do we improve the codes?
00:45:35
Speaker
So that they kind of have to come together and actually work as a team. Um, and I have a feeling that they do that kind of naturally already because, um, I wouldn't be surprised if you have a couple of wars off people sitting in there with the Azorius people during code enforcement, like slipping things through and, you know, through the pay system instead of the actual code enforcement system. Um,
00:46:02
Speaker
just getting their bureaucracy on. Yeah, yeah, you know, they both like bureaucracy. They're just like different sections of it. Um, your boros individuals are your, your law enforcement, like, that's kind of a given. Um, but they're, I have a feeling they'd also be your firefighters. Uh, same with your Arachdos kind of guys.
00:46:27
Speaker
They're kind of your crazy individuals and I'm not gonna lie a lot of us firefighter people are kind of crazy individuals It takes a certain level of crazy to go running when everybody else is going the other direction So, you know, that's that's just a thing So that a lot of these share a color if you see
00:46:56
Speaker
You have, Golgari is kind of this interesting thing because they do a lot and they kind of do it solitarily where they're your public works department as far as a water, sanitation, sewage. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe they help some, is it people with electricity through, through water pumping? Hmm. Okay.
00:47:27
Speaker
However, they also are kind of your biological specimens, uh, specialists. Oh, sure. Kind of your epidemiologist. So if like you have a zombie outbreak, the kind of the people you want.
00:47:44
Speaker
to know what's going on. Yeah. I could see them be called in on the zombie invasion plan. Yeah. If there's sort of a chemical pandemic, they're the experts. Yeah. And you know what? If we on the planet Earth have zombie plans in place, I guarantee there's a zombie invasion plan on Ravnica. Exactly.
00:48:10
Speaker
We might even be surprised. There might be intergalactic portal plus zombie invasion plans. Very well, maybe. We have such little faith. You never know. We'll find out as the story comes out. Like we have Storov down here, and I'm really kind of curious as to what his angle is, because it's like, are you getting ready to eat these other random zombie guys?
00:48:39
Speaker
or turn them into your style of zombie because they are totally currently not your style of zombie. They're all armored zombie and you're just completely natural zombie. So I think there's an angle there where he's like, nope, that zombie's gotta go. Zombie is not okay. This zombie is an invasive species kind of thing. Yeah, yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
Exactly. Who haven't we covered? We haven't covered gruel. So gruel is actually your wildlife. In addition to like your search and rescue kind of thing that they're also kind of your people who handle all of your like wildfire and land management. You know, they do good. They understand how the wildlife works and how everything kind of interacts. They also do a lot of really good work
00:49:38
Speaker
on the other end of biology where they recognize where, um, uh, issues with like rabies or whatever Ravnica's version of like mad cow disease or anything like that would be like, they know the signs and symptoms of what's going on and could quarantine that population and like make the rest of everything safe for Ravnicans to eat because they've got to eat something.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I could see that. I also now have a picture of, of some gruel, like animal control person, like in my head. They're like, damn it. I got raccoons in the backyard. Call the girl to come recruit these raccoons. Recruit them? This is only fun here because I have a D and D character who is like totally gruel in nature, uh, who has a dire raccoon as a animal familiar named mushroom.
00:50:37
Speaker
That is incredible. That's great. And then Celestia is like, they're your happy planners. They want to bring everyone together and kind of make, they're the piece of cord people. They understand how the weather patterns go and they want to make sure everyone's safe.
00:51:06
Speaker
I'm pretty sure they're sending out reports to everyone to be like, oh, well, the, the matzolesnya is happy right now. So you can expect rain at the later end of the week and maybe in four, they're like Ravnica's version of the farmer farmer's almanac. Nice. So you have Trevor like laughing in the background now at that one. Okay. Good there.
00:51:35
Speaker
I think Simic is one we haven't covered. Simic is your other water guys, like kind of, I mean, but they're also your other, so they're weird because they're the epidemiologists in the lab. Oh yeah, even more than the Golgari. The Golgari are the ones who are out there taking the samples and getting dirty and the
00:52:03
Speaker
Um, some guys are the ones in the lab testing everything. They're also probably the ones like actually doing exercises along with the, is it so like they're coming up with the crazy ideas of how to get everyone to do everything and test what they're doing. So it's like, all right, we've all got this plan now. We've all like, we've all experienced the portal coming down on us. How do we prepare for the next portal?
00:52:30
Speaker
This is how we're going to do it. This is the crazy idea. Let's go, go, go. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And the civic are like your FBI and CIA guys. So like there's actually in, when I am activated during an event and I sit in the planning section, typically right now in my role, I'm typically a planning section chief. Um,
00:52:59
Speaker
but there is an intelligence unit underneath of me that is typically made up of our fusion center, which is part of, it's a state run kind of thing, but it communicates, it's meant to communicate with FBI counterparts, other federal kind of intelligence agencies, other state level intelligence agencies in the area.
00:53:26
Speaker
This is really important for like active shooter types of generations planar collapses that are bringing zombies You know This is very obvious that the zombies are coming from the planar portal
00:53:55
Speaker
Sorry guys, we're we're dressing the wrong issue here I think this is the big concern is that you're not on the ground right now Helping coordinate That's our show
00:54:16
Speaker
You can find the podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter, or email any questions, comments, or concerns to goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com. If you'd like to support your friendly neighborhood gobslugs, you can do so at patreon.com slash goblinlorepod.
00:54:34
Speaker
This episode of Goblin Lore was hosted by Joe Redemann, who you can find on Twitter at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D, Horn. This episode is written and co-hosted by Alex Newman, who you can find on Twitter at AlexanderNewM. Engineering, editing, and production for this episode, also by Joe Redemann. Rene can be found on Twitter at MTGRayUnicorn. That's M-T-G-R-E-I, Unicorn.
00:55:02
Speaker
Our music is by Wintergatan. We can find at vintergatan.com. That's winter g-a-t-a-n. Logo by Steven Raphael on Twitter at stevenraffle. Goblin lore is presented by Hipsters of the Coast, which you can find at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening. And remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.