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Episode 6: Krenko, Problematic Mob-Goblin
132 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our sixth episode, Joe Redemann introduces the lore we have about Krenko, the Ravnican goblin mob boss who is a fixture of Commander/EDH decks and may be a face we see in the Guilds of Ravnica block (Fall 2018).
After that, the guys discuss real-world analogies to Krenko and put his philosophy into the context of a sociopolitical ideology (essentially, anarchy vs. libertarianism).
ALSO! The guys will be at GP Minneapolis, doing giveaways and recording community people for future episodes. Come say hi!
Finally, the winners of the first 100 followers' giveaway have been announced! At 200 followers on Twitter, we'll do our second giveaway, so keep the word of mouth going!
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 courtesy of Greg Staples, design by JDR.
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Transcript
Introduction of Cranko: Goblin Legend and Political Themes
00:00:04
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lord. In this episode we talk about Krenko, our first actual legendary goblin, and dig into a little bit of his backstory and some of the thematic elements that go into what makes him such a fascinating character. On top of that we dig into socialism,
00:00:25
Speaker
libertarianism, capitalism, and some big political concepts. It gets a little bit hairy at the end. That's one of the great things that we love about our cast is we all have slightly different beliefs and political ideologies and yet we still find that way of using our ideals as a way to create equality and value for everybody. Individuals and society as a whole matter to us.
00:00:52
Speaker
So, without any further ado, let's get to the show.
Cranko: Mob Boss and Role Model
00:01:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome back Podwalkers. This is another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. This week we are talking about Cranko, the mad mob gob mob boss. I'm gonna butcher that phrase so often, but the hobgoblin with the mob knoblin, I don't even know. Cranko- This could be the worst intro we've had. It's trying to say that five times fast though.
00:01:31
Speaker
seems thematically appropriate when we're talking about an actual goblet. Yeah, that is the most slapped together.
00:01:40
Speaker
Well, and that's kind of the fun part of today is we actually get on brand in this episode, guys. This is the first episode of the Goblin Lore podcast where we're talking goblins. And of course, it's got to be Cranko. It's got to be like the OG Goblin Tribal Commander card. But we're not just talking the card, we're talking Cranko, the mob boss from Ravnica himself. We're going to talk about whether he's a good role model,
00:02:08
Speaker
Whether he's a cautionary tale we're gonna talk about where his allegiances lie and what we can learn from him So I'm super pumped but first I need you guys to introduce yourselves and with that I'm also want to ask you which goblin like quality. Do you feel best reflects your personality? Let's let's start with Alex.
Hosts' Goblin Personas
00:02:28
Speaker
Well, I'm Alex. You can find me on Twitter at Alexander new M and and I think
00:02:36
Speaker
maybe a little paradoxically, or maybe counterintuitively, perhaps. Goblin Ringleader. In our last episode, we talked about some struggles I've had with social anxiety, but I'm still a very outgoing person. I love to do things with friends. I have how many years on? I have lots and lots of different groups of friends that I'm constantly trying to pull into different plans and do stuff and bring people to cons and the GP and everything. I think Goblin Ringleader is a good fit for me, actually.
00:03:07
Speaker
Okay. Well, I'm, I'm Hobbs Q. I'm at Hobbs Q on twitter.com and I'm really stuck between two of these. So my first instinct is to go Mog fanatic. And I just feel so bad for Mog fanatic because of how badly Mog fanatic ends up getting hosed by the changing of removing the stack. Um, so if people don't know that the whole point of Mog fanatic was Mog fanatic would absorb a point of damage and then would sacrifice itself in order to
00:03:35
Speaker
get in another point of damage somewhere, which is greatly hit by his... the artwork is basically him withholding a powder keg, and the flavor text says, I got it, I got it, I... and cuts off. Now, I think this is so apropos for a goblin, and actually the flavor text I'm going to come back to in a second because it ties in with what my other choice was,
00:03:59
Speaker
But MOG Fanatic I also feel bad for because MOG Fanatic got screwed by changing and taking away the stack. And to me this actually was not intuitive from a flavor standpoint. So if people don't know, the stack used to allow you to do things like let damage be assigned and then you could do effects after that. MOG Fanatic is one of the classic creatures that is known for using that ability.
00:04:21
Speaker
But to me, from a flavor standpoint, that actually makes a lot of sense, because if you think about a fanatic, a fanatic can take lethal damage and is not going to just die. As a bonus, my other choice, relatedly, was Goblin's Skyraider, which was first an onslaught and has been reprinted. And it is also for the flavor text and for the fact that it is a one-two flying goblin. He's got a Leonardo da Vinci-style apparatus
00:04:51
Speaker
on his back and the flavor tech says the goblin word for flying is more accurately translated as falling slowly.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's the Buzz Lightyear of Goblins. I love it. Yes, exactly. Well, with that, I am Joe. You can find me on Twitter at FinDhorn. That's F-Y-N-D Horn. And I like to think of myself as a goat napper.
00:05:23
Speaker
I love this card for so many reasons.
Cranko's Charismatic Crime Leadership
00:05:27
Speaker
So for those who don't know, Goat Napper is a tutu goblin rogue from Lorwyn. When Goat Napper comes into play, untap target goat and gain control of it until end of turn. It gains haste until end of turn. So it's a threatened effect.
00:05:30
Speaker
And...
00:05:43
Speaker
for goats specifically. Now, I wanna ask you guys, when this card was printed, how many cards in Magic the Gathering referenced goats? Ring Jack pasture, was that out yet? Oh, I'm sorry, it was not incorrect. Damn it. I'm gonna guess Mountain Goat from Ice Age, and maybe nothing else that is goat specific. Though, to go all Melvin on ya,
00:06:11
Speaker
there were a lot of goats in the lower wind block in the floor changelings i was just gonna go there too nice that's why i love you alex nice yes there were changelings so you could steal changelings however
00:06:27
Speaker
You're right, there was mountain goat, there was crested kraghorn, there was colos yearling, battering kraghorn, wild colos, and then if you played with somebody who had any of the portal cards, you had zodiac goat.
00:06:44
Speaker
So no, you had like five cards, like one, one card that referenced a goat even in standard at that time. It was the most useless card and it's perfect. So if you wanted somebody to marshal all of those goblin B squad JV into a ragtag, you know, fighting force, which goblin would you turn to? Oh, I don't know. You know, I think Krenko.
00:07:14
Speaker
might be a good choice to lead such a squad.
00:07:34
Speaker
on Ravnica like and yeah they're not nearly as like sneaky as the Demir or organized as the Boros or even maybe as like explodey destructive as the Rakdos but they do some good stuff well Cranko what can we say that hasn't already been said many times about Cranko Cranko literally walked into like an Azorius stronghold and just like didn't he just like grab feather
00:08:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah, the Boros. He walked into Sunhome, the Boros stronghold. So the first story that we really get introducing us to Cranko is called Cranko Mob
Cranko's Bold Infiltration Mission
00:08:13
Speaker
Boss. And it was posted on the mothership on magic.wizards.com. And that'll be linked in our show notes here. But Cranko is sitting down to a meal with an odd sort of looking fellow.
00:08:29
Speaker
whose skin doesn't fit too well on his body, apparently, named Mr. Taz. What we don't find out in this story, but we learn later through the stories, is this is Lazov, the Demir shape-shifter and the head of the guild. And Mr. Taz is giving him this job to case Sunholm, the Boros, you know, the red-white-aligned soldier and angel, the Boros,
00:08:58
Speaker
Guild Hall, sort of their fortress basically. And they're like the combination between the police force and the military. Right. Like they're not just some local constabulary. This is a serious law enforcement business.
00:09:16
Speaker
right they are yeah and they're a real deal when it comes to fighting and and so you'd think that security at sunhome would be a lot better but cranko strolls on in like for a while he's sitting on top of some roofs and like watching people through a telescope and he's like nah this sucks i'm gonna go in and so the next day he goes in walks into the mess hall sits down and helps himself to some free you know whatever some eggs and i think it says like duck eggs or
00:09:45
Speaker
you know all sorts of all sorts of stuff and he just starts listening and realizes all the tension that's going on this is a way to introduce the conflict for the return to Ravnica story but Cranko is just like you know loving the fact that there is all this tension around him because he's like oh yeah yep one little push and this whole powder keg goes off
00:10:09
Speaker
And so I have to read this bit here. This is one of the funniest things to one of the funniest lines in the Cranko story. I mean,
00:10:37
Speaker
What we have to realize is, what's funny about this, like Alex said, this isn't just your constabulary, this is the Boros, right? This is a garrison. They're not too bright. I am fairly certain they're sort of racist and just assume that Krenko is really a Legion loyalist. Yeah. They just like, well, it's a goblin, it's here, it probably belongs here. I don't really care about it or notice it.
00:11:02
Speaker
right and we will get into that later on too and we talk about the real world impact but yeah that's important to note is that they don't they i think they assume that well and it says he joined a goblin maintenance crew so that's maybe part of his cover but nobody thinks twice about like maybe we should see some id from you
00:11:20
Speaker
And so the point of this story is that Cranko gets to the top floor of Sun Home, and gets to the private chambers of Feather, who is the angel, if you remember the Ravnica story, is the angel that was Agris Coase, the protagonist of that story, uh, Agris Coase's partner on the beat, and um,
00:11:40
Speaker
Feather has now ascended to being the guildmaster of the Boros.
Rise of Goblin Organized Crime
00:11:46
Speaker
But there is some sort of infighting going on. Another angel says that a fallen angel, a disgraced angel, shouldn't ever be allowed to be the guildmaster. And so there's all this tension and blah, blah, blah. And really like Krenko just basically takes a glowy shiv that Lazav gave him and like breaks the detention sphere.
00:12:06
Speaker
that that feathers in and says that she was attacking him and then he runs out in the chaos and then an explosion blows a hole in the side of the building. So my favorite part of the MTG like the game PD a wiki on this feather was freed during a secretive raid performed by Cranko.
00:12:25
Speaker
I think we're giving him a lot of credit for being secretive here. Yeah, he like grabbed a janitor's uniform, threw it on, and then that was that. That's the amount of secretitude. And then started sending explosives. Right, like calling giant attention and then saw something shiny and broke it open.
00:12:43
Speaker
Even for a goblin, that's not really secretive. Like the first floor, like rumors, okay, that's like subtle goblin stuff. Punching a goblin, that could kind of be subtle if he punches, walks away, and like that starts a fight behind him. But setting off bombs?
00:12:59
Speaker
And so it's important to note that this is basically like Cranko's origin story. He's a young goblin at the time. This is kind of his make it big moment. This is when he starts to prove his worth to the Demir and start to get hired for other jobs. It's also important to note that he's not a member of the Demir. He is brought in by the Demir to basically do the jobs that they don't want to do and get their own hands dirty.
00:13:25
Speaker
I love that they actually call this not a knife. It's an enchanted shiv. Yeah. There's a lot of power and a lot of magic and a lot of even just political power wrapped up in the guild structure. So the people who aren't part of that structure have very little power. They have very little agency. And so a big part of Krenko is that he is part of this guild list group that is kind of taking their agency back.
00:13:54
Speaker
We actually see this too become kind of him in some ways being made if we really want to stick with this mafia kind of language.
00:14:01
Speaker
He kind of in some ways is his first successful, huge mission where he's going to start bringing power to him among these unaffiliated to the point where he is developing organized crime. He is pulling all of this unorganized, unaffiliated goblins, these people that we would think of as like this chaos of goblins because that's what we generally think of with chaos and what we see mainly with goblins. And he's actually organizing them.
00:14:26
Speaker
I think it would be great also if that was the like term for a group of goblins, a chaos of goblins.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, that might be it. I would also like to call attention to the fact that in the art for Cranko Mob Boss, you can see in the back alley behind him, the two goblins that are on the card Cranko's Command. I think that's pretty cool. Just as a little flavor note there for you, believe both of those cards were, in fact, yes, they were done by Karl Kopinski. Shout out to the homie.
00:15:02
Speaker
So that is actually a perfect transition as we discuss the guild list to talk about the other story that we see Cranko in on the Magic Mothership again.
Goblin Gang War and Intervention
00:15:14
Speaker
We see him show up in limits. Limits was published in 2015. I will link this again in the show notes and it's talking about
00:15:24
Speaker
The trials that Gideon is going through, Gideon the Planeswalker, as he bounces back and forth between Zendikar and Ravnica, trying to stop the Eldrazi threat on Zendikar and trying to protect the innocent civilians of Zendikar. We reference this a little bit, and specifically Michelle Rapp referenced this in her article on Gideon and trauma. This is that point where he starts to wear down, get sloppy, all that sort of stuff.
00:15:53
Speaker
because he's just, you know, grinding himself to the ground. But, but this isn't a Gideon podcast, this is a Cranko cast. So Cranko comes in because he is the one stirring up all the crap on Ravnica. You know, there is basically a goblin gang war happening between Cranko's mob and the Shatter Gang brothers.
00:16:16
Speaker
It's consuming the entire Foundry Street, Tin Street, the whole Goblin District. The way that this goes down is, Dargig, a goblin black market weapons runner, the youngest of the Shattergang brothers, was found stabbed in an alley off of Tin Street and worded spread that Cranko did the deed himself when a weapons drop went bad. So, you know,
00:16:43
Speaker
Organized crime they have their they have their rules. They have their you know, they need to work together It's not like mobs don't ever communicate but when one of them pushes the other things go a little bit awry and so Cranko being a goblin of honor question mark you know took his took his vengeance on one of the shatter gang brothers well
00:17:06
Speaker
There are obviously two remaining Shattergang brothers, and those two, along with the rest of the mob, decided to set off a series of explosions across the district, blowing up Cranko's warehouses. Basically now, it is full-on goblin war in the streets, and, you know, many of these people, and I think this goes under
00:17:30
Speaker
appreciated under noticed when we're talking about the story of Ravnica is that many of the people of Ravnica are non-guild affiliated. Many people are just living their lives on Ravnica doing their thing. These people are all caught in the blowback between these two warring factions
00:17:48
Speaker
And so Gideon tries to step in and, you know, put a stop to this. He tries to apprehend the Shatter gangs. He eventually does apprehend Krenko. He's the only character in Magic Cannon so far to have made Gideon bleed. That's pretty impressive. And, well, in the story, too, he brings Krenko in, right? Right. And tells people. And then Krenko's like, I got him twice.
00:18:11
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, that's kind of this great thing where Gideon brings him into the Boros. Again, they're the law enforcement. Welcome back, buddy. Right. Have fun.
00:18:24
Speaker
Like, hey, I've been here, this place looks familiar. This son home is nice. Right. And he's just gritting. He's just having a great time. And a Shatter Gang message drops in. It looks like one of their classic bombs. You know, they have a very distinctive way of making their bombs, these vials with these metal bands around them.
00:18:42
Speaker
It turns out to just be a message that says basically turn Cranko over to the Shattergangs for our retribution, or the entire Boros will now be liable. So now that Street War of the Guildless has spread to affect a guild, and now the guilds step in. And that's an important note that we're gonna talk about in a minute.
00:19:02
Speaker
The last bit here that I really want to note that I love this about Cranko's character is decision time, Cranko taunted. Get him out of there, Darsbarkt. I want him behind bars. You see Jura, Cranko said as soldiers dragged him away. The Boros won't turn me into the Shattergang brothers. What now?
00:19:20
Speaker
and so he's a little bit of this like he's playing as many sides as he can even when he's apprehended he is very much like set himself in this non-affiliated you know full neutral place i mean he's chaotic for sure but he set him i think he's less chaotic if we were to put him in dnd terms he's less chaotic than the average goblin i would say that he is more neutral neutral
00:19:47
Speaker
I mean, you can't really be a boss in some ways if you're too chaotic. And I mean, we're gonna get into this, I think, a little bit when we bring this to history or the real world. Gideon, who has been set up in multiple stories to just be shown as one of the multiverse's biggest badasses.
Cranko's Dangerous Charisma
00:20:05
Speaker
He may not have, like, great gobs of magic powder thrown around, but Gideon doesn't get hurt. He can just stand up to anything and is tenacious.
00:20:16
Speaker
And we see a goblin kind of getting the better of him despite the fact that the goblin is the one who was arrested. And there's just something compelling about the character specifically, generally set up as villains, but there's something compelling about that character who gets caught and is arrested and seems to be out of play and yet the whole time they're just acting like, yep, this is all part of my plan.
00:20:45
Speaker
I don't know, there's something compelling there.
00:20:48
Speaker
Right, and that's one thing that the stories show us and his description on the mothership tells us too is he's extremely charismatic, dangerously so. I think it's actually his flavor text on his card that says this as well. He displays a perverse charisma fueled by avarice, highly dangerous, recommend civil sanctions. And that's a quote by an Azorius bureaucrat essentially.
00:21:15
Speaker
And so that's actually a really good transition point for us into our real world talk.
00:21:21
Speaker
I wanna turn this over to you guys here since I talked most of the lore background, but where does Cranko fit into our real world understanding? He's this charismatic mob boss, he is this perversely violent, he really enjoys violence, that is very clear, but he's not chaotic, he's not stupid, he's not somebody that people don't wanna follow, he's not a loner, he is a leader,
00:21:51
Speaker
I mean, he's charismatic. I mean, that's where we're starting off with here, right? I mean, for a goblin, especially, which we generally think of as being depicted as ugly from a typical beauty standard that we do not think of as being the attractive heroes. He has charisma. I mean, he has that ability to what we said. He didn't get questioned basically walking into a garrison. He walked in. He was able to look like he belonged and then he starts
00:22:21
Speaker
just doing violence. And there's something to be said for being drawn to that, even if it's talking about something to do with sociopathy or psychopathy, which is really what we're talking about when we're talking about a sociopath or antisocial personality disorder. One of the things about that, so if we're kind of bringing it to the psychology world for a second here, antisocial personality disorder is really characterized by kind of this pervasive
00:22:51
Speaker
ability to not really be able to tell the difference between right and wrong or care um and kind of really be self-serving and self-centered and where it's been studied less rigorously the idea of sociopathy is really what we think of when we see most movies it is the person who can function in a social crowd so you know let's think of something like american psycho technically
00:23:17
Speaker
If anybody's ever seen that, you know, it's the Christian Bale character. He's still very charismatic versus Dexter, who has trouble blending and doesn't really fit in. Um, because the, he is more of a closer, what we think of as kind of being the antisocial personality. Like that's the typical, what I would think of in a clinical sense versus in the media. We really are enabered with this idea of the sociopath, somebody that can appear charming and then is going to kill you. And so.
00:23:47
Speaker
We're actually kind of seeing that with Krenko here with his also, you know, for both of these, even when we're talking about antisocial personality, another key hallmark is this kind of inability to control your impulses, like even in situations where it would probably be smart to do it.
00:24:06
Speaker
It's how most serial killers end up getting caught is they believe that they truly are smarter and they eventually do something that gets them caught. And that's sort of what we see here too is he does get caught. We don't, we don't know exactly how he got caught. Um, you know, the story doesn't cover that in limits, but he gets brought in and something, you know, something about that trips him up. And that is interesting too, because looking from a sort of color pie,
00:24:32
Speaker
standpoint in magic, you know, the underlying philosophies of the different colors. A lot of times, red gets glossed over as just the violence and things, but the impulsiveness is a big part of that. The person, you know, a piece of red philosophy is just, you should do what makes you happy and you shouldn't control, you shouldn't have to
00:24:58
Speaker
hamper what you want to do just to get along with other people. I really like when Wizards is able to sort of show something where you have like cathartic reunion in red from Kaladesh where Chandra is reuniting with her mom for the first time in years and years. That is a very red thing that isn't tied to violence and so it's interesting that Krenko has some piece of that.
00:25:22
Speaker
Well, I think it shows too that, you know, red is not the absence of intelligence.
Cranko's Red Character Analysis
00:25:26
Speaker
What we're seeing here in a red character that is a legend and is very popular among red EDH or commander players for this reason is actually a very intelligent goblin who also still cannot inhibit those red ability. Kind of thinking about this in the real world, are we looking at a true mafioso here? Or are we looking at something more akin to the Joker from Batman?
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, is he the Ravnica goblin version of Al Capone for a long time? And again, I don't think people know this so much about the history here with Al Capone. But back in the day when he was involved in the rum running and all the bank robberies and all that sort of stuff, he was sort of seen as this folk hero.
00:26:10
Speaker
Like he was romanticized as like this, as this Robin Hood-esque sort of guy, even though he never like stole from the rich and gave to the poor, he just stole from other people to make himself rich. But he was, he was seen as this, this outlaw, this, this dangerous badass. And he was frankly violent and, and awful. I mean, we also saw it in the, later in the 20th century with John Gotti.
00:26:35
Speaker
I mean, he was called the Teflon Don. I mean, that's where that nickname comes from because they couldn't make anything stick to him until he actually had somebody basically rat on him that went into witness protection. And this guy was known. I mean, it was the same thing. Everybody knew who he was and what he was doing.
00:26:55
Speaker
But he was out in New York City at fancy restaurants being photographed. I mean, there really was an obsession with him. Yeah. So there's these cult of personalities around these guys that, you know, I think that does get get a little bit towards the charisma of Cranko. You know, it sort of has that organized crime element, too. But we also do see some of those qualities in The Joker as well, right?
00:27:22
Speaker
Well, I think that's where we're kind of talking to once we really get more into the chaos and the impulse control. There's some similarities in the highly intelligent, even when he appears to be caught, he still has things going on. But I think there's also some differences there in the character. And some of that, I think, lends towards some of Cranko's redness. I mean, and characters are not necessarily just one note, too. It's also a fairly common
00:27:52
Speaker
like black thing that while you're you care about yourself you can also kind of care about your group I mean that's how like black white tends to work they're very focused on their group and they don't care about any other groups I guess the problem is we don't have enough in my opinion yet I mean I would in some ways maybe when we return to Ravnica we will get to see more of Franco because the question is does he really care about them or not I mean we we we know that he's organized them but is that
00:28:21
Speaker
to get to his end that he needs or what he wants. Yeah, it's a fair question. We don't have a ton of info on it. We don't have a ton of things to tell us. Because if we're going to jump in and think a little bit more, I'm coming back to the Joker piece. If we're going with the version, let's say, of Heath Ledger, which is actually a very well-written version, it brings in a lot of the elements of the comic book that are actually really key to him.
00:28:48
Speaker
We see him in heists with his gang. We don't see Cranko in heists or in his missions really with his gang. We only see him doing those kind of more that alone type of thing. Like when he goes into Sun Home. We're dropped in the middle of their story and we don't... I'm the type of person that we don't always need an origin story.
00:29:10
Speaker
especially with some of this more, we don't know some of these motivations and they seem kind of chaotic. The lack of an origin story is actually works a lot better. What we know about him is that he came from being a guildless goblin who lived out of the gutters and try saying that five times fast. But, you know, and got his first big break by being a hired thug for the Demir, not as a part of the Demir again, but, you know, hired out freelancing for them. And that's kind of it.
00:29:38
Speaker
Like, it also sort of lends me a little bit to, I think we've talked about this off air, sort of a little bit in the way of a, you know, Last Jedi sort of thing, where maybe it doesn't matter where he came from, because where he is now is who he is. And that's kind of that cool thing of at this point in the story,
00:30:02
Speaker
This is what he is and what he does. And he's, you know, I like that he's almost this force of nature in the same way that Heath Ledger's Joker was. We don't know what drives him other than greed, other than, you know, the desire for violence. But what does he do with the greed? What does he do with the power? What does he do with the things he gets once he has them? That's fascinating. So Alex, kind of coming back to what you were saying a little bit with the
00:30:30
Speaker
You know the the mono red kind of qualities of him But his ability to kind of have that in some ways what we think we don't know we maybe we're gonna learn more about this the love of his His kind maybe whether that's the guild list or or specific other goblins the goblins that he is the boss of I mean are you I mean do we see him shifting colors? But remaining guild list which would be a very interesting thing in terms of Ravnica
00:30:58
Speaker
I think that could be interesting. You don't have to be in other colors to care for other people. And so it would be interesting to see Krenko develop and to go into another color and to develop that way as a character. But kind of the other mind, you also don't have to shift him into another color to continue to develop him. You can continue to develop his character, keeping him in that mono-red space.
00:31:25
Speaker
I throw this in here because it sounds like, and we don't have a whole lot of him talking to other goblins. And so this is kind of, it sounds like a little speech that he's giving. So he says, we won't sit like lazy gobslugs waiting for death to come to us. We'll bring death, shiny, sharp, to our enemies. Seems like he really does have a group that he is working with. I think it would be interesting to see that develop, whether they decide to pull him into another color,
00:31:55
Speaker
or not. I do hope that there's some development of his character because in the world of guilds, which are also really cool and fun to develop, it's nice to see that other side of the world. And I guess maybe, like I said, it doesn't need to be him, but this idea of color-aligned guild-less, I mean, or just like multi-color guild-less, now that we're returning to Ravnica for the third time, and we've already been so inundated with guilds,
00:32:23
Speaker
Like, what is the result of this? Do we have people that are these colors that just are because that's who they are, not because they belong to guilds? Like you're saying, this is their third time to Ravnica, and it's been a little while. But I don't recall there being much guild-less in the first Ravnica. It was about the guilds. And then the Nephilim, just in case people didn't care for the guild, that was weird and something different. It wasn't really until the second Ravnica block
00:32:53
Speaker
where we had that idea of where they at least introduced it in the cards and the story where there was here are the guilds and then here are the other people that aren't part of that system that don't get the benefits of that system and are kind of being taken advantage of by this system.
00:33:11
Speaker
And what's funny too is if we want to go as far as the actual card frame, we get our watermarks. We get cards being very easily to tell just by looking at a mono-colored card. Are you part of a guild or not? We get to see not only a character who works and operates outside of the guild system, we get to see how the guild system treats the other citizens. And it says verbatim in the limits story,
00:33:39
Speaker
that the Gilded people basically didn't care about the street wars that were happening as long as they didn't stray into Gilded territory. As long as it didn't affect them behind their gates, they were fine. They were willing to let all these goblins kill each other and kill themselves without, you know, any sort of impact on their lives. There's a card from Gatecrash, and I love this flavor text, and I didn't see this pay off in the stories too much. Nouribis Protector. You are B-I-S Protector.
00:34:09
Speaker
The 1-1 for 6, but you get a 4-4 Angel and you play him. What I love this flavor text is actually a quote from two guild leaders. Taysa of the Orzhov talking to Lazov of the Demir says, I hear that Boros is losing its Angels to the Gateless movement. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you.
00:34:30
Speaker
And that little piece of world building was so interesting to me, the whole idea that you have this movement outside of the guilds trying to be a counter to the guilds. And it makes a lot of sense when you look at what the guilds were doing. Like you're saying, there's all these street wars going on, and the guilds didn't care. Even Boros, who's the guild that is the peacekeepers, they should be the ones caring, didn't matter them until
00:35:00
Speaker
gilded territory was was affected. Right? No, I love that. I love that, too, that it's it's guildless movement. It's not just people who've been sort of left aside and and, you know, that the guilds didn't choose them. There are people choosing to leave the guilds. That's fascinating. Well, in this, like the angels, from my understanding, like their constructs, they are basically built to fulfill purposes. And the fact that angels are choosing to leave
00:35:40
Speaker
There's this element of Ravnica that lives outside of the system that not only we as the story readers and the game players understand as the main
00:35:52
Speaker
point of Ravnica? Ravnica is the city of guilds. It's a city plane made by guilds, sustained by guilds. That's the whole branding. And so that does get us to an interesting discussion point here. How do we understand that in a real world society, this left out
Ravnica's Guild System and the Guildless
00:36:12
Speaker
-ness?
00:36:12
Speaker
there's something different between people not being allowed to participate in the system and people being ousted or choosing to leave the system. To me, you know, I'll speak freely about my political beliefs here for sure is like, I'm a socialist by my, you know, understanding and we can get into a longer discussion. If anyone wants to engage with me on Twitter about that and know what exactly I mean by that, we can do that. But basically I believe that it's the system's job to provide
00:36:42
Speaker
you know, a baseline for everybody to live at. And I think that's what the Guild Pact was originally supposed to do, you know, ensure a baseline of civility. And it was supposed to instill these ten organizations into specific niches.
00:36:57
Speaker
to create this fabric for society. But now you have this group of people who have either been left out of the system or chose to leave the system or have been forced out of the system who aren't represented by the guild pact and even after when we return to Ravnica the guild pact is done. Jace is the living guild pact but the magic of the original guild pact is gone. So
00:37:22
Speaker
this whole thing to me is this this push and pull between between what the purpose of a system is and I think that's cool to think about you know especially in our world today where we're wrestling with I mean frankly as Americans we're wrestling with a lot of that same stuff
00:37:40
Speaker
What is the purpose of the system? What is the purpose of each of us in the system? Is our duty to be a neighbor and a fellow citizen first, or is it to be our own citizen first? And that's a big question. I don't know that I have an answer on what it is, but it's fascinating. That's a thing that I've kind of been wrestling with a lot myself, thinking about what is the role
00:38:10
Speaker
of the society and what should it be providing. There's the idea for a while, I consider myself a libertarian and now I think unfortunately there's a lot of people who like to use that term to defend
00:38:27
Speaker
think beliefs that aren't really defendable. But the concept that appealed to me was the idea that people should generally be left to their own devices, a person. And this actually is interesting, you talk about color ply philosophies, this is kind of a black philosophy that each person knows best how to take care of themselves. So each person should be empowered to take care of themselves, because they're in the best position to do it. And
00:38:56
Speaker
That idea is not necessarily rejected, but it's still now looking at a lot of other realities of actual reality and things that happen in societies and things that are going on. It's like, that's a great ideal, but I don't know how practical of an ideal it is. Generally, people should be able to do what they want.
00:39:19
Speaker
at the extreme that's saying, well, government can't this and that, but the whole point of having a society, the whole point of having a government is to create a fabric in which people can live.
Systemic Failures in Ravnica
00:39:31
Speaker
So it's where
00:39:33
Speaker
Does that fabric get a say because it's what's best? And where do the individuals get a say? Because again, they're the ones who can choose best for themselves. Two, I think it's interesting that we see a system fail the guildless people here because the Boros shouldn't be just the defenders of the gilded.
00:39:50
Speaker
You know, that's never stated. To my understanding, that's never stated is that the Boros are the military or the police force, the protectors of just those who are affiliated with one of the 10 guilds. It's the backbone of society trying to help keep everyone safe.
00:40:11
Speaker
And so, you know, again, we look at the the reflections of that we see far too often that that people get left out and that people do like you said, there that fabric gets frayed, you know, and and, you know, the
00:40:26
Speaker
the message from this, and I think that's interesting, is the message of Cranko is, you know, when that fabric phrase, crime thrives, you know? It's not just a, I don't think this is just a law and order story. I think this is frankly like a, you know, no, if you're not looking out for everybody, then somebody gets exploited. Kind of jumping in here, it does seem like, when I was, I will admit, when I was much younger, I definitely adhered a lot more to kind of libertarian ideals.
00:40:55
Speaker
I liked the idea of it because I didn't like the idea of people being told what they could and couldn't do. And to me, I think it was my initial phase of trying to reconcile my social beliefs with some of my more conservative fiscal beliefs.
00:41:11
Speaker
Um, especially when it came to things like, I mean, I grew up in a blue collar family and I really didn't like the idea of taxes and felt that that was pretty and I grew up in an environment where the second amendment was held as like this really unalienable right in some ways. And so I'm like, well, yeah, sure. People can have guns, but also then you can marry whoever you want. And I just don't care. And I've learned, I think that part of that for me at least was through
00:41:37
Speaker
a lens for me of privilege, because I didn't have to pay attention in some ways to what I guess we could say is the the guiltless. It means that somebody eventually is going to get exploited. Ultimately, one of the things that I have learned that has maybe put me into the area of confusion, not confusion so much as as questioning, questioning, that's a beautiful word for it, and which I think is a great place to be because that means you're a little more open to all the things that you don't know and understand yet.
00:42:07
Speaker
is the fact that things are a lot more complex. And so having this one little byline is really fun and quippy, but it's not really practical when you start to look at the real world. And I think talking about the difference between freedom and anarchy is a good way to illustrate that, is that freedom, like you're saying, is the ability to make choices. And sometimes you need to have a structure to limit certain choices to make you free to choose other choices. I mean, you run into the fact of that at some point,
00:42:36
Speaker
And to me, this is where I've kind of understood the distinction between them. Like freedom only works if everybody has the ability to have it. Anarchy would say you're literally free to do anything, which could then
00:42:49
Speaker
impinge on somebody else's freedom. That's a, that's a really clear way of saying that quality, I think of, you know, that's, that's the civil society idea. That's the fabric of society that, that, you know, coexistence piece is if I can't exist as a result of your freedom, then I'm not free. And in that way, is it really true freedom across the board? Whoo, we got heady here.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah. How do we transition to the outro from here?
Podcast Sign-Off and Announcements
00:43:28
Speaker
Speaking of freedom and anarchy, we'll see you all at GP Minneapolis. That's our show. Thank you all for listening.
00:43:43
Speaker
You can find the podcast at Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter. You can find Joe Redman at Findhorn, that's F-Y-N-D Horn. You can find Hobbs Q at Hobbs Q, and you can find Alex at Alexander New M. You can email the pod any questions, comments, or concerns you have at goblinlorepodcastatgmail.com. The guys will be at GP Minneapolis,
00:44:10
Speaker
This coming weekend, that's July 27th through the 29th, and we'll be helping to host a series of events. Follow their Twitter feeds. Any information? Thank you all for listening. And remember, inspiration comes in all shapes and sizes.