Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #844: Tempest Story, Part 2

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

This podcast is part two of a two-part series where I sit down with Michael Ryan to talk about creating the story for Tempest and integrating it with the set.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So last time, I had on Michael Ryan and we were talking about the story of Tempest. But we only got halfway through. So I'm having him back so that we can tell the rest of the story. So hey, Michael. Hi, good morning. Hey, glad to be back. Thank you for having me. Okay, so last we left, our heroes had a plan.

They were going to use their ship. which the ship got kind of repaired. It didn't, the ship was repaired enough to fly, but not enough to be able to plane jump. So we'll get to that in a second. But they're going to go, they're going to sneak into the stronghold, which is Volrath's lair. And the elves are going to attack up front. And then there's going to be a giant conflict was the idea. So one of the things that we needed to do, so let's talk about Ertai real quick.

So we knew at the end of the story we needed to get from Wrath to somewhere else and to make things complicated, we broke the way they had to go between planes. So we invented something called, what was the name of it? It was the portal. The erratic portal,

I think it was. Yeah. And so, at the portal, we get a chance to meet one of the Sultari. Lina was her name. So,

once again, I explained last time that we had a mechanic in the set called Shadow, and Shadow creatures couldn't be blocked by normal creatures and could only block

other Shadow creatures. It's kind of a like flying a little bit, although flyers can block non-flyers. It's sort of a pseudo-flying. And we had to explain it. So we explained that when Vorath was pulling creatures from elsewhere to make this artificial plane, some of them

got stuck. And we wanted the Shadow characters to play a role here, so Lena played a big role. Lena was, she was guarding the portal, and Ertai is sent to try to get the portal open so they can get out. The other important

thing here is there's a thing called a clock in storytelling, which is you want your characters to not only have to do something, but they have a time limit. It puts drama into it, right? Otherwise, they just camp, right? They're like, oh, if this didn't work, we'll wait six months and try it again.

You don't want them to have that option. You don't want them to be 100% sure that they've got this right. They've got to hurry. Right. And so the idea is Urtai's supposed to, with help of Lena, is supposed to get the portal open, and then he's supposed to let them know, through

some magical means, he's a wizard, let them know that it's opened. And so that's, like, once again, we're doing the first act in Tempest, setting up the third act. So if you send him to get the portal open, hey, in the third act, perhaps he gets the portal open. Although, once again, it's not

going to happen like we think. Like, part of storytelling is the obvious plan doesn't quite work the way you think it's going to work. Exactly. Exactly. So we set that, once again, we're trying to set up... Act 1 is all about setting up Act 3, right? A lot of what you're trying to do is get the things

into place so that you have what you're trying to do is get the things into place um so that you you have what you need um okay so anything you want to add anything before we get to i want to add one more thing i just want to know one more thing is that as we talked about last time you get more more drama and more story and especially in a great big expansion by splitting the characters up which we had done because then we brought them all back together with the elves. So from a story perspective, you can see when Ertai needs to stay behind at the portal to try to get it open, and the Sultari are there kind of messing with him, saying, hold on, what are you doing here? Why are you messing with this? We have once again separated a core character from everybody else. And he's all alone.

We still have people who are prisoners. We still have Tongarth and Karn being held prisoner aboard the Predator. And now we've separated out Ertai. Again, potentially sacrificing character. We should explain. There's a little more to the story with Tongarth and Karn,

we should explain real quick. So Karn is taken on the ship. Tengarth jumps on it and is hiding on the outside. Like, they don't know, the Predator doesn't know Tengarth is there, right? He's tagged along,

but secretly, they don't know that. So when they get back to the stronghold, Tengarth actually breaks Karn out and is rescuing him. And you see them sneaking out in the background

of one of the pictures. What's the picture? The background of... Where do you see them sneaking out? But anyway, they're trying to sneak out. Oh, the background of Mog conscripts. You can actually see the outlines of Karn and Tongard in the background sneaking out.

But they get caught. And so they end up... And the reason they get caught is we wanted to show off Volrath. In Act 1, we wanted you to see Volrath. But Volrath wasn't going to meet our heroes yet. We were trying to save it. We had a giant story to tell.

We had a three-act, over three years to tell. So we didn't want Volrath interacting yet with our hero, but we did want to meet Volrath. So what happens is you see Volrath interacting yet with our hero, but we did want to meet Volrath. So what happens is, you see Volrath sort of torturing Karn and Tongarth. And the interesting

thing about it is, in each case he figures out what will affect the character. And so Tongarth is kind of vain, so he misshapes Tongarth he's sort of torturing him and because he recognizes that Tongarth is vain

he messes with his looks and with Karn he realizes that Karn's pacifism his unwillingness to want to hurt things so I think he ends up putting him in a cage with mogs and keeps rotating the cage and like he inadvertently forces Karn to hurt these mogs,

even though he's not trying to. And then Volrath also talks to him and talks about what a failure he is because he's supposed to be the protector of the legacy, and he hasn't. And so he goes psychologically after Karn. So we're trying to show how smart Volrath is that for each person,

he's figuring out the best way to get at that person. And we want to show that Volrath is mean and smart, right? So we show that off. Okay. Okay, so we've now got the characters all split up all over the place. And the Weatherlight is sort of limping along, headed for Volrath's stronghold. They're going to try to get in.

And then after they get in, presumably get Sisay, they're going to come out. And they're going to flee the plane through the portal where Ertai is waiting for them. So the first place that they come is these ventilation duct uh in the cinder marsh yeah if they if they work their way through the ducks um which both eladomri and stark have told them this will work if they go through these these ducks they will get to the furnaces of wrath right but there's they're just beyond the center of the problem right. Right. So one of the things that's important, I talked about how Shadow was one of the mechanics, and we made sure

to introduce Shadows. Lena was a Shadow character. So another big part of the set was the slivers. Mike Elliott had actually designed them in a set he had made at home. When he got hired, they bought the set,

and then we ended up putting the Slivers in the set. And they were a big part of Tempest. So one of the things I said to Michael was, okay, the Slivers have to show up in the story, and so they end up showing here in the docks. They get attacked by the Slivers. And so one of the cool things was we want our heroes to solve the problem.

Like, how do you defeat the slivers? So, the key to it was what makes the slivers the slivers? And Michael and I, so, when Mike Elliott gave us the

mechanic of slivers, I think in Michael's version, like, a creature had fallen from the heavens and broken to pieces and the slivers were slivers. I think in Michael's version, like a creature had fallen from the heavens and broke into pieces and the slivers were slivers of this being. But we're like, okay, that doesn't work at all. So Michael and I reconcepted it and we said, okay, well, mechanically

whenever I have one in play it grants an ability to all the others. What does that mean? And so the idea we came up with was that they were shape changers that shared a hive mind. So the idea was if one of them learns how to make wings, maybe it goes off and looks at birds and mimics birds and it figures out how to grow wings. When it gets in the hive mind, anybody knows how to grow wings. So the reason that any of them can now fly is, as long as

that one's close enough to be part of the hive mind, ooh, now any one of them knows how to grow wings, because they can change their shape. But it's distance-based, and that was a big part. We needed to give them a weakness that we can then exploit in the story. So the idea is, when they're near each other,

they have a hive mind, but if they're far they're near each other, they have a hive mind, but if they're far enough apart from each other, they don't. Right. Right. And they have a queen. They have a queen. We should mention the queen

because it was a relevant card in the set as well. Right. The sliver queen, which a lot of people know because she's a very popular card, shows up in the second set, I think, in Stronghold. She also, by the way, is a prisoner.

So, real quickly, the backstory of the slivers, for those who don't know backstory of slivers, is when Volrath is making his artificial plane, he's peering in on other planes. This is back when there were portals and things that now in Magic it'd be a planeswalker going from plane to plane. But back then, there were portals.

And he's able to use portals to pull things from other planes. On another world, a plane we haven't visited yet, he finds the home world of the slivers, and Volrath is a shapeshifter. So he's really enamored with these little shapeshifters, and he ends up taking a bunch of them and pulling

them to his world so he can study them because he's really fascinated by them. And then he makes some artificial slivers, which is what the metallic sliver is, so that he can monitor them. Notice that the artifact slivers, the metallic slivers, are the only ones that only get abilities and don't grant abilities.

And that was us making a little nod that these weren't real slivers. They were just sort of mimicking things and they were getting information. So when they fight, the slivers attack. Hannah, who's our

artifact expert, figures out that some of these aren't real. They're not real, but they're artificial. They're artifacts. And she uses her magic to destroy the artifact ones. And then I think it's Hannah that figures out that they're location-based, meaning them sharing abilities has to do with how close they are to each other. So the key to defeating them is, Michael?

I couldn't remember to save my life. The key to defeating them is spacing them apart. So what happens is... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Moving them away from each other. Right, by moving them away from each other, they're easier to handle because they don't have all the abilities. And so they end up luring them away from one and sort of they keep taking away the one

that's apart from the other ones. And so they start luring each other's away. So they figure out the weakness of the slivers to defeat the slivers. I'm embarrassed that I don't remember that. There's a moment of embarrassment there but see what happens folks when you do stuff 20 years ago like you know i recognize my son periodically because he comes home but every once in a while something that i did in my life is just gone i don't even remember i remember all these character names and he says

how did the slivers this is why we should have talked before. Okay. So, the next step. As true of anything, three has a power in storytelling, right? Like, when I have to solve something, it's like, oh, there were three challenges to solve. You'll notice the number three shows up a lot. So, we had three challenges. The first was the Duckworks where the slivers were.

Next was the Furnace of Wrath. Furnace of Wrath. So, we had made... I had made two cards in the set. One was called Furnace of Wrath. Furnace of Wrath. So we had made... I had made two cards in the set. One was called Furnace of Wrath. One was called Death Pits of Wrath. They were just cool cards. Furnace of Wrath doubled all damage,

and the Death Pits of Wrath killed things. And Michael and I ended up naming them... In fact, I think we named the Death Pits of Wrath before we named the Plane of Wrath. I think we liked Furnace of Wrath, and we liked Death Pits of Wrath. We were like, well, if we're going to the Death Pits of Wrath before we named the Plane of Wrath. I think we liked Furnace of Wrath and we liked Death Pits of Wrath. Like, well, if we're going to have Death Pits of Wrath, I guess it's got to be Wrath.

Why would it be the Death Pits of Wrath? Let's just call it Wrath. That'll work. And so the furnace, the idea wasn't double damage, but it was representing of just this fiery, like volcanic hellscape. And so the problem is they have a wood chip.

So traveling with your wood chip through a super hot place, it keeps catching on fire. They managed to get through it, but once again, we put the ship through a lot. The ship gets damaged some more because it catches on fire a couple different places. I see you recall that we

injured our healer, Orim. I think we did some damage to her. Oh, I think that we injured our healer, Orim. I think we did some damage to her. Oh, I think we might have injured... Yeah, Orim might have got... Well, I think Orim healed... Actually, I don't know if Orim... Orim might have got injured. But we injured a bunch...

A bunch of people got burned, and then Orim had to heal them because they got burned. But we luckily put a healer on our crew, which allowed us... One of the secrets, as someone who reads superhero comics all the time, one of the things all team comics

tend to do is they put a healer on their team so they can really beat up their team but then heal them. So we put a healer on our team. Okay, which gets us to the Death Pits of Wrath. It's a wrath. And also in the Death Pits of Wrath, there was a card called, I think, Carionette.

So there's this creature that jumps out of the graveyard in the set and grabs creatures and can kill them. And so we had the Carrier Net. So they're going through it, and the death pits are where all these dead creatures are, and they jump out, and they're trying to pull you back into the death pit so you'll die with them.

And the Carrier Net is the thing that jumps out. But what is it that saves Gerard? Do you remember? No, I doard? He's doing this to me. No, I do remember. This one I happen to know. Okay. This one I know. I believe that Oram,

our semi-healer, God, there was a card. I want to say it was Oram's Prayer? Oram's Blessing? Oram's Prayer? And does something to Gerard that allows him to, to fight back and draw their life essence or something.

Whenever they attacked him. Yeah. Here is resolve. And then Orm's prayer. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how he survives. Right.

So she, she sort of, she buffs him, if you will, to use some video game, she buffs him and he's able to defeat most of the Carionettes. But one Carionette is not accounted for. So this was another little thing we set up.

So let's talk about Squee. We haven't talked about Squee yet. Oh, wait. Before we get to Squee, by the way, you mentioned Aurum. I realized last time we talked about all the cards but Aurum. Aurum's the one card we didn't talk about. Legendary creature cards. So Aurum, the one card we didn't talk about. Legendary creature cards. So Aurum, when we decided we wanted a healer,

we wanted sort of a doctor for our crew, we decided what's the most iconic healer in all of Magic at the time? And it was Samite Healer, right? The card that was in Alpha. It tapped Prevented Damage. And so we decided to make Aurum a Samite Healer because we were trying to be as magic-y as we could.

So the card, instead of tapping preventing one, she prevents three just because she's like a super. So I just want to mention that. Okay, let's get back to Squee. Okay, let's talk a little bit about where Squee came from because Squee becomes important here. Every story that's going to be intense and have lots of great risks to your hero needs some sort of comic relief.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Nobody's mentioning Jar Jar Binks here. But you need to have a way to step back from it and say, oh, OK, I can catch my breath for a second and reassess. And the characters who are going to be your comic relief still need to have an integral part of the story. They need to be involved in what's actually happening and not just an observer commentating on it. So we introduced the Goblin Squeak.

And we introduced very early on that he was the comic relief. And so one of the things we introduced, which shows up in this set, there's actually a card called Squeeze Toy, which, by the way, is a pun that every time I say that, people always go, oh, I never realized that. So, like,

squeeze, like, S-Q-U-E-E-Z-E. Squeeze Toy. But anyway, the idea was that so, on board, so real quickly, the legacy was that... So, on board, so real quickly, the legacy, Gerard's destiny is that he, along with the legacy, will save the day and defeat the Phyrexians,

is this big thing. We don't even know the Phyrexians are involved yet, by the way. That happens later on in the story. But Gerard is supposed to one day save the day. The legacy are all... So, we later learn, although this wasn't part of our original story, but later became part of the story.

Urza was the creator of a legacy. Um, it was Urza's legacy, if you will. Uh, and, uh, there are a lot of artifacts. And so one of the backstories, uh, of this real quickly is Vool was Gerard's adopted brother. He was the son of Kondo, Siddhar Kondo. And

Vool really resents Gerard and his relationship with his dad. And Vool has a strained relationship with his dad. And so part of the story is Vool ends up stealingined relationship with his dad. And so part of the story is Vool ends up stealing the legacy and selling it. Meaning, to try to get back at Gerard,

he ends up killing his father and stealing the legacy. And so what happens is the legacy is strewn all about the world. And that Sisay's original mission, or one of her early missions, is to go find all the world and that Sisay's original mission, or one of her early missions, is to go find all the pieces of a legacy. And she ends up getting Gerard and Miri and Raffaello to join her,

but sort of the early days, we joked about, we said, if you ever make a TV series, this is the TV series portion of the story where every week they go around and get a different piece of a legacy every week. So they were off getting the legacy. And the idea is, when they get Gerard back, Sisay and her crew have gotten all the legacy.

So the legacy's on board. And there's one little piece of legacy, which we call Squee's toy, which Squee takes a liking to. And the card prevents damage. The card prevents, like, one damage. It's a dinky little card. But the idea was, we liked the idea that... We said that Squee has some affinity to it.

And we early on say, this is Squee's favorite thing. And we call it the Squee's toy. So you want to talk about why Squee's toy becomes important? Squee's toy is the only piece of the legacy that Volrath didn't get. And so it stays on board. And to Volrath's liking, he thinks he's got everything and that he can now use the power of the legacy for his own evil machinations.

But it only works if it's all together. It's not like you get 99% of the power and, oh gosh, I'm missing one item. No, you get none of the power if you don't have all of it. And people are not observant enough that Squee is carrying around part of a major legacy

and treats it like a toy. Also, Squee hides it when they come aboard because Squee doesn't want them to take it. He doesn't want to lose his toy. It doesn't occur to him that he's part of the legacy, just this is mine and they're taking stuff, so I'm going to keep it.

Right, so Squee inadvertently foils Volrath a little bit because he's missing a piece of the legacy and when this... So Gerard manages to defeat all the carrionettes, except there's one that he doesn't realize is there

and it's about to get him when... I hate it when he does this to me. So Squee... except there's one that he doesn't realize is there and it's about to get him when... I hate it when he does this to me. So Squee, who has his toy with him, is afraid and squeezes it and it produces... What it does is it makes this little safety thing. Squee doesn't realize it does this, but it protects Gerard.

So Squee kind of inadvertently saves Gerard in the death pits. Which plugs into what the card does. Squee's toy is a... Right, Prince damage. Yeah. You tap it and you can prevent a damage. And so he accidentally uses it to protect Gerard.

To save Gerard. Oh, so real quickly, while we're talking about the crew, one of the things that we were trying to do with the crew was we wanted to get the breath of magic, right? And so we really wanted to, like, part of what we needed was the story needed certain components, right? We needed somebody to be able to fix the ship. We needed someone to fix the people.

We needed somebody to know where they're going. We needed some fighters. We needed people to be able to do all the component pieces of the story. And another important part was we wanted to make sure we hit all the colors. Like, magic's a five-color game. So we made sure that we had white characters and blue characters and black characters

and red characters and green characters. And we even had an artifact character. We had Karn to be our artifact character. That's right. And so one of the things that you'll notice is we really were trying to both hit a lot of archetypes. When Michael and I say that we wanted to do

the story, we also made sure that we hit a lot of story archetypes. For example, Karn is what's known as a gentle giant. He's somebody who's the strongest of everybody, but he's the nicest. He's the kindest of them all, even though he's the who's the strongest of everybody, but he's the nicest. He's the kindest of them all, even though he's the biggest and the strongest.

But he doesn't want to use that power. Right. Tom Garth is what's called the noble warrior. He's someone who pride is very important to him, and doing the right thing and, right, he's the one that when he sees injustice, he leaps, even though it's maybe not the smartest

thing to be doing. Like, he can't one that when he sees injustice he leaps, even though it's maybe not the smartest thing to be doing, like he can't let injustice go by. You know, we were very careful with all these characters, and squeeze the comic relief. We want someone who, look, really isn't, you know, he's not that bright, he's not, but he his loyalty and his

willingness to sort of do what he needs to do, he occasionally saves the day in a way that's kind of fun, that's fun for the character. So if you've paid attention to stories you've seen in the past, you'll see lots and lots of pieces of all of those classic

stories scattered across the characters and the story arc for this first part. When we were getting to the second part, which was the stronghold, after the carrionettes are beaten and Squee saves Gerard from that last one that he didn't see coming, they have reached the fortress

where Volrath is up and theory waiting for them. Right. So, I mean, today we're just talking Tempest, but the second act of the story is going to get them into the stronghold, right? Like, one of the things, once again, one of the things you want to do in the first act is telegraph where you're going in the second and the third act.

So the act one is get to the stronghold because act two takes place in the stronghold. And in order, and as you get to the stronghold, you create, as you get to act two, rather, you create circumstances that perhaps the viewer or reader doesn't see are going to be problematic. We took their wizard away, right? Ertai stays behind. What if they're going to need him in the second part?

Then what happens that he's been left behind on purpose? Like they denied themselves a tool because they needed it for something else so we've laid a lot of the foundations in this part that if you think about where characters are who characters are consider stark stark has a mission and he will happily sacrifice anybody aboard this ship including the ship itself if it proceeds to get him to his daughter Takara. So what does that mean that Stark is with them as they go inside? They haven't left him behind. They've brought him along. What would his character do once within the bad guy's fortress? We have all of these elements ready to unleash in part two.

Because part two of any three-act structure is where the massive complications kick in. You lay all the foundations for those complications, and then they unroll one after another after another. And another thing we did in act one is sort of the Chekhov's gun thing in general, which is before things become problems, we want to make sure the reader knows those things exist. For example,

Selenia, who I think is the one last legend we haven't talked about yet that was in the set. Selenia. So, real quickly, Crovax's family had this artifact that was a cursed artifact, and in it was trapped this angel. And Crovax sort of fell in love with the angel and then freed the artifact, and in it was trapped this angel.

And Krovac sort of fell in love with the angel and then freed the angel, and the angel immediately fled. But part of the curse was there's this tie between them. And we show Selenia showing up in the first act because she's going to become important in the second act, and we want you to know she exists. It's important to remind you that there's a link between Selenia and Krovac. That becomes super important. So, we don't want her just

showing up and, like, we want to make sure you know that. So, the fact that Selenia shows up early in the story is, like, Selenia shows up early in the story, Grevin shows up early in the story, like, we lay and show you who Volrath is early in the story. Like, we, the first act introduces all the things you need to know for the problems

that are going to come in this, in the second and third act. Exactly. There's a principle called premise fiction and premise fiction is basically saying to the audience, you'll need to understand and appreciate that this exists, that this is possible. Or when we use it later on,

you'll be like, where did that come from that doesn't make any sense at all so in act one we make sure that you you know we don't want to spring selenia on you later and have you go who's this who where'd she come from what's her relevance so we have to introduce all the the pieces that go on the board so when we use them later on you don't think we've somehow cheated and tried to pull a fast one just to resolve the story. And I will warn you, once you get good

at recognizing this, and this is one of the downsides of being a writer, is when you go to see movies, you'll recognize in the first act when they do this, like the classic example, as I was watching Batman Begins, the first Nolan Batman film. And in the first act, they say something.

Bruce Wayne and his dad are talking. And his dad says something that has no purpose but to lay groundwork so in the third act you know it. And like normally you cover it so the audience doesn't realize it. But it wasn't quite covered enough. And so I was in the theater and I say to my wife, I go, there's the third act. Like it's so tough for the third act what's going to happen. So. And you, and you, if you go back and find that, that visual story arc that Mark and I put together.

It's online. Just Google Tempest, Magic Tempest storyline, and you'll find it. You'll go through. You'll see what all the characters look like. The way that they looked, for specific reasons, you get a sense of what our intentions were for later on. At some point, when Hannah and Mirii the the cat woman when they are looking for

gerard they come across a shapeshifter i think it was called unstable shapeshifter and the art shows it sort of turning into miri and then changing out of miri one or the other we had plans for shapeshifting that involved vol later on volrath excuse me on. And so you see that and you think, why is this relevant? This just happens out of nowhere. Why do I need to see this? This is just a random encounter, isn't it? Well, it is for those characters, but it's not for the story. It will become relevant.

So there's a lot of that kind of stuff. You can see it in the arts. You can read it in the little story elements to say, oh, they obviously had a plan for this. They leave the elves behind, right? But you know that's not the end of the elves. That can't possibly be the end of the elves. Right. The elves come back in the

third act. The other thing I wanted to stress, by the way, was this was the first set where we built sort of a, when you think of a modern creative team, like a world-building team. There was people doing continuity and the names and flame injections and stuff, but this was the first time we, so

we had a whole team, and so, like, every character, we designed what they looked like, and Gerard had a look, and Miri had a look, and, like, all the characters had a certain outfit, and, like, so you could recognize them. So if you go through and you look at the set, we really do a lot to, like, so you can recognize, because we have different artists drawing the, right? One of the problems

when you have all these different artists drawing the same characters is you want to recognize them. And one of the things that we learned, like from comic books, for example, is there's a reason Superman wears his suit. It's so you can always recognize it's Superman. And we did that as well. Like Gerard had his, had his vest. And had his vest, and the characters had a very distinctive look to them, so you could recognize them. So, another thing going on as you look through the set is, this is the first time we really, really did worldbuilding in a

way that we hadn't done quite before. We had a team brought in that did worldbuilding. That was the first time that had happened. And it worked extremely well. Tempest was constructed in a way that when Mark and I were done with it we practically sat back and sighed with

satisfaction of I feel like we hit all the beats like every element that we needed is here now and you know on to Stronghold in the Duelist by the way the article that I'm talking about was actually in Duelist magazine Magic East Side magazine and we did a little thing where we showed each piece of art whole. Right. In the Duelist, by the way, the article that I'm talking about was actually in Duelist Magazine, Magic Established Magazine.

And we did a little thing where we showed each piece of art and what card it was and told the story through all the pieces. The thing you're going to read, we put out as soon as the set was out so people could see that. Also, inside back in the day, besides booster packs, we also had what's called

starter decks, which were 60 cards. We also had a storybook that went in the starter deck. So not only did we tell it in the D, besides booster packs, we also had what's called starter decks, which were 60 cards. We also had a storybook that went in the starter deck. So not only, not only did we tell it in the duelist, but every single starter deck came with a little book that told the story.

So all the stuff we're telling you now, that was told in various forms. There also was books and stuff written, short stories. Michael wrote a bunch of short stories. And so there was a lot. Anyway, if you're interested in the Weatherlight Saga

and know nothing about it, there's a bunch of material on it that you can read. There's books and stuff. And so anyway, there's a bunch of short stories. And so there's a lot. Anyway, if you're interested in the Weatherlight Saga and know nothing about it, there's a bunch of material on it that you can read. There's books and stuff. And so anyway, there's a lot of stuff you can go back and look at. But I can see my desk here. So I know we got to wrap up. The whole point of the last podcast and this podcast

was to show you a lot, a lot of effort went into the story in Tempest. It wasn't just like we threw things down. Things happened for a reason, and there's things we were highlighting stuff so we could pay them off later, and there are even things that, I mean, Michael and I stopped working on the story,

so some of these didn't pay off, but there were even things that we set up here that were supposed to pay off in the second year or the third year, so there was a lot of stuff we were setting up. Not all of it ended up paying off, but we did do a lot to set things up, so there's a lot of stuff we were setting up um not all of it ended up paying off but we did do a lot to set things up so there was a lot of structure here and i'm hoping that michael and i today sort of showed you like you know there's a lot of components that go into

making a story so if you ever want to want to see those characters and learn a little bit more about them and mark will have to to tell you the details if these are even still out there someplace at one point we did things called vanguard cards and they were like oversized cards that you play that affected the the entire playing field between you and your opponent we did them for all of the key characters here uh and there were story elements on all of those cards that would tell you a little bit more of the backstory. Right. So if you want to go on to Gatherer or any magic database of your choice, usually those databases will have the Vanguard cards.

So if you just look up the name of the character, the cards are named after the character. So if you look up Gerard, it should show up. And there was a paragraph. If you look up Gerard, it should show up. And there was a paragraph. Normally on a Magic card, because these were bigger cards, you only have room for like a line or two. We had a whole paragraph.

So every card really goes in depth about the characters. And like I said, there's a short story anthology. There's short stories that were posted online. There's a lot. If any of this stuff's interesting to you, the Weatherlight Saga is a four-year story that took place. Actually, it's slightly over four if you count the prologue. So it started in Weatherlight and went all the way through Apocalypse.

So if you're interested in that, there's a lot of fun stuff there. This is giving a little taste of just the beginning. I just wanted to talk about how we did it for one set. But if any of this sounds interesting to you, there's a lot of material out there if you want to learn more about the Wuglite Saga. But I can see my desk. I'm here. I made it.

I made it. I made it to work. Oh, no. Would you let me out now? I can't get out of the building. I went in with Mark, but I can't. Oh, wait. This is Mark's house.

Yes. Wait. I know how to get out of this house. I've been here before. So anyway, guys, we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you, Michael, for being with us on two podcasts.

Thank you so much. Ooh, I got to be on two podcasts. Thank you so much for having me on board. It was really fun. And to all of you, I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.