Podcasts about archmage

Programa 114 - Otras Mazmorras 13th Age con Antonio Guarás Hoy Nacho GM nos sigue comentando otros juegos, otras mazmorras que explorar. 13th Age: Un Juego de Rol de Fantasía 13th Age es un juego de rol de fantasía creado por Jonathan Tweet y Rob Heinsoo, y publicado por Pelgrane Press. Este juego utiliza el motor de juego Archmage, basado en el sistema d20. Características Principales Sistema de Clases y Niveles: Similar a otros juegos de rol de fantasía, 13th Age es un juego basado en clases y niveles. Mecánicas de Historia: El juego se centra en desarrollar personajes y la historia a medida que se juega. Utiliza mecánicas como Iconos, Relaciones y Antecedentes para enriquecer la narrativa. Un Único Peculiaridad: Cada personaje tiene una característica única que lo diferencia de cualquier otro en el universo del juego. Distancias Abstractas: En lugar de usar miniaturas o una cuadrícula, 13th Age utiliza distancias abstractas y posicionamiento. Dado de Escalación: En combate, los personajes obtienen un bono creciente a los golpes dependiendo del número de rondas que han pasado. Ambientación La ambientación de 13th Age está diseñada para ser desarrollada durante el juego. Aunque existen lugares y Iconos predeterminados, gran parte del mundo se construye a partir de la creación de personajes y sus antecedentes. Publicación 13th Age fue lanzado el 3 de agosto de 2013 y ha sido bien recibido, con más de 25 suplementos publicados desde su lanzamiento Música de Uppbeat: License code: DSJHNLFTIRWBKXPO Música de Youtube

Sydnie and June are joined by Mike Funi, the owner (and opener) of a killer Grim Reminders deck you may have heard of: Bandola, Archmage of the Spined Plateau. One of the newest, most well-known decks in the world, otherwise known simply as "Bandola", this Untamed, Unfathomable, Geistoid beauty has already earned multiple Archons invites to Worlds. Mike shares everything there is to know about one of the biggest Archon threats out there! If you wish to donate to HFFS here is our Patreon link:  https://www.patreon.com/hffspodcast • Please subscribe if you enjoyed  this episode, leave a review on Apple with your thoughts, and share it on your social channels. We appreciate any and all support. // If you wish to connect with, join our Discord, link below, or email us: hffspodcast@gmail.com. Connect with Sydnie on Discord:  SCSteele // June on Discord: june.is.here // Blake on Discord: blvdblake Join our Discord to talk about episodes and help shape future ones! https://discord.gg/w6vbkWF6Xh

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: D&D.Sci Alchemy: Archmage Anachronos and the Supply Chain Issues Evaluation & Ruleset, published by aphyer on June 18, 2024 on LessWrong. This is a follow-up to last week's D&D.Sci scenario: if you intend to play that, and haven't done so yet, you should do so now before spoiling yourself. There is a web interactive here you can use to test your answer, and generation code available here if you're interested, or you can read on for the ruleset and scores. RULESET There are two steps to brewing a potion: STEP 1: MAGICAL POTENCY Any ingredient that doesn't exist in the mundane world is Magical, while any ingredient that exists in the mundane world is not: Magical Not Magical Angel Feather Badger Skull Beholder Eye Beech Bark Demon Claw Crushed Diamond Dragon Scale Crushed Onyx Dragon Spleen Crushed Ruby Dragon Tongue Crushed Sapphire Dragon's Blood Eye of Newt Ectoplasm Ground Bone Faerie Tears Oaken Twigs Giant's Toe Powdered Silver Troll Blood Quicksilver Vampire Fang Redwood Sap The first step of potion-brewing is to dissolve the magical potency out of the Magical Ingredients to empower your potion. This requires the right amount of Magical Ingredients: too few, and nothing magical will happen and you will produce Inert Glop, while too many and there will be an uncontrolled Magical Explosion. If you include: 0-1 Magical Ingredients: 100% chance of Inert Glop. 2 Magical Ingredients: 50% chance of Inert Glop, 50% chance OK. 3 Magical Ingredients: 100% chance OK. 4 Magical Ingredients: 50% chance OK, 50% chance Magical Explosion. 5+ Magical Ingredients: 100% chance Magical Explosion. If your potion got past this step OK, move on to: STEP 2: DIRECTION Some ingredients are used to direct the magical power into the desired resulting potion. Each potion has two required Key Ingredients, both of which must be included to make it: Potion Key Ingredient 1 Key Ingredient 2 Barkskin Potion* Crushed Onyx Ground Bone Farsight Potion Beholder Eye Eye of Newt Fire Breathing Potion Dragon Spleen Dragon's Blood Fire Resist Potion Crushed Ruby Dragon Scale Glibness Potion Dragon Tongue Powdered Silver Growth Potion Giant's Toe Redwood Sap Invisibility Potion Crushed Diamond Ectoplasm Necromantic Power Potion* Beech Bark Oaken Twigs Rage Potion Badger Skull Demon Claw Regeneration Potion Troll Blood Vampire Fang *Well. Sort of. See the Bonus Objective section below. Some ingredients (Angel Feather, Crushed Sapphire, Faerie Tears and Quicksilver) aren't Key Ingredients for any potion in the dataset. Angel Feather and Faerie Tears are nevertheless useful - as magical ingredients that don't risk creating any clashing potion, they're good ways to add magical potential to a recipe. Crushed Sapphire and Quicksilver have no effect, including them is entirely wasteful. If you've gotten through Step 1, the outcome depends on how many potions you've included both the Key Ingredients of: 0 potions: with nothing to direct it, the magical potential dissolves into an Acidic Slurry. 1 potion: you successfully produce that potion. 2 or more potions: Sometimes (1/n of the time, where n is # of potions you included) a random one of the potions will dominate, and you will produce that one. The rest of the time, the clashing directions will produce Mutagenic Ooze. So, for example, if you brew a potion with: Dragon Spleen, Dragon Scale, Dragon Tongue and Dragon's Blood: You have included 4 magical ingredients, and the Key Ingredients of one potion (Fire Breathing). 50% of the time you will get a Magical Explosion, 50% of the time you will get a Fire Breathing Potion. Badger Skull, Demon Claw, Giant's Toe, Redwood Sap. You have included 2 magical ingredients, and the Key Ingredients of two potions (Rage and Growth). 50% of the time you will get Inert Glop, 25% of the time Mutagenic Ooze, 12.5% of the time G...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: D&D.Sci Alchemy: Archmage Anachronos and the Supply Chain Issues Evaluation & Ruleset, published by aphyer on June 18, 2024 on LessWrong. This is a follow-up to last week's D&D.Sci scenario: if you intend to play that, and haven't done so yet, you should do so now before spoiling yourself. There is a web interactive here you can use to test your answer, and generation code available here if you're interested, or you can read on for the ruleset and scores. RULESET There are two steps to brewing a potion: STEP 1: MAGICAL POTENCY Any ingredient that doesn't exist in the mundane world is Magical, while any ingredient that exists in the mundane world is not: Magical Not Magical Angel Feather Badger Skull Beholder Eye Beech Bark Demon Claw Crushed Diamond Dragon Scale Crushed Onyx Dragon Spleen Crushed Ruby Dragon Tongue Crushed Sapphire Dragon's Blood Eye of Newt Ectoplasm Ground Bone Faerie Tears Oaken Twigs Giant's Toe Powdered Silver Troll Blood Quicksilver Vampire Fang Redwood Sap The first step of potion-brewing is to dissolve the magical potency out of the Magical Ingredients to empower your potion. This requires the right amount of Magical Ingredients: too few, and nothing magical will happen and you will produce Inert Glop, while too many and there will be an uncontrolled Magical Explosion. If you include: 0-1 Magical Ingredients: 100% chance of Inert Glop. 2 Magical Ingredients: 50% chance of Inert Glop, 50% chance OK. 3 Magical Ingredients: 100% chance OK. 4 Magical Ingredients: 50% chance OK, 50% chance Magical Explosion. 5+ Magical Ingredients: 100% chance Magical Explosion. If your potion got past this step OK, move on to: STEP 2: DIRECTION Some ingredients are used to direct the magical power into the desired resulting potion. Each potion has two required Key Ingredients, both of which must be included to make it: Potion Key Ingredient 1 Key Ingredient 2 Barkskin Potion* Crushed Onyx Ground Bone Farsight Potion Beholder Eye Eye of Newt Fire Breathing Potion Dragon Spleen Dragon's Blood Fire Resist Potion Crushed Ruby Dragon Scale Glibness Potion Dragon Tongue Powdered Silver Growth Potion Giant's Toe Redwood Sap Invisibility Potion Crushed Diamond Ectoplasm Necromantic Power Potion* Beech Bark Oaken Twigs Rage Potion Badger Skull Demon Claw Regeneration Potion Troll Blood Vampire Fang *Well. Sort of. See the Bonus Objective section below. Some ingredients (Angel Feather, Crushed Sapphire, Faerie Tears and Quicksilver) aren't Key Ingredients for any potion in the dataset. Angel Feather and Faerie Tears are nevertheless useful - as magical ingredients that don't risk creating any clashing potion, they're good ways to add magical potential to a recipe. Crushed Sapphire and Quicksilver have no effect, including them is entirely wasteful. If you've gotten through Step 1, the outcome depends on how many potions you've included both the Key Ingredients of: 0 potions: with nothing to direct it, the magical potential dissolves into an Acidic Slurry. 1 potion: you successfully produce that potion. 2 or more potions: Sometimes (1/n of the time, where n is # of potions you included) a random one of the potions will dominate, and you will produce that one. The rest of the time, the clashing directions will produce Mutagenic Ooze. So, for example, if you brew a potion with: Dragon Spleen, Dragon Scale, Dragon Tongue and Dragon's Blood: You have included 4 magical ingredients, and the Key Ingredients of one potion (Fire Breathing). 50% of the time you will get a Magical Explosion, 50% of the time you will get a Fire Breathing Potion. Badger Skull, Demon Claw, Giant's Toe, Redwood Sap. You have included 2 magical ingredients, and the Key Ingredients of two potions (Rage and Growth). 50% of the time you will get Inert Glop, 25% of the time Mutagenic Ooze, 12.5% of the time G...

Welcome back to the People's Guild.  The bus makes its way up north in Canada for this one as we sit down with another one of the great, contributing community members in @iproto.He is one of the founding members over at @archmage.app and part one of the most successful guild groups in all of Praetoria, @shield-of-glory. We cover the genesis of Archmage, the ethos around operating in the bot-provision industry, what to expect, and hope for, with the latest addition to the team.As an aside and on very related note, iProto has put together this proposal (dated Nov. 2023) outlining how automation can potentially be a feature of the game instead of a problem: https://hackmd.io/@IProto/HJIL6wGBp Enjoy the show!************************************************************************* Follow us elsewhere: Peakd: https://peakd.com/@thepeoplesguild  Patreon: https://patreon.com/thepeoplesguild Twitter: https://twitter.com/thepeoplesguild General: https://linktr.ee/thepeoplesguild Check out the official sponsor of the People's Guild, the People's Market over at Aqualis: splinterlands.aqualis.io

Send us a Text Message.The Enigma of Mordenkainen: Unveiling the Weave's MasterMordenkainen. A name whispered with awe and even a hint of fear throughout the multiverse. But who is the man behind the legend?This episode dives deep into the enigmatic life of Mordenkainen, the famed Archmage

The World of Eora is a news/lore podcast about the fantasy world/setting developed by Obsidian Entertainment for their cRPG series, Pillars of Eternity, and their upcoming action RPG: Avowed. In today's episode we discuss everything that we learned from the Xbox "Extended Developer Direct", hosted by the official Xbox Podcast, including a lot of gameplay related news and some pieces of lore...including two major lore dumbs: the name of the spiritual plague we are sent to investigate, and the presence of an ARCHMAGE in Avowed. worldofeora@gmail.com @worldofeora

Happy new year, everyone. Sorry our release schedule was so spotty last year. We're hoping to make up for it by starting to go weekly again. Expect these episodes to be recorded FAR in advance, so apologies if we make references that are far out of date. Case in point, this was recorded in October of last year. We know we're making these for at least a month out now so they should get less dated moving forward. So, we're talking about Out to Lunch, Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle, and Clay Fighter in today's episode. Out to Lunch just barely escapes being relegated to the wrap-up for being an odd curio that neither Chase nor Emmy had really ever heard of before digging into the library for this show. But does that mean it's any good? We'll tell ya. Ranma 1/2: Hard Battle is based on the manga and anime Ranma 1/2. It's kind of amazing that a manga-based game made it to America so early (the first game in the series was turned into the disappointing "Street Combat"). If you want to hear Chase talk about this game more in-depth (back when he was still SteampunkLink), you can check out this episode of Play Comics. Finally, we're talking about Clay Fighter, a game that looks really cool and obviously had a lot of work go into it. But does this one reach the hights of say "World Heroes" or does it sink to the depths of "Power Moves". Look, we already know it's no Street Fighter II, right? All of this and a deep dive into Interplay. Thanks for sticking with us and we hope to bring you more SNEScapades than ever this year! References Barton, Matt. "The Burger Speaks: An Interview with an Archmage", GameDeveloper.com, 16 Dec 2020 Williams, Mike. "Interplay Selling Off Its IP, Putting Earthworm Jim and Descent in Play"(via Internet Archive), USGamer.net, 8 Sept 2016

This lecture discusses the science fiction and fantasy author, Ursula K. Leguin's novel, The Farthest Shore, the third of six Earthsea books It focuses specifically on the young nobleman, Arren's encounter with Ged/Sparrowhawk, the Archmage of Earthsea. Arren comes to the island of Roke bringing reports of a problem with magic failing in the islands, and he commits himself to Ged, an offer Ged will take him up on, as they sail out to find and confront the source of the problem. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 2,500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Ursula K Leguin's The Farthest Shore - https://amzn.to/46VVZSQ

Welcome Back BNB Fans for more of The Dragon Pod. Host Ben Pruitt and an incredible array of Special Guests are ready to discuss The Dragon Prince SEASON 5! This Week Ben is joined once again by the incomparable Jesse Inocalla (The Voice of Soren) to tackle Season 5 Episode 5 : "Archmage Akiyu" through the lens of : SACRIFICE. We Hope You Enjoy! Music : "Drppr" by nARK Produced By Noah Blanchard Released By The ARK of E Network Send Feedback : thearkofe@gmail.com

Last time on Storm King's Chaos, the Mercs for Hire decided to head west after the botched but still somehow successful revenge mission. Knowing they would be likely chased after they decided to stay off the road. However before they set out Ruhn expressed that he was parting ways. His reasoning being that his very presence added danger and that they now were in hot water with at least 3 different organizations, so it would be best to split up to mitigate the danger. After saying their goodbyes the remaining Mercs traveled to Triboar. They spent the night outside the city, torturing two teens who snuck out in the night for some time alone. The following day Odie entered the town in disguise to buy supplies and offerings for the dragon they intended to consult. Meanwhile Siren was yelled at via Sending by Krowen the Archmage. Siren quickly explained the situation and profusely apologized multiple times. Krowen then told her that the Teleportation network was no longer available to them, however he would look into the Kraken Society and see if he could smooth things over. Continuing their travel the group finally arrived at the Kryptgarden Forest. Heading in the forest quickly turned from normal terrain into a strange maze of trees and briars lightly obscured by a green fog. Traveling a bit further they were soon met by the resident dragon, an Ancient Green Dragon, commonly known as Old Gnawbone. The offerings were well received and information gathered. However the dragon seemed to want more than simple offerings. After it was requested that the dragon help transport them to their next destination, the dragon expressed its desire for more entertainment and broke Arridols pendant, resulting in him transforming into a large eastern dragon. We now return to the Mercs to see what happens next.   If you'd like to join the community to chat with the Fools and other D&D aficionados, considering joining our discord! https://discord.gg/bWSgjAdMbp If you like what we do and would like to support us, consider donating to our Ko-Fi page at https://www.ko-fi.com/foolsandflagons You can catch us live every other Friday on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/foolsnflagons/ If you'd like to see our past adventures, you can check out the VODs on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/c/FoolsNFlagons

This episode is brought to you partially by the following. Humble Bundle: Be sure to use our link when subscribing to Humble Bundle's Monthly Game Program.  (We will get a portion of all new subscriptions using the service.) ⁠https://www.humblebundle.com/subscription?partner=sww ⁠ Mike and AJ interview the developers behind "Archmage Rises" https://store.steampowered.com/app/506480/Archmage_Rises/ AJ: @aj_losey Mike: @Mikey_Morrone @TheSWWShow --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sww/support

*Patron Only Release* Now for the stunning conclusion in the Lost Hideaway! Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

*Patron Only Release* The party flees one threat, only to run into another! Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

*Patron Only Release* The party continues their investigation of the trophy room as they delve deeper into the Hideaway Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

*Patron Only Release* Discovering the entrance to the Hideaway, the party begins their search for the crystal Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

*Patron Only Release* Buzz, Lilith, Saul and Zephyr meet an old man named Phineas who has a proposition for them Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

*Patron Only Release* Meet four new adventurers as they become a party Like our Stuff? Let us know on social media! Connect with us: Twitter: @IncorrigiblePar Instagram: instagram.com/incorrigibleparty Facebook: facebook.com/groups/theincorrigiblepartypodcast/ Website: http://incorrigibleparty.com/ Youtube: The Incorrigible Party YT Twtich: https://www.twitch.tv/incorrigibleparty Support us and get exclusive mini campaign content! https://www.patreon.com/incorrigibleparty Intro Music provided by: Josh Jarvis Contact Josh for your music needs! All other music courtesy of Tabletopaudio.com The Incorrigible Party podcast is sponsored by the amazing and very generous Critical Hit Design!

The World of Eora is a news/lore podcast about the fantasy world/setting created for Obsidian Entertainment's Pillars of Eternity cRPG series, and their upcoming first-person RPG: Avowed. Today's episode is a follow-up from last week's episode on the Undead (such as Skeletons, Fampyrs and Revenants). This week focuses, instead, on Lichs - a very powerful and immortal form of Undead, and Void Seers (which are essentially floating magic-filled skulls). To top it all of we look at the brief story of Concelhaut, a powerful mage-turned-lich in the world of Eora. worldofeora@gmail.com @worldofeora

I discuss what I saw go down with the Theorycrafting steams before playing Nohandsgamer's Rank 68 Legend Big Spell Mage. You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me @blisterguy or the podcast @walktoworkHS on twitter. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 2x (1) Pelican Diver # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (2) Far Watch Post # 2x (2) Mailbox Dancer # 1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard # 2x (3) Mor'shan Watch Post # 2x (3) Nightcloak Sanctum # 1x (4) Blademaster Okani # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 1x (4) Varden Dawngrasp # 1x (6) Balinda Stonehearth # 2x (6) Barbaric Sorceress # 2x (6) Grey Sage Parrot # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 1x (8) Mordresh Fire Eye # 2x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 2x (10) Drakefire Amulet #  AAECAamDBgbY7AOd7gOgigT/ogTHsgSY1AQM9+gD+egD0+wDzvkDkoEEk4EEoZIE+6IE+qwEmbAE6rkEhJMFAAA=

The party gets educated about theology as they encounter one of Strahd's vampire husbands. Pip once again hurts the ones closest to him while Hecktor gets to experience being food.Want ad-free and even more bonus content? Just check out the Imagination Adventures show page on Apple podcasts! Music by the ever wonderful Lepidora, you can check out her music here. And head to peddlerspress.store to peruse our D&D themed merch store and help support the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're joined on the show by Terry Mancour, author and Archmage to the Spellmonger world. On today's episode we talk about writing, building a science fiction and fantasy world, and much more!   Follow Terry! https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Mancour/author/B004QTNFOO https://spellmongerseries.com/ https://spellmonger.fandom.com/wiki/Spellmonger_Wiki   Follow the Show! https://terrancelayhew.com/suitup/ https://www.instagram.com/suitup.podcast/

"4 Ches, 1491 DR - Darkhold Keep, Sunset Vale, Sword Coast, Faerun. After successfully liberating the White Dragon Mask from a heavily-guarded Cult of the Dragon Convoy, the Storm Watch, with Magical assistance from the Archmage of the Black Hand, returns to Darkhold Keep just in time to rendezvous with the approaching Zhentilar - now at its full strength. It has been nigh over a Century since the Zhentilar has returned to its former glory of over 10,000 swords, but the Highlord "Pereghost" has sounded the Horn of the Guldym, and the Zhentilar mobilizes - for War!" Join the Storm Watch behind enemy lines as we foray into (and narratively connect all 5E Faerunian adventures!) - a Universe where the Zhentilar has re-formed at full strength, and seeks to overthrow the fascist, despotic regimes of the Hillsfar Alliance, led by the xenophobic Red Plumes under the Command of Vuhm Yestral, Maggarl Helck & Torin Nomerthal, and the hateful Divine Order of Purity led by Dagult Neverember and his splinter faction, placing the Lords Alliance in a morally difficult position. SOURCEBOOKS: Featuring: MCDM's Kingdoms & Warfare and Darkhold: Secrets of the Zhentarim MCDM: Kingdoms & Warfare: https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/kingdoms-and-warfare-book Darkhold: Secrets of the Zhentarim: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/324679/Darkhold-Secrets-of-the-Zhentarim MUSIC: Intro Music: Metal (Royalty Free Music) - "AURORA" by DEgITx

A bonus episode this week with one of our great buddies, Maxpower from Archmage.We discuss the recent updates that Archmage dropped and the benefits of the Hive ecosystem.Max brings so much energy to our conversations and he has a wealth of knowledge of all things web3 that this is a must listen. Enjoy!

ALMIGHTYMELON is one of the founders of the Archmage Scholar Bot for Splinterlands. Archmage has just dropped its revised whitepaper, which has caused a stir within the community, so we asked AlmightyMelon on to clarify everything that's been happening. Enjoy the episode guys!

Xe Iaso is the Archmage of Infrastructure at Tailscale and previously worked at Heroku.This episode originally aired on Software Engineering Radio but includes some additional discussion about their blog near the end of the episode.Topics covered: Use cases for VPNs Simplifying service authentication by identifying users via IP Peer-to-peer vs centralized "Virtual Pain Networks" Tailscale's tech stack and why they forked the go compiler DERP relay servers Struggling with the iOS network extension size limit The surprisingly small amount of infrastructure required to run a VPN Running your company on your own product Working at Heroku vs Tailscale Using the socratic style of debate in technical blog posts Related Links @theprincessxena Xe's Blog ACL samples Go links origin story How Tailscale works Tailscale SSH How Tailscale assigns IP addresses Hey linker, can you spare a meg? My Blog is Hilariously Overengineered to the Point People Think it's a Static Site The Sheer Terror of PAM Transcript[00:00:00] Jeremy: Today I'm talking to Xe Iaso, they're the archmage of infrastructure at tailscale, and they also have a great blog everyone should check out. Xe, welcome to software engineering radio.[00:00:12] Xe: Thanks. It's great to be here. [00:00:14] Jeremy: I think the first thing we should start with, is what's a, a VPN, because I think some people they may have used it to remote into their workplace or something like that. But I think the, the scope of what it's good for and what it does is a lot broader than that. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that first.[00:00:31] Xe: Okay. a VPN is short for virtual private network. It's basically a fake network that's overlaid on top of existing networks. And then you can use that network to do whatever you would with a normal computer network. this term has been co-opted by companies that are attempting to get into the, like hide my ass style market, where, you know, you encrypt your internet information and keep it safe from hackers.But, uh, so it makes it really annoying and hard to talk about what a VPN actually is. Because tailscale, uh, the company I work for is closer to like the actual intent of a VPN and not just, you know, like hide your internet traffic. That's already encrypted anyway with another level of encryption and just make a great access point for, uh, three letter agencies.But are there, use cases, past that, like when you're developing a piece of software, why would you decide to use a VPN outside of just because I want my, you know, my workers to be able to get access to this stuff.[00:01:42] Xe: So something that's come up, uh, when I've been working at tailscale is that sometimes we'll make changes to something. And it'll be changes to like the user experience of something on the admin panel or something. So in a lot of other places I've worked in order to have other people test that, you know, you'd have to push it to the cloud.It would have to spin up a review app in Heroku or some terrifying terraform of abomination would have to put it out onto like an actual cluster or something. But with tail scale, you know, if your app is running locally, you just give like the name of your computer and the port number. And you know, other people are able to just see it and poke it and experience it.And that basically turns the, uh, feedback cycle from, you know, like having to wait for like the state of the world to converge, to, you know, make a change, press F five, give the URL to a coworker and be like, Hey, is this Gucci?they can connect to your app as if you were both connected to the same switch.[00:02:52] Jeremy: You don't have to worry about, pushing to a cloud service or opening ports, things like that.[00:02:57] Xe: Yep. It will act like it's in the same room, even when they're not it'll even work. if you're at both at Starbucks and the Starbucks has reasonable policies, like holy crap, don't allow devices to connect to each other directly. so you know, you're working on. Like your screenplay app at your Starbucks or something, and you have a coworker there and you're like, Hey, uh, check this out and, uh, give them the link.And then, you know, they're also seeing the screenplay editor.[00:03:27] Jeremy: in terms of security and things like that. I mean, I'm picturing it kind of like we were sitting in the same room and there's a switch and we both plugged in. Normally when you do something like that, you kind of have, full access to whatever else is on the switch. Uh, you know, provided that's not being blocked by a, a firewall.is there like a layer of security on top of that, that a VPN service like tailscale would provide.[00:03:53] Xe: Yes. Um, there are these things called access control lists, which are kind of like firewall rules, except you don't have to deal with like the nightmare of writing an IP tables rule that also works in windows firewall and whatever they use in Mac OS. The ACL rules are applied at the tailnet level for every device in the tailnet.So if you have like developer machines, you can put people into groups as things like developers and say that developer machines can talk to production, but not people in QA. They can only talk to testing and people on SRE have, you know, permissions to go everywhere and people within their own teams can connect to each other. you can make more complicated policies like that fairly easily.[00:04:44] Jeremy: And when we think about infrastructure for, for companies, you were talking about how there could be development, infrastructure, production, infrastructure, and you kind of separate it all out. when you're working with cloud infrastructure. A lot of times, there's the, I always forget what it stands for, but there's like IAM.There's like policies that you can set up with the cloud provider that says these users can access this, or these machines can access this. And, and I wonder from your perspective, when you would choose to use that versus use something at the, the network or the, the VPN level.[00:05:20] Xe: The way I think about it is that things like IAM enforce, permissions for like more granularly scoped things like can create EC2 instances or can delete EC2 instances or something like that. And that's just kind of a different level of thing. uh, tailscale, ACLs are more, you know, X is allowed to connect to Y or with tailscale, SSH X is allowed to connect as user Y.and that's really different than like arbitrary capability things like IAM offers.you could think about it as an IAM system, but the main permissions that it's exposing are can X connect to Y on Zed port.[00:06:05] Jeremy: What are some other use cases where if you weren't using a VPN, you'd have to do a lot more work or there's a lot more complexity, kind of what are some cases where it's like, okay, using a VPN here makes a lot of sense.(The quick and simple guide to go links https://www.trot.to/go-links) [00:06:18] Xe: There is a service internal to tailscale called go, which is a, clone of Google's so-called go links where it's basically a URL shortener that lives at http://go. And, you know, you have go/something to get to some internal admin service or another thing to get to like, you know, the company directory and notion or something, and this kind of thing you could do with a normal setup, you know, you could set it up and have to do OAuth challenges everywhere and, you know, have to put and make sure that everyone has the right DNS configuration so that, it shows up in the right place.And then you have to deal with HTTPS um, because OAuth requires HTTPS for understandable and kind of important reasons. And it's just a mess. Like there's so many layers of stuff like the, the barrier to get, you know, like just a darn URL, shortener up turns from 20 minutes into three days of effort trying to, you know, understand how these various arcane things work together.You need to have state for your OAuth implementation. You need to worry about what the hell a a JWT is (sigh) . It's it it's just bad. And I really think that something like tailscale with everybody has an IP address. In order to get into the network, you have to sign in with your, auth provider, your, a provider tells tailscale who you are.So transitively every IP address is tied to an owner, which means that you can enforce access permission based on the IP address and the metadata about it that you grab from the tailscale. daemon, it's just so much simpler. Like you don't have to think about, oh, how do I set up OAuth this time? What the hell is an oauth proxy?Um, what is a Kubernetes? That sort of thing you just think about like doing the thing and you just do it. And then everything else gets taken care of it. It's like kind of the ultimate network infrastructure, because it's both omnipresent and something you don't have to think about. And I think that's really the power of tailscale.[00:08:39] Jeremy: typically when you would spin up a, a service that you want your developers or your system admins, to be able to log into, you would have to have some way of authenticating and authorizing that user. And so you were talking about bringing in OAuth and having your, your service understand that.But I, I guess what you're saying is that when you have something like tailscale, that's kind of front loaded, I guess you, you authenticate with tail scale, you get onto the network, you get your IP. And then from that point on you can access all these different services that know like, Hey, because you're on the network, we know you're authenticated and those services can just maybe map that IP that's not gonna change to like users in some kind of table. Um, and not have to worry about figuring out how do I authenticate this user.[00:09:34] Xe: I would personally more suggest that you use the, uh, whois, uh, look up route in the tailscale daemon's local API, but basically, yeah, you don't really have to worry too much about like the authentication layer because the authentication layer has already been done. You know, you've already done your two factor with Gmail or whatever, and then you can just transitively push that property onto your other machines.[00:10:01] Jeremy: So when you talk about this, this whois daemon, can you give an example of I'm in the network now I'm gonna make a service call to an application. what, what am I doing with this? This whois daemon?[00:10:14] Xe: It's more of like a internal API call that we expose via tailscaled's, uh, Unix, socket. but basically you give it an IP address and a port, and it tells you who the person is. It's kind of like the Unix ident protocol in a way, except completely not. And at a high level, you know, if you have something like a proxy for Grafana, you have that proxy for Grafana, make a call to the local tailscale daemon, and be like, Hey, who was this person?And the tailscale, daemon will spit back at JSON object. Like, oh, it's this person on this device and there you can do additional logic like maybe you shouldn't be allowed to delete things from an iOS device, you know, crazy ideas like that. there's not really support for like arbitrary capabilities and tailscaled at the time of recording, but we've had some thoughts would be cool.[00:11:17] Jeremy: would that also include things like having roles, for example, even if it's just strings, um, that you get back so that your application would know, okay. This person, is supposed to have admin access to this service based on what I got back from, this, this service.[00:11:35] Xe: Not currently, uh, you can probably do it via convention or something, but what's currently implemented in the actual, like, source code and user experience that they, you can't do that right now. Um, it is something that I've been, trying to think about different ways to solve, but it's also a problem.That's a bit big for me personally, to tackle.[00:11:59] Jeremy: there's, there's so many, I guess, different ways of doing it. That it's kind of interesting to think of a solution that's kind of built into the, the network. Yeah.[00:12:10] Xe: Yeah. and when I describe that authentication thing to some people, it makes them recoil in shock because there's kind of a Stockholm syndrome type effect with security, for a lot of things where, the easy way to do something and the secure way to do something are, you know, like completely opposite and directly conflicting with each other in almost every way.And over time, people have come to associate security or like corporate VPNs as annoying, complicated, and difficult. And the idea of something that isn't annoying, complicated or difficult will make people reject it, like just on principle, because you know, they've been trained that, you know, VPN equals virtual pain network and it, it's hard to get that association outta people's heads because you know, a lot of VPNs are virtual pain networks.Like. I used to work for Salesforce and Salesforce had this corporate VPN where no matter what you did, all of your traffic would go out to the internet from their data center. I think it was in San Francisco or something. And I was in the Seattle area. So whenever I had the VPN on my latency to Google shot up by like eight times and being a software person, you know, I use Google the same way that others breathe and it, it was just not fun.And I only had the VPN on for the bare minimum of when I needed it. And, oh God, it was so bad.[00:13:50] Jeremy: like some people, when they picture a VPN, they picture exactly what you're describing, where all of my traffic is gonna get routed to some central point. It's gonna go connect to the thing for me and then send the result back. so maybe you could talk a little bit about why that's, that's maybe a wrong assumption, I guess, in the case of tailscale, or maybe in the case of just more modern VPN solutions.[00:14:13] Xe: Yeah. So the thing that I was describing is what I've been lovingly calling the, uh, single point of failure as a service type model of VPN, where, you know, you have like the big server somewhere, it concentrates all the connections and, you know, like does things to make the computer feel like they've teleported over there, but overall it's a single point of failure.And if that falls over, you know, like goodbye, VPN. everybody's just totally screwed. And in contrast, tailscale does a more peer-to-peer thing so that everyone is basically on equal footing. Everyone can send traffic directly to each other, and if it can't get directly to there, it'll use a network of, uh, relay servers, uh, lovingly called Derp and you don't have to worry about, your single point of failure in your cluster, because there's just no single point of failure.Everything will directly communicate as much as possible. And if it can't, it'll still communicate anyway.[00:15:18] Jeremy: let's say I start up my computer and I wanna connect to a server in a data center somewhere at the very beginning, am I connecting to some server hosted at tailscale? And then. There's some kind of negotiation process where after that I connect directly or do I just connect directly straight away?[00:15:39] Xe: If you just turn on your laptop and log in, you know, to it signs into tailscale and gets you on the tailnet and whatnot, then it will actually start all connections via Derp just so that it can negotiate the, uh, direct connection. And in case it can't, you know, it's already connected via Derp so it just continues the connection with Derp and this creates a kind of seamless magic type experience where doing things over Derp is slower.Yes, it is measurably slower because you know, like you're not going directly, you're doing TCP inside of TCP. And you know, that comes with a average minefield of lasers or whatever you call it. And it does work though. It's not ideal if you wanna do things like copy large amounts of data, but if you want just want ssh into prod and see the logs for what the heck is going on and why you're getting paged at 3:00 AM. it's pretty great.[00:16:40] Jeremy: What you, you were calling Derp is it where you have servers kind of all over the world and somehow it determines which one's, I guess, is it which one's closest to your destination or which one's closest to you. I'm kind of[00:16:54] Xe: It's really interesting. It's one of the most weird distributed systems, uh, type things that I've ever seen. It's the kind of thing that could only come outta the mind of an X Googler, but basically every tailscale, every tailscale node has a connection to all of the Derp servers and through process of, you know, latency testing.It figures out which connection is the fastest and the lowest latency. And it calls that it's home Derp but because it's connected to everything is connected to every Derp you can have two people with different home Derps getting their packets relayed too other clients from different Derps.So, you know, if you have a laptop in Ottawa and a laptop in San Francisco, the laptop in San Francisco will probably use the, uh, Derp that's closest to it. But the laptop in Ottawa will also use the Derp that's closest to it. So you get this sort of like asynchronous thing, and it actually works out a lot better in practice, than you're probably imagining.[00:17:52] Jeremy: And then these servers, what was the, the technical term for them? Are they like relays or what's[00:17:58] Xe: They're relays. Uh, they only really deal with encrypted wire guard packets, and there's, no way for us at tailscale, to see the contents of Derp messages, it is literally just a forwarder. It, it literally just forwards things based on the key ID.[00:18:17] Jeremy: I guess if tail scale isn't able to decrypt the traffic, is, is that because the, the keys are only on the user's devices, like it's on their laptop and on the server they're trying to reach, or[00:18:31] Xe: Yeah. The private keys are live and die with those devices or the devices they were minted on. And the public keys are given to the coordination server and the coordination server spreads those around to every device in your tailnet. It does some limiting so that like, if you don't have ACL access to something, you don't get the private key, you don't get the, uh, public key for it.The public key, not the private key, the public key, not the private key. And yeah. Then, you know, you just go that way and it'll just figure it out. It's pretty nice.[00:19:03] Jeremy: When we're kind of talking about situations where it can't connect directly, that's where you would use the relay. what are kind of the typical cases where that happens, where you, you aren't able to just connect directly?[00:19:17] Xe: Hotel, wifi and paranoid network security setups, hotel wifi is the most notorious one because you know, you have like an overpriced wifi connection. And if you bring, like, I don't know like, You you're recording a bunch of footage on your iPhone. And because in, 2022. The iPhone has the USB2 connection on it.And you know, you wanna copy that. You wanna use the network, but you can't. So you could just let it upload through iCloud or something, or, you know, do the bare minimum. You need to get the, to get the data off with Derp it wouldn't be ideal, but it would work. And ironically enough, that entire complexity involved with, you know, doing TCP inside of TCP to copy a video file over to your laptop might actually be faster than USB2, which is something that I did the math for a while ago.And I just started laughing.[00:20:21] Jeremy: Yeah, that that is pretty, pretty ridiculous [00:20:23] Xe: welcome to the future, man (laughs) .[00:20:27] Jeremy: in terms of connecting directly, usually when you have a computer on the internet, you don't have all your ports open, you don't necessarily allow, just anybody to send you traffic over UDP and so forth. let's say I wanna send, UDP data to a, a server on my network, but, you know, maybe it has some TCP ports open. I I'm assuming once I connect into the network via the VPN, I'm able to use other protocols and ports that weren't necessarily exposed. Is that correct?[00:21:01] Xe: Yeah, you can use UDP. you can do basically anything you would do on a normal network except multicast um, because multicast is weird.I mean, there's thoughts on how to handle multicast, but the main problem is that like wireguard, which is what is tail tailscale is built on top of, is, so called OSI model layer three network, where it's at like, you know, the IP address level and multicast is a layer two or data link layer type thing.And, those are different numbers and, you can't really easily put, you know, like broadcast packets into IP, uh, IPV4 thinks otherwise, but, uh, in practice, no people don't actually use the broadcast address.[00:21:48] Jeremy: so for someone who's, they, they have a project or their company wants to get started. I mean, what does onboarding look like? What, what do they have to do to get all these devices talking to one another?[00:22:02] Xe: basically you, install tail scale, you log in with a little GUI thing or on a Linux server, you run tailscale up, and then you all log to the, to a, like a G suite account with the same domain name. So, you know, if your domain is like example.com, then everybody logs in with their example.com G suite account.And, there is no step three, everything is allowed and everything can just connect and you can change the permissions from there. By default, the ACLs are set to a, you know, very permissive allow everyone to talk to everyone on any port. Uh, just so that people can verify that it's working, you know, you can ping to your heart's content.You can play Minecraft with others. You can, you know, host an HTTP server. You can SSH into your development box and and write blog post with emacs, whatever you want.[00:22:58] Jeremy: okay, you install the, the software on your servers, your workstations, your laptops, and so on. And then at, after that there's some kind of webpage or dashboard you would go in and say, I want these people to be able to access these things and [00:23:14] Xe: Mm-hmm [00:23:15] Jeremy: these ports and so on.[00:23:17] Xe: you, uh, can customize the access control rules with something that looks like JSON, but with trailing commas and comments allowed, and you can go from there to customize basically anything to your heart's content. you can set rules so that people on the DevOps team can access everything, but you know, maybe marketing doesn't need access to the production database.So you don't have to worry about that as much.[00:23:45] Jeremy: there's, there's kind of different options for VPNs. CloudFlare access, zero tier, there's, there's some kind of, I think it's Nebula from slack or something like that. so I was kind of curious from your perspective, what's the, difference between those kinds of services and, and tailscale.[00:24:04] Xe: I'm gonna lead this out by saying that I don't totally understand the differences between a lot of them, because I've only really worked with tailscale. I know things about the other options, but, uh, I have the most experience with tailscale but from what I've been able to tell, there are things that tailscale offers that others don't like reverse mapping of IP addresses to people, or, there's this other feature that we've been working on, where you can embed tail scale as a library inside your go application, and then write a internal admin service that isn't exposed to the internet, but it's only exposed over tailscale.And I haven't seen a way to do those things with those others, but again, I haven't done much research. Um, I understand that zero tier has some layer, two capabilities, but I've, I don't have enough time in the day to look into.[00:25:01] Jeremy: There's been different, I guess you would call them VPN protocols. I mean, there's people have probably worked with IP sec in some situations they may have heard of OpenVPN, wireguard. in the case of tailscale, I believe you chose to build it on top of wireguard.So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why, you chose wireguard and, and maybe what makes it unique.[00:25:27] Xe: I wasn't on the team that initially wrote like the core of tailscale itself. But from what I understand, wire guard was chosen because, what overhead, uh, it's literally, you just encrypt the packets, you send it to the other server, the other server decrypts them. And you know, you're done. it's also based purely on the public key. Um, the key pairs involved. And from what I understand, like at the wireguard protocol level, there's no reason why you, why you would need an IP address at all in theory, but in practice, you kind of need an IP address because you know, everything sucks. But also wire guard is like UDP only, which I think it at it's like core implementation, which is a step up from like AnyConnect and OpenVPN where they have TCP modes.So you can experience the, uh, glorious, trash fire of TCP in TCP. And from what I understand with wireguard, you don't need to set up a certificate authority or figure out how the heck to revoke certificates. Uh, you just have key pairs and if a node needs to be removed, you delete the key pair and you're done.And I think that really matches up with a lot of the philosophy behind how tailscale networks work a lot better. You know, you have a list of keys and if the network changes the list of keys changes, that's, that's the end of the story.So maybe one of the big selling points was just What has the least amount of things I guess, to deal with, or what's the, the simplest, when you're using a component that you want to put into your own product, you kind of want the least amount of things that could go wrong, I guess.[00:27:14] Xe: Yeah. It's more like simple, but not like limiting. Like, for example, a set of tinker toys is simple in that, you know, you can build things that you don't have to worry too much about the material science, but a set of tinker toys is also limiting because you know, like they're little wooden, dowels and little circles made out of wind that you stick the dowels into, you know, you can only do so much with it.And I think that in comparison, wireguard is simple. You know, there's just key pairs. They're just encryption. And it's simple in it's like overall theory and it's implementation, but it's not limiting. Like you can do pretty much anything you want with it.inherently whenever we build something, that's what we want, but that's a, that's an interesting way of putting it. Yeah.[00:28:05] Xe: Yeah. It. It can be kind of annoyingly hard to figure out how to make things as simple as they need to be, but still allow for complexity to occur. So you don't have to like set up a keyboard macro to write if error not equals nil over and over.[00:28:21] Jeremy: I guess the next thing I'd like to talk a little bit about is. We we've covered it a little bit, but at a high level, I understand that that tailscale uses wireguard, which is the open source, VPN protocol, I guess you could call it. And then there's the client software. You're saying you need to install on each of the servers and workstations.But there's also a, a control plane. and I wonder if you could kind of talk a little bit about I guess at a high level, what are all the different components of, of tailscale?[00:28:54] Xe: There's the agent that you install in your devices. The agent is basically the same between all the devices. It's all written in go, and it turns out that go can actually cross compile fairly well. So you have. Your, you know, your implementation in go, that is basically the, the same code, more or less running on windows, MacOS, freeBSD, Android, ChromeOS, iOS, Linux.I think I just listed all the platforms. I'm not sure, but you have that. And then there's the sort of control plane on tailscale's side, the control plane is basically like control, uh, which is, uh, I think a get smart reference. and that is basically a key dropbox. So, you know, you You authenticate through there. That's where the admin panel's hosted. And that's what tells the different tailscale nodes uh, the keys of all the other machines on the tailnet. And also on tailscale side there's, uh, Derp which is a fleet of a bunch of different VPSs in various clouds, all over the world, both to try to minimize cost and to, uh, have resiliency because if both digital ocean and Vultr go down globally, we probably have bigger problems.[00:30:15] Jeremy: I believe you mentioned that the, the clients were written in go, are the control plane and the relay, the Derp portion. Are those also written in go or are they[00:30:27] Xe: They're all written and go, yeah,go as much as possible. Yeah.It's kind of what happens when you have some ex go team members is the core people involved in tail scale, like. There's a go compiler fork that has some additional patches that go upstream either can't accept, uh, won't accept or hasn't yet accepted, for a while. It was how we did things like trying to shave off by bites from binary size to attempt to fit it into the iOS network extension limit.Because for some reason they only allowed you to have 15 megabytes of Ram for both like your application and working Ram. And it turns out that 15 megabytes of Ram is way more than enough to do something like OpenVPN. But you know, when you have a peer-to-peer VPN engine, it doesn't really work that well.So, you know, that's a lot of interesting engineering challenge.[00:31:28] Jeremy: That was specifically for iOS. So to run it on an iPhone.[00:31:32] Xe: Yeah. Um, and amazingly after the person who did all of the optimization to the linker, trying to get the binary size down as much as possible, like replacing Unicode packages was something that's more coefficient, you know, like basically all but compressing parts of the binary to try to save space. Then the iOS, I think 15 beta dropped and we found out that they increased the network extension Ram limit to 50 megabytes and the look of defeat on that poor person's face. I feel very bad for him.[00:32:09] Jeremy: you got what you wanted, but you're sad about it,[00:32:12] Xe: Yeah.[00:32:14] Jeremy: so that's interesting too. you were using a fork of the go compiler [00:32:19] Xe: Basically everything that is built is built using, uh, the tailscale fork, of the go compiler.[00:32:27] Jeremy: Going forward is the sort of assumption is that's what you'll do, or is it you're, you're hoping you can get this stuff upstreamed and then eventually move off of it.[00:32:36] Xe: I'm pretty sure that, I, I don't know if I can really make a forward looking statement like that, but, I've come to accept the fact that there's a fork of the go compiler. And as a result, it allows a lot more experimentation and a bit more of control, a bit more control over what's going on. like I'm, I'm not like the most happy with it, but I've, I understand why it exists and I'm, I've made my peace with it.[00:33:07] Jeremy: And I suppose it, it helps somewhat that the people who are working on it actually originally worked on the, go compiler at Google. Is that right?[00:33:16] Xe: Oh yeah. If, uh, there weren't ex go team people working on that, then I would definitely feel way less comfortable about it. But I trust that the people that are working on it, know what they're doing at least enough.[00:33:30] Jeremy: I, I feel like, that's, that's kind of the position we put ourselves in with software in general, right? Is like, do we trust our ourselves enough to do this thing we're doing?[00:33:39] Xe: Yeah. And trust is a bitch.[00:33:44] Jeremy: um, I think one of the things that's interesting about tail scale is that it's a product that's kind of it's like network infrastructure, right? It's to connect you to your other devices. And that's a little different than somebody running a software as a service. And so. how do you test something that's like built to support a network and, and how is that different than just making a web app or something like that.[00:34:11] Xe: Um, well, it's a lot more complicated for one, especially when you have to have multiple devices in the mix with multiple different operating systems. And I was working on some integration tests, doing stuff for a while, and it was really complicated. You have to spin up virtual machines, you know, you have to like make sure the virtual machines are attempting to download the version of the tailscale client you wanna test and. It's it's quite a lot in practice.[00:34:42] Jeremy: I mean, do you have a, a lab, you know, with Android phones and iPhones and laptops and all this sort of stuff, and you have some kind of automated test suite to see like, Hey, if these machines are in Ottawa and, my servers in San Francisco, like you're mentioning before that I can get from my iPhone to this server and the data center over here, that kind of thing.[00:35:06] Xe: What's the right way to phrase this without making things look bad. Um, it's a work in progress. It it's, it's really a hard problem to solve, uh, especially when the company is fully remote and, uh, like. Address that's listed on the business records is literally one of the founders condos because you know, the company has no office.So that makes the logistics for a lot of this. Even more fun.[00:35:37] Jeremy: Probably any company that's in an early stage feels the same way where it's like, everything's a work in progress and we're just gonna, we're gonna keep going and we're gonna get there. And as long as everything keeps running, we're good.[00:35:50] Xe: Yeah. I, I don't like thinking about it in that way, because it kind of sounds like pessimistic or defeatist, but at some level it's, it, it really is a work in progress because it's, it's a hard problem and hard problems take a lot of time to solve, especially if you want a solution that you're happy with.[00:36:10] Jeremy: And, and I think it's kind of a unique case too, where it's not like if it goes down, it's like people can't do their job. Right. So it's yeah.[00:36:21] Xe: Actually, if tail scales like control plane goes down, I don't think people would notice until they tried to like boot up a, a reboot, a laptop, or connect a new device to their tailnet. Because once, once all the tailscale agents have all of the information they need from the control plate, you know, they just, they just continue on independently and don't have to care.Derp is also fairly independent of the, like the key dropbox component. And, you know, if that, if that goes down Derp doesn't care at all,[00:37:00] Jeremy: Oh, okay. So if the control plane is down, as long as you had authenticated earlier in the day, you can still, I don't know if it's cached or something, but you can still continue to reach the relay servers, the Derp servers or your, [00:37:15] Xe: other nodes. Yeah. I, I'm pretty sure that in most cases, the control plane could be down for several hours a day and nobody would notice unless they're trying to deal with the admin panel.[00:37:28] Jeremy: Got it. that's a little bit of a relief, I suppose, for, for all of you running it,[00:37:33] Xe: Yeah. Um, it's also kind of hard to sell people on the idea of here is a VPN thing. You don't need to self host it and they're like, what? Why? And yeah, it can be fun.[00:37:49] Jeremy: though, I mean, I feel like anybody who has, self-hosted a VPN, they probably like don't really wanna do it. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.[00:38:00] Xe: well, so a lot of the idea of wanting to self host it is, uh, I think it's more of like trying to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on other companies, failures dictating your company's downtime. And, you know, like from some level that's very understandable. And, you know, if, you know, like tail scale were to get bought out and the new owners would, you know, like basically kill the product, they'd still have something that would work for them.I don't know if like such a defeatist attitude is like productive. But it is certainly the opinion that I have received when I have asked people why they wanna self-host. other people, don't want to deal with identity providers or the, like, they wanna just use their, they wanna use their own identity provider.And what was hilarious was there was one, there was one thing where they were like our old VPN server died once and we got locked out of our network. So therefore we wanna, we wanna self-host tailscale in the future so that this won't happen again.And I'm like, buddy, let's, let's just, let's just take a moment and retrace our steps here. CAuse I don't think you mean what you think you mean.[00:39:17] Jeremy: yeah, yeah. [00:39:19] Xe: In general, like I suggest people that, you know, even if they're like way deep into the tailscale, Kool-Aid they still have at least one other method of getting into their servers. Ideally, two. I, I admit that I'm, I come from an SRE style background and I am way more paranoid than most, but it, I usually like having, uh, a backup just in case.[00:39:44] Jeremy: So I, I suppose, on, on that note, let's, let's talk a little bit about your role at tailscale. the title of the archmage of infrastructure is one of the, the coolest titles I've, uh, I've seen. So maybe you can go a little bit into what that entails at, at tailscale.[00:40:02] Xe: I started that title as a joke that kind of stuck, uh, my intent, my initial intent was that every time someone asked, I'd say, I'd have a different, you know, like mystic sounding title, but, uh, archmage of infrastructure kind of stuck. And since then, I've actually been pivoting more into developer relations stuff rather than pure software engineering.And, from the feedback that I've gotten at the various conferences I've spoken at, they like that title, even though it doesn't really fit with developer relations work at all, it it's like it fits because it doesn't. You know, that kind of coney kind of way.[00:40:40] Jeremy: I guess this would go more into the, the infrastructure side, but. What does the, the scale of your infrastructure look like? I mean, I, I think that you touched a little bit on the fact that you have relay servers all over the place and you've got this control plane, but I wonder if you could give people a little bit of perspective of what kind of undertaking this is.[00:41:04] Xe: I am pretty sure at this point we have more developer laptops and the like, than we do production servers. Um, I'm pretty sure that the scale of the production of production servers are in the tens, at most. Um, it turns out that computers are pretty darn and efficient and, uh, you don't really need like a lot of computers to do something amazing.[00:41:27] Jeremy: the part that I guess surprises me a little bit is, is the relay servers, I suppose, because, I would imagine there's a lot of traffic that goes through those. are you finding that just most of the time they just aren't needed and usually you can make a direct connection and that's why you don't need too many of these.[00:41:45] Xe: From what I understand. I don't know if we actually have a way to tell, like what percentage of data is going over the relays versus not. And I think that was an intentional decision, um, that may have been revisited I'm operating based off of like six to 12 month old information right now. But in general, like the only state that the relay servers has is in Ram.And whenever the relay, whenever you disconnect the server, the state is dropped.[00:42:18] Jeremy: Okay.[00:42:19] Xe: and even then that state is like, you know, this key is listening. It is, uh, connected, uh, in case you wanna send packets over here, I guess. it's a bit less bandwidth than you're probably thinking it's not like enough to max it out 24/7, but it is, you know, measurable and there are some, you know, costs associated with it. This is also why it's on digital ocean and vulture and not AWS. but in general, it's a lot less than you'd think. I'm pretty sure that like, if I had to give a baseless assumption, I'd say that probably about like 85% of traffic goes directly.And the remaining is like the few cases in the whole punching engine that we haven't figured out yet. Like Palo Alto fire walls. Oh God. Those things are a nightmare.[00:43:13] Jeremy: I see. So it's most of the traffic actually ends up. Being straight peer to peer. Doesn't have to go through your infrastructure. And, and therefore it's like, you don't need too many machines, uh, to, to make this whole thing work.[00:43:28] Xe: Yeah. it turns out that computers are pretty darn fast and that copying data is something that computers are really good at doing. Um, so if you have, you know, some pretty darn fast computers, basically just sitting there and copying data back and forth all day, like it, you can do a lot with shockingly little.Um, when I first started, I believe that the Derp VMs were using like sometimes as little as one core and 512 megabytes of Ram as like a primary Derp. And, you know, we only noticed when, there were some weird connection issues for people that were only on Derp because there were enough users that the machine had ran out of memory.So we just, you know, upped the, uh, virtual machine size and called it a day. But it's, it's truly remarkable how mu how far you can get with very little[00:44:23] Jeremy: And you mentioned the relay servers, the, the Derp servers were on services like digital ocean and Vultr. I'm assuming because of the, the bandwidth cost, for the control plane, is, is that on AWS or some other big cloud provider?[00:44:39] Xe: it's on AWS. I believe it's in EU central 1.[00:44:44] Jeremy: You're helping people connect from device to device and in a situation like that. what does monitoring look like in, in incidents? Like what are you looking for to determine like, Hey, something's not working.[00:44:59] Xe: there's monitoring with, you know, Prometheus, Grafana, all of that stuff. there are some external probing things. there's also some continuous functional testing for trying to connect to tailscale and like log in as an account. And if that fails like twice in a row, then, you know, something's very wrong and, you know, raise the alarm.But in general. A lot of our monitoring is kind of hard at some level because you know, we're tailscale at a tailscale can't always benefit from tailscale to help operate tail scale because you know, it's tailscale. Um, so it, it still trying to figure out how to detangle the chicken and egg situation.It's really annoying.there's the, the term dog fooding, right? Where they're saying like, oh, we, we run, um, our own development on our own platform or our own software. but I could see when your product is network infrastructure, VPNs, where that could be a little, little dicey.[00:46:06] Xe: Yeah, it is very annoying. But I I'm pretty sure we'll figure something out. It is just a matter of when, another thing that's come up is we've kind of wanted to use tailscale's SSH features, where you specify ACLs in your, you specify ACL rules to allow people to SSH, to other nodes as various users.but if that becomes your main access to production, then you know, like if tailscale is down and you're tailscale, like how do you get in, uh, then there's been various philosophical discussions about this. it's also slightly worse if you use what's called check mode in SSH, where, uh, tail scale, SSH without check mode, you know, you just, it, the, the server checks against the policy rules and the ACL and if it. if it's okay, it lets you in. And if not, it says no, but with check mode, there's also this like eight hour, there's this like eight hour quote unquote lifetime for you to have like sudo mode on GitHub, where you do an auth an auth challenge with your auth aprovider. And then, you know, you're given a, uh, Hey, this person has done this thing type verification.And if that's down and that goes through the control plane, and if the control plane is down and you're tailscale, trying to debug the control plane, and in order to get into the control plane over tailscale, you need to use the, uh, control plane. It, you know, that's like chicken and egg problem level 78,which is a mythical level of chicken egg problem that, uh, has only been foretold in the legends of yore or something.[00:47:52] Jeremy: at that point, it sounds like somebody just needs to, to drive to the data center and plug into the switch.[00:47:59] Xe: I mean, It's not, it's not going to, it probably wouldn't be like, you know, we need to get a person with an angle grinder off of Craigslist type bad. Like it was with the Facebook BGP outage, but it it's definitely a chicken and egg problem in its own right.it makes you do a lot of lateral thinking too, which is also kind of interesting.[00:48:20] Jeremy: When, when you say lateral thinking, I'm just kind of curious, um, if you have an example of what you mean.[00:48:27] Xe: I don't know of any example that isn't NDAed. Um, but basically, you know, tail scale is getting to the, to the point where tailscale is relying on tailscale to make tailscale function and you know, yeah. This is classic oroboros style problem.I've heard a, uh, a wise friend of mine said that that is an ideal problem to have, which sounds weird at face value. But if you're getting to that point, that means that you're successful enough that, you know, you're having that problem, which is in itself a good thing, paradoxically.[00:49:07] Jeremy: better to have that problem than to have nobody care about the product. Right.[00:49:12] Xe: Yeah.[00:49:13] Jeremy: kind of on that, that note, um, you mentioned you worked at, at Salesforce, uh, I believe that was working on Heroku. I wonder if you could talk a little about your experience working at, you know, tailscale, which is kind of more of a, you know, early startup versus, uh, an established company like Salesforce.[00:49:36] Xe: So at the time I was working at Heroku, it definitely didn't feel like I was working at Salesforce for the majority of it. It felt like I was working, you know, at Heroku, like on my resume, I listed as Heroku. When I talked about it to people, I said, I worked at Heroku and that sales force was this, you know, mythical, Ohana thing that I didn't have to deal with unless I absolutely had to.By the end of the time I was working at Heroku, uh, the salesforce, uh, sort of started to creep in and, you know, we moved from tracking issues in GitHub issues. Like we were used to, to using their, oh, what's the polite way to say this, their creation, which is, which was like the moral equivalent of JIRA implemented on top of Salesforce.You had to be behind the VPN for it. And, you know, every ticket had 20 fields and, uh, there were no templates. And in comparison with tail scale, you know, we just use GitHub issues, maybe some like things in notion for doing like longer term tracking or Kanban stuff, but it's nice to not have. you know, all of the pomp and ceremony of filling out 20 fields in a ticket for like two sentences of this thing is obviously wrong and it's causing X to happen.Please fix.[00:51:08] Jeremy: I, I like that, that phrase, the, the creation, that's a very, very diplomatic term.[00:51:14] Xe: I mean, I can think of other ways to describe it, but I'm pretty sure those ways wouldn't be allowed on the podcast. So[00:51:25] Jeremy: Um, but, but yeah, I, I know what you mean for sure where, it, it feels like there's this movement from, Hey, let's just do what we need. Like let's fill in the information that's actually relevant and don't do anything else to a shift to, we need to fill in these 10 fields because that's the thing we do.Yeah.[00:51:48] Xe: Yeah. and in the time I've been working for tail scale, I'm like employee ID 12. And, uh, tail scale has gone from a company where I literally know everyone to just recently to the point where I don't know everyone anymore. And it's a really weird feeling. I've never been in a, like a small stage startup that's gotten to this size before, and I've described some of my feelings to other people who have been there and they're like, yeah, welcome to the club. So I figure a lot of it is normal. from what I understand, though, there's a lot of intentionality to try to prevent tail skill from becoming, you know, like Google style, complexity, organizational complexity, unless that is absolutely necessary to do something.[00:52:36] Jeremy: it's a function of size, right? Like as you have more people, more teams, then more process comes in. that's a really tricky balance to, to grow and still keep that feeling of, I'm just doing the thing, I'm doing the work rather than all this other process stuff.[00:52:57] Xe: Yeah, but it, I've also kind of managed to pigeonhole myself off into a corner with devrel stuff. And that's been nice. I've been working a bunch with, uh, like marketing people and, uh, helping out with support occasionally and doing a, like a godawful amount of writing.[00:53:17] Jeremy: the, the writing, for our audience's benefit, I, I think they should, they should really check out your blog because I think that the way you write your, your articles is very thoughtful in terms of the balance of the actual example code or example scripts and the descriptions and, and some there's a little bit of a narrative sometimes too.So, [00:53:40] Xe: Um, I'm actually more of a prose writer just by like how I naturally write things. And a lot of the style of how I write things is, I will take elements from, uh, the Socratic style of dialogue where, you know, you have the student and the teacher. And, you know, sometimes the student will ask questions that the teacher will answer.And I found that that's a particularly useful way to help model understanding or, you know, like put side concepts off into their own little blurbs or other things like that. I also started doing those conversation things with, uh, furry art, specifically to dunk on a homophobe that was getting very angry at furry art being in, uh, another person's blog.And that's it, it's occasionally fun to go into the, uh, orange website of bad takes and see the comments when people complain about it. oh gosh, the bad takes are hilariously good. Sometimes.[00:54:45] Jeremy: it's good that you have like a, a positive, mindset around that. I know some people can read, uh, that sort of stuff and go, you know, just get really bummed out. [00:54:54] Xe: One of the ways I see it is that a lot of the time algorithms are based on like sheer numbers. So if you like get something that makes people argue in the comments, that number will go up and because there's more comments on it, it makes more people more likely to, to read the article and click on it.So, sometimes I have been known to sprinkle, what's the polite way to say this. I've been known to sprinkle like intentionally kind of things that will, uh, get people and make them want to argue about it in the comments. Purely to make the engagement numbers rise up, which makes more people likely to read the article.And, it's kind of a dirty practice, but you know, it makes more people read the article and more people benefit. So, you know, like it's kind of morally neutral, I guess.[00:55:52] Jeremy: usually that, that seems like, a sketchy thing. But I feel like if it's in service to, uh, like a technical blog post, I mean, why not? Right.[00:56:04] Xe: And a lot of the times I'll usually have the like, uh, kind of bad take, be in a little conversation blurb thing so that people will additionally argue about the characterization of, you know, the imaginary cartoon shark or whatever.[00:56:20] Jeremy: That's good. It's the, uh, it's the Xe Xe universe that they're, they're stepping into.[00:56:27] Xe: I've heard people describe it, uh, lovingly as the xeiaso.net cinematic universe.I've had some ideas on how to expand it in the future with more characters that have more different kind of diverse backgrounds. But, uh, it turns out that writing this stuff is hard. Like actually very hard because you have to get this right.You have to get the right balance of like snark satire, uh, like enlightenment. Andit's, it's surprisingly harder than you'd think. Um, but after a while, I've just sort of managed to like figure out as I'm writing where the side tangents come off and which ones I should keep and which ones I should, uh, prune and which ones can also help, Gain deeper understanding with a little like Socratic dialogue to start with a Mo like an incomplete assumption, like an incomplete picture.And then, you know, a question of, wait, what about this thing? Doesn't that conflict with that? And like, well, yes. technically it does, but realistically we don't have to worry about that as much. So we can think about it just in terms of this bigger model and, uh, that's okay. Like, uh, I mentioned the OSI model earlier, you know, like the seven layer OSI model it's, you know, genuinely overkill for basically everything, except it's a really great conceptual model for figuring out the difference between, you know, like an ethernet cable, an ethernet, like the ethernet card, the IP stack TCP and, you know, TLS or whatever.I have a couple talks that are gonna be up by the time this is published. Uh, one of them is my, uh, rustconf talk on my, or what was it called? I think it was called the surreal horrors of PAM or something where I discussed my experience, trying to bug a PAM module in rust, uh, for work. And, uh, it's the kind of story where, you know, it's bad when you have a break point on dlopen.[00:58:31] Jeremy: That sounds like a nightmare.[00:58:32] Xe: Oh yeah. Like part of the attempting to fix that process involved, going very deep. We're talking like an HTML frame set in the internet archive for sunOS documentation that was written around the time that PAM was used. Like it's things that are bad enough were like everything in the frame set, but the contents had eroded away through bit rot and you know, you're very lucky just to have what you do.[00:59:02] Jeremy: well, I'm, I'm glad it was. It was you and not me. we'll get to, to hear about it and, and not have to go through the, the suffering ourselves.[00:59:11] Xe: yeah. One of the things I've been telling people is that I'm not like a brilliant programmer. Like I know a bunch of people who are definitely way smarter than me, but what I am is determined and, uh, determination is a bit stronger of a force than you'd think.[00:59:27] Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, without it, nothing gets done. Right.[00:59:30] Xe: Yeah.[00:59:31] Jeremy: as we wrap up, is there anything we missed or anything else you wanna mention? [00:59:36] Xe: if you wanna look at my blog, it's on xeiaso.net. That's X, E I a S o.net. Um, that's where I post things. You can see, like the 280 something articles at time of recording. It's probably gonna get to 300 at some point, oh God, it's gonna get to 300 at some point. Um, and yeah, from, I try to post articles about weekly, uh, depending on facts and circumstances, I have a bunch of talks coming up, like one about the hilarious over engineering I did in my blog.And maybe some more. If I get back positive responses from calls for paper submissions,[01:00:21] Jeremy: Very cool. Well, Xe thank you so much for, for coming on software engineering radio.[01:00:27] Xe: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I hope you have a good day and, uh, try out tailscale, uh, note my bias, but I think it's great.

Greetings Everyone! Welcome to the Commander & Coffee Podcast your source for sweet cEDH and EDH brews.In this Episode Cypher is is brining one of his favorite Modern decks to cEDH, Gift Storm! Helmed by Vadrik, Astral Archmage. So if you like killing your opponents with Grapeshot and convoluted storm chains, well then this might be the deck for you!Moxfield: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/siAkz1dzq0S6ieuZXkh8mgTwitter: @cmdr_coffeeInstagram: cmdr_coffeeAll our Links: linktr.ee/cmdr_coffee

Roll to find out who's the DM, what monster and setting will take place in the adventure, and do it all in 2 hours? Could be chaos or some spectacular…you decide with this weeks adventure “Archmage's Prison” --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carpool-shenanigans/message

Join Michael and Jesse on their quest to become famous in the niche hobby of board games. In this episode we first board game loves, have a deep dive into Clank Legacy Acquisitions Incorporated, and drive David crazy while he tries to catch every game discussed while editing Brother Talk focused around picking games for having a themed game night. Games discussed this episode: Ark Nova, Paint the Roses, Arakis Dawn of the Fremen, Clank Legacy Acquisitions Incorporated, Brass Birmingham, Colt Express, Chicago Express, Railroad Inc, Fury of Dracula, Endangered, CO2 Second Chance, Cascadia, Three Sisters, Everdell, Meadow, Tiny Towns, Isle of Cats, Raccoon Tycoon, Root, Summoner City, Seasons, Archmage, Winter Queen, Sagrada, Quantum, Roll for the Galaxy, Cubitos, Chronicles of Crime, Detective, Micro Macro Crime City, Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, Cryptid, Mysterium, 5 Minute Mystery, Risk and Risk Legacy, Scythe, Clue, City of Horror ^Hope you appreciated this, Scott!^ Join our Discord Server at THIS LINK Follow us on Instagram with THIS LINK Music by Joystock

In this episode, we chat Splinterlands, ethical bots and the Mighty Dricken with IVIAXPOW3R of Archmage. Enjoy!

Team 5 accidentally pushed some upcoming Balance Changes live, so I discuss what they have confirmed so far! before playing XL Skeleton Mage on the ladder. You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Also, this is a link to the youtube video I mentioned! Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or your podcatcher of choice. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 2x (0) Flurry (Rank 1) # 2x (1) Shivering Sorceress # 1x (1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide # 2x (1) Wildfire # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (3) Arcane Intellect # 1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard # 2x (3) Frostweave Dungeoneer # 2x (3) Nightcloak Sanctum # 1x (3) Prince Renathal # 2x (4) Cold Case # 1x (4) Commander Sivara # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 1x (4) Theotar, the Mad Duke # 1x (4) Varden Dawngrasp # 1x (5) Lady Naz'jar # 2x (6) Blizzard # 2x (6) Deathborne # 2x (6) Grey Sage Parrot # 1x (6) Kael'thas Sinstrider # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 1x (8) Kel'Thuzad, the Inevitable # 1x (8) Mordresh Fire Eye # 2x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 1x (10) Sire Denathrius # AAECAfaOBQzY7AOd7gOgigTlsATYsgTp0ASY1AS42QSp3gS65ASX7wS+8AQO1OoD0uwD0+wD1uwDkoEEk4EEn5IEoZIE/J4E+6IE8dME294E+uwEhJMFAA==

In this episode, the party confronts the wretched Archmage, Frank. The fate of Spokane hangs in the balance. Follow Foes and Fables: TikTok | Twitter | Instagram Follow The Cast: Tanner Azzinnaro (DM): Music | Instagram | YouTube Zach Stenzel (Kirtland Cutter IV): Twitter | Instagram | DONATE (Feed My Starving Children) David Sturges (Roman Winters): Instagram | DONATE (International Justice Mission) Nathan Augustyn (Oliver Haf): Instagram | Artwork David Beaman (Nicholas Hubert Bartholomew Olsen III): Music | Instagram Evergreen Cover Art & Character Art by Jonas Lorenzini (Instagram)

The World of Eora is a news/lore podcast for Avowed & Pillars of Eternity (I & II), games developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Today's episode follows up on the previous episode about the Archmages of Eora. Here, we discuss one mage specifically: Llengrath; and even more specifically how she...he...they... are striving towards immortality. This episode contains spoilers for Llengrath's backstory, as discovered in the Forgotten Sanctum DLC in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. It is not the DLC narrative that is spoiled, only Llengrath's backstory, which you can learn about organically in-game when playing through quests.

Murder at Castle Nathria is almost here and we go over a few more reveals, before playing XL Big Spell Mage on the ladder! You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or your podcatcher of choice. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 2x (1) Pelican Diver # 1x (1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (2) Far Watch Post # 2x (2) Mailbox Dancer # 2x (2) Submerged Spacerock # 1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard # 1x (3) Flightmaster Dungar # 1x (3) Prince Renathal # 2x (3) Smothering Starfish # 2x (3) Treasure Guard # 1x (4) Blademaster Okani # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 1x (4) Escaped Manasaber # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 2x (4) School Teacher # 1x (4) Varden Dawngrasp # 2x (5) Spammy Arcanist # 1x (6) Balinda Stonehearth # 2x (6) Barbaric Sorceress # 2x (6) Grey Sage Parrot # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 1x (8) Mordresh Fire Eye # 2x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 2x (10) Drakefire Amulet # AAECAfaOBQrY7AOd7gPX+QOgigT/ogTlsATHsgSY1ASX7wSKugUP9+gD0+wDzvkDkoEEk4EEpY0EoZIE+6IE+qwEmbAEjbUEh7cElrcE6rkEo84EAA==

Dana and Max are back for another installment of the Decks You Play series. This week they look at patron Kyle Gerischer's Inalla, Archmage Ritualist EDH deck. Tune in to hear how these deck wizards suggest changes to make some hideous copies. . TeeSpring Link for CMDR Central Apparel: https://teespring.com/stores/cmdrcentral Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CMDRCentral Support us by using promo code CMDR at Flipside Gaming: https://bit.ly/2OGDYooSubscribe on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/CMDRCentralSubscribe on iTunes: http://apple.co/2wVE3XFFollow us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/2wj8GWh

The gang is on the lukewarm trail of Ansel as he flees into Faenalin. They track him to Court of the Archmage and, I'm gunna level with you, the group gets a lot farther than either I or Justin thought we would.Join our Patreon at www.patreon.com/bcbpartyA time-loop comedy real-play show featuring an original campaign, based on Pathfinder, where four heroes of varying skills, attractiveness, and stupidity, race against time to prevent a war. Featuring the talents of game master Justin Green, Jenna Stoeber, Caitlin Stayduhar, Andrew Hansen, and Paul Luetkemeyer. Email us at BCBparty@gmail.com or find us on Twitter @BCBparty. Support us on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I discuss more of the Murder at Castle Nathria reveals before playing Janos' Rank 1 Legend Big Spell Mage on the ladder! You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or your podcatcher of choice. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 1x (1) Peasant # 2x (1) Pelican Diver # 1x (1) Sir Finley, Sea Guide # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (2) Mailbox Dancer # 1x (3) Brann Bronzebeard # 1x (3) Rustrot Viper # 2x (3) Smothering Starfish # 2x (3) Treasure Guard # 1x (4) Blademaster Okani # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 1x (4) Varden Dawngrasp # 1x (6) Balinda Stonehearth # 2x (6) Barbaric Sorceress # 2x (6) Grey Sage Parrot # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 2x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 2x (10) Drakefire Amulet # AAECAdDwBAid7gP09gPQ+QOgigT/ogTlsATHsgSY1AQL0+wDzvkDkoEEk4EEoZIE+6IE+qwEmbAEjbUEh7cE6rkEAA==

The post nerf Throne of Tides meta is more different than expected! and I play Big Spell Mage on the ladder. You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or your podcatcher of choice. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 2x (1) Pelican Diver # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (2) Far Watch Post # 2x (2) Mailbox Dancer # 2x (3) Smothering Starfish # 2x (3) Treasure Guard # 1x (4) Blademaster Okani # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 1x (4) Varden Dawngrasp # 2x (5) Spammy Arcanist # 1x (6) Balinda Stonehearth # 2x (6) Barbaric Sorceress # 2x (6) Grey Sage Parrot # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 2x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 2x (10) Drakefire Amulet # AAECAfaOBQSd7gOgigT/ogTHsgQN9+gD0+wDzvkDkoEEk4EEpY0EoZIE+6IE+qwEmbAEjbUEh7cE6rkEAA==

Welcome to the very first of the Legends of Arias special and our 100th episode! In the year of 552, a thousand years before the Ram Pack began their journey, the Band of Ravens learned of Lich… Sarees Morte and her creation of a powerful arcane device that if fully unleashed upon the world could bring ruin to the people of Arias. Led by a powerful Archmage, Valtinus Adlim, these men and women journeyed to the Lich's keep with the intent to stop her before it was too late. Join Lothlaris, Vakurr Darksword, Alavira Farrows, Nettle Fizzpark, Delmar Alvingham, Irene Crowly, Cerebus Blackwood, and their young knight companion, Bedivere Rysfire, in their quest to take on the Lich and her minions... Find us on all our Social Media! https://linktr.ee/PartyAdvantage Don't forget to check out our Sponsors! Elderwood Academy Awesome Dice Check out 5E Homebrew creator, Nim ToastHaster on Twitter, Discord, DMs Guild, and Patreon! Additional music featured with the use of Soncraft, music platform Audio, & Music by Cassie Derby Audio Editing by Kyle Voisine

The coven meet and speak with their Archmage host and 'patron'. What they learn does not particularly excite them but the temptation of gifts and knowledge is great.Join us live on Twitch, Friday nights at 7pm EDT:http://twitch.tv/OccultistsAnonymousSupport the show by joining our Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/OccultistsAnonymousGet your own Occultists Anonymous, Rookery, and Into The West Merch:http://occultanon.threadless.comFollow us on Twitter:https://twitter.com/OccultistsAJoin us on Discord:http://www.yeetointo.spaceGet the Book. Play the Game:https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/181754/Mage-the-Awakening-2nd-Edition?affiliate_id=723048View the Chronicle's Wiki:https://kanka.io/en-US/campaign/54701Character Art by Brenna Goche: https://twitter.com/CloudBoundCorgiTheodosia Character Design by Elijah Vardo:https://linktr.ee/elijahvardoMusic: LuIzA - Chrono Trigger "...And in Her Self-Loathing and Despair, She Found Wrath" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01989Chimpazilla, Emunator - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild "Torchlight" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04224Eladar - Golden Sun "Riding the Desert Winds" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04096RebeccaETripp - Final Fantasy X "Macalania Shaman" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04116Forest Elves - Final Fantasy VIII "Wings of Freedom" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04009Jeff Ball, Jillian Aversa, XPRTNovice, zircon - Final Fantasy VI "A Fistful of Nickels" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02687MkVaff - Kid Icarus: Uprising "Black Feathers in the Sky" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04200Brandon Strader, Chickenwarlord, Lemonectric, Tuberz McGee - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons "No Rain in the Desert" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03099Jorito, Aster, Furilas, Lauren the Flute - Skies of Arcadia "Il buono, il brutto, il pirata dell'aria" https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03901

We still scrapping with big bads up in here! The Strong Thighs, Jamon the Tiefling bard in the black buttas, and Yax the Loxodon barbarian valiantly continue their fight against the seemingly unstoppable lich, Geldar the Archmage! Cast: Chevon (@ChevonVelez) as Chenora, Mark J(@Morrthemerri_er) as Farlies, Jinx(@JinxMilano) as Mythcyra, Mark H(@MarkieWanderous) as Lucky, GM/sound design/editor: Elias (@Elias9Omar) Audio editor: Kestrel Esin(@Oatcooki) Featuring Special Guest @JazzeFait of the Gimme Da Loot podcast as Jamon the Bard with the Black Buttas Leave us a tip on Ko-Fi- https://ko-fi.com/everrealmadventures Download and use newsly! Go to https://newsly.me/ and use the promo code EVERREALM for a free one month premium subscription! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/daeverrealmpod/support

After a much-needed long rest, The Strong Thighs prepare to travel thru time once again, via Boss Cal's untested time machine, to head into the past to face Geldar, the Archmage of the Everrealm. Who apparently conquers the Everrealm...in the future? Which is the past relative to WHEN they're at right now? It's a little confusing...anyway if Emperor Cluud's MEGA forces have their way, The Strong Thighs won't be going anywhere....or is it anywhen? Time travel gets weird in D&D.... SEND VICTOR W. BUTLER BIRTHDAY CARDS!! He's believed to be the last surviving of the Tuskegee Airmen, he turns ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD 5/21/22, send this hero birthday cards! Victor W. Butler C/O Gary Butler P.O. Box 3523 Cranston RI 02910 https://thegrio.com/2022/05/06/tuskeegee-airman-butler-100-wants-birthday-cards-address/ Cast: Chevon (@ChevonVelez) as Chenora, Mark J(@Morrthemerri_er) as Farlies, Jinx(@JinxMilano) as Mythcyra, Mark H(@MarkieWanderous) as Lucky GM/sound design/editor: Elias (@Elias9Omar) Audio editor: Kestrel Esin(@Oatcooki) Leave us a tip on Ko-Fi- https://ko-fi.com/everrealmadventures Download and use newsly! Go to https://newsly.me/ and use the promo code EVERREALM for a free one month premium subscription! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/daeverrealmpod/support

It's the classic one shot, dear listener. An Archmage has gone missing from their tower, which has since filled with magical power that has attracted all sorts of creatures, monsters, and problems. The local Adventurer's guild has hired our group of heroes to clear the tower and find out what happened to our Archmage. But LO! The group of players piloting these adventurers are professional improvisers! And BEHOLD their lack of dungeons and dragons experience! Can this first time party climb to the tallest room of the tallest tower? Can they overcome the beasts, puzzles, and traps in the floors below? Why did one of them name their character Wet Wet? Find out in this episode of Yes And... Dragons! Featuring:Rhett Sosebee as Wet WetNathan Cowper as Garlic TedAri Goldberg as Humdrum McFee Recorded at Improv AsylumA part of the Asylum Podcast NetworkSound design and editing by Mike Crockett of Crackpot Podcast Production.

I look at one final batch of Sunken City reveal cards before we find out about Core 2022 in a few days time, and then play Qullo's Rank 1 Legend Amulet Mage on the ladder. You can find the deck import link below the following contact links.  Join our Discord community here or at discord.me/blisterguy. You can follow me on twitter @blisterguy.  You can follow the podcast on twitter @walktoworkHS  Subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher or your podcatcher of choice. You can see my infographic archive here. Subscribe to my Youtube channel. You can support this podcast and my other Hearthstone work at Patreon here. # 2x (1) Animated Broomstick # 2x (1) Guardian Augmerchant # 2x (1) Irondeep Trogg # 2x (1) Shivering Sorceress # 2x (1) Wand Thief # 2x (2) Amplified Snowflurry # 2x (2) Cult Neophyte # 1x (3) King Mukla # 2x (3) Venomous Scorpid # 1x (4) Blademaster Okani # 2x (4) Deepwater Evoker # 2x (4) Reckless Apprentice # 1x (5) Spammy Arcanist # 1x (5) Taelan Fordring # 1x (6) Balinda Stonehearth # 1x (7) Magister Dawngrasp # 1x (7) Mask of C'Thun # 1x (9) Rune of the Archmage # 2x (10) Drakefire Amulet # AAECAePxBAj73QOgigSoigSljQSYoAT7ogT/ogTHsgQL3r4Dlc0DpNEDi9UDlugD0+wDk4EEn5IEoZIE4aQE+qwEAA==

Dana and Max are back with another Decks You Play. This week they are taking a look at patreon supporter Dylan Gibson's Inalla Archmage Ritualist deck. Tune in to hear how the help this deck make everything and anything into a Wizard.Dylan's Deck: https://bit.ly/3KDaRuu TeeSpring Link for CMDR Central Apparel: https://teespring.com/stores/cmdrcentral Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CMDRCentral Support us by using promo code CMDR at Flipside Gaming: https://bit.ly/2OGDYooSubscribe on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/CMDRCentralSubscribe on iTunes: http://apple.co/2wVE3XFFollow us on Twitter: http://bit.ly/2wj8GWh

Join us as we chat with the Archmage, Ed Greenwood, about Sembia. We learn from him about the process of writing The Halls of Stormweather, about the evolution of Forgotten Realms, and about the details that pertain directly to this podcast (who is Yeven, what exactly was Koril's Well, etc.).    Archivos Podcast: 20 Minutes with Ed Greenwood https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/archivos-podcast-network/id495606011?i=1000350514067 Plotpoints Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plot-points/id768952889?i=1000462077700 Sembia References: https://longwinded.one/sembian-sources/ Fate of the Norns: https://pandemoniumbooks.com/collections/pendlehaven-games The Ultimate Viking Anthology: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avalkauskas/the-ultimate-viking-anthology?ref=geeknative

We'll have none of that nasty real-life failure around here, no, thank you. We will, however, take all the pretend in-game failures available. Laurel and Olivia cover the concept of “failing forward” and discuss ways to make failure fun instead of frustrating. Plus, rustling up some contraband cattle with a homebrew background and the surprisingly charismatic enigma that is the Black Pudding. Dungeon Mastering 101: Failing Forward by The Archmage on dmsworkshop.com Cattle Rustler background on D&D Wiki Cover Art by Marie-Anne Simard “Handel - Entrance to the Queen of Sheba for Two Oboes, Strings, and Continuo allegro” by Advent Chamber Orchestra is licensed under a Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Episode 72 Tuesday, January 25,2022 Call ins & Emails from the Outlands 1. Call-ins and Emails – John Alan Large of The Red Dice Diaries 2. DC shooting themselves in the foot or are they? https://bleedingcool.com/comics/dc-comics-cancels-and-kills-off-the-justice-league/ and the New JLA?: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/e8/d6/19e8d691b6f2d5be601586a668d73163.jpg ( thanks to Eric Sciver: https://youtu.be/gp0WJoIvzJU for a great overview) 3. Cthulhu Awakens by Green Ronin: https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/cthulhu-awakens/news/cthulhu-awakens-rpg-green-ronin 4. 13th age SRD: https://www.13thagesrd.com/ and the ARCHMAGE engine pdf: http://pelgranepress.com/media/SRD/CombatRules.pdf Main Topic: 13thAge Deep Dive Part 3 The New One Unique Thing (OUT) Relationship Points [RP] Background Points [BP] Failing Forward Weapon & Armor Categories, Damage and Goods Rallying Rest and Re-charges Full Heal Ups Fleeing 1 Random Question: Is the GM just a player? Shameless Plug Time: If you would like to support our show, please visit the many places you can find us on the inter-webs: Website: www.biggusgeekuspodcast.com click on support for ways to give us your money PayPal: paypal.me/biggusgeekus Twitter: @biggusgeekus Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biggusgeekuspodcast MeWe: www.mewe.com/i/biggusgeekuspodcast (new!) Odysee: https://odysee.com/@biggusgeekus:3 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyVze8TfIB16j0PdmE4lOJg Email: thegeeks@biggusgeekuspodcast.com Discord: https://discord.gg/bhyYkAz4 Share this show with your friends and let us know if there is another way that you listen or watch that we could support better. Please Subscribe, Like, share and rate us in all the places that you find us. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/biggusgeekus/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/biggusgeekus/support

Utility cantrips that scale like damage cantrips? It's more likely than you think! Andrew and Pat take a look at how PCs use cantrips, from the Archmage to the Eldritch Knight and how improving cantrips can improve gameplay. The good cantrips get better, but can this system even save True Strike? Evolving Cantrips (Version 2.5) by u/Carios125 (Yoonki) can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PHpOenx-jkwEuHLblDCB7WdSnF1C89xS/view Intro and outro music is Lord of the Land by Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech. The image in the title card is by Designdrunkard on Pexels. Want to contact us, maybe with a comment or suggestion for a homebrew to look at? We can be found in the following places! Email: homebrewreviewers@gmail.com Pat on reddit: u/ravenmaw Andrew on reddit: u/aabrock

Returning to the sacrificial altar, the boys roast another deck from the Hexdrinkers meta, and then build it back up with constructive criticism about playstyle, card choices, and gameplan. It's Eric's turn to be thrown to the wolves with his Jodah, Archmage Eternal deck embodying the Timmy archetype to a tee. Will a fight break out when the boys desecrate holy ground? Find out! Eric's original decklist for this episode can be found at https://www.moxfield.com/decks/ynUGWe6PXUGwMfTyWVZGkg Eric's new and improved decklist can be found at https://www.moxfield.com/decks/OtHHtdGAjE-eBt643m6w6Q Check out articles, deck techs, and more at https://hexdrinkers.com/ All our decklists can be found at https://www.moxfield.com/users/The_Hexdrinkers Talk Magic with us at https://twitter.com/hexdrinkers or https://www.instagram.com/hexdrinkers/ Catch us on stream on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/the_hexdrinkers Catch gameplay, replays, highlights, and other videos at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8VvyNf8K3etyuLptQzBiYA Questions, comments, or business ventures can be directed to hexdrinkers@gmail.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app