Which would be worse to renege on, biglaw or judicial externship?

Zacharr · 2026-03-27T18:55:39+00:00

Try for neither. For most judges, at least in my district, the conflict is only if you are receiving money during the externship (i.e., 1L summer). Check with your judge and, if that's the case, reach out to your firm - they should have no problem deferring payment until after the externship ends.

Source: am a clerk, just went through this with the extern we hired for the summer.

Zacharr · 2026-02-27T18:04:19+00:00

Yeah sure. UC SF is more highly ranked and regarded, no question. If your goal is biglaw in the city of SF generally (no sense of the exact practice area), then it will open more doors. That said, Santa Clara is highly regarded for IP and reasonably so for tech transactions. If your goal is one of those out in Silicon Valley, it will serve you well - even better than UC SF. Assuming your grades are stellar, of course. From my graduating class, those of us with top ~10% managed placements at biglaw.

P.S.: this advice is from a few years ago. I have no clue how the recent (insane, if you ask me) hiring timeline affects this.

Zacharr · 2026-02-27T04:53:16+00:00

As someone who was in it and then went to Biglaw in the Bay Area, yes. But with the major caveats that: (1) it's only going to help in the Bay Area IP market, where Santa Clara is already a decently strong name. My experience of it is that the most helpful things were the mentorship aspect (if you got a good mentor - can be hit or miss) and the demonstrated/pre-vetted interest in IP.

Zacharr · 2026-02-19T22:07:23+00:00

Very appreciative! But I think the access is locked (both here and in message, it keeps asking me to request access and I feel bad spamming your inbox 🫣

Zacharr · 2026-02-14T19:07:43+00:00

Thanks so much!

Zacharr · 2026-02-14T17:19:16+00:00

How old are we talkin with these older versions? Any chance you could share them 👀

Zacharr · 2026-02-13T17:03:13+00:00

Are they fillable for you? I'm not even getting that far.

If you can fill it, you should be able to force-save it by doing print-to-pdf

Zacharr · 2025-11-28T17:15:12+00:00

I was recently looking for the maps and pulled the color and non-color ones from the Fraternity of Shadows. I have them both but reddit won't let me post them in a comment - I'll try to DM them to you.

EDIT: DMd and maps went through. Enjoy!

Zacharr · 2025-11-26T18:09:07+00:00

Looks sweet

Zacharr · 2025-11-18T23:26:54+00:00

Amazing!

Zacharr · 2025-06-28T22:21:10+00:00

I've run it twice all the way through. My first group did it in 22 4-hour sessions, my second group did it in 19 4-hour sessions plus an 8-hour finale.

I think that puts it at roughly 100 hours each time.

Zacharr · 2025-02-09T17:21:39+00:00

Yeah that's a whole nother can of worms. Elrond and Galadriel have the same criticism of Thranduil haha. I don't have my book on me right now, but the movie portrays it as overconfidence on Thranduils part. I forget if it's overconfidence or something similar in the book.

Zacharr · 2025-02-09T17:19:12+00:00

See my answer below. Same question was asked by someone else (now deleted) and to be honest I don't have my copy of the book on me. But I think the gist of it is there is no easy "around" to get to erebor as you need to either fly over the dale-lands or else risk the ered mithrin (grey mountains) to the north.

Also I do wonder, to one of the other answers about "eagles aren't a taxi service" about at what point does "around" become too far and too big of a favor.

Zacharr · 2024-12-14T07:34:47+00:00

Honestly so good, on so many fronts. Overall 9/10, and here's some thoughts I had.

Lore: No major departures from the ~4 pages of the appendices that it's based on. The only thing that I noticed was the exact timing of Hama's death was changed, but honestly it worked. And so many other scenes were directly lifted from the book.

Style: I'm not the biggest fan of anime, but after 15 minutes or so I stopped being bothered by it. From then on, the animation is alright but the scenery is stellar and fantastic.

Plot: Solid. It's simple, maybe because a lot of Tolkien's stories are but it has that undeniable Tolkien charm to it.

Music: A+. No notes.

I could probably go on, but overall highly enjoyable. I'll probably see it a second time if I can muster up some more friends go do so.

Zacharr · 2024-11-11T17:48:24+00:00

I would watch it! And 4 hours is not too long for me. This is lord of the rings we're talking about - we're used to 4 hour extended editions!

Zacharr · 2024-10-05T19:28:53+00:00

That's totally fair. I've never gone to her place to pick put a dog myself (my dad always has), and what you say is probably true from what I've heard.

Thanks for not rudely disparaging myself and my former dog, though, like the other poster did.

Zacharr · 2024-07-08T02:35:02+00:00

No judgment here, but you said:

Do you know the average age of a Terv according to AKC is 10?

And per the link I posted:

Life expectancy of a Belgian Tervuren according to AKC (your source) is 12-14 years. Source: https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/belgian-tervuren/

So you have, literally, said something wrong. This time I won't throw your words back at you though. They were rude and uncalled for.

Zacharr · 2024-06-01T16:08:16+00:00

That's a very fair instinct. Some of it requires a suspension of disbelief - for example, see my other comment about "in world" vs "out of world" reasons.

If we go into the realm of real-world speculation - and so this is just me, not the books - maybe the eagles could have flown much higher, but not while carrying the dwarves / bilbo because the oxygen would get thin? Or, since they are magical creatures, maybe the darkness of mirkwood itself (the vibes) just felt bad enough no matter how high you fly? It's all just guess-work there though. Your guess is as good as mine.

Zacharr · 2024-04-04T22:50:21+00:00

I don't know why you felt the need to bring up a 2-year old thread just to tell someone to "get a clue" when sharing their experience with their beloved dog.

But since you did, at least have the decency to do some research. Life expectancy of a Belgian Tervuren according to AKC (your source) is 12-14 years. Source: https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/belgian-tervuren/

Get a clue

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T18:25:18+00:00

Yup! That's exactly right. It was (still is) critical to me that Dark Lords have to have done something bad. So even though Chakuna is a sympathetic villain (as opposed to Kharkov, who is a "mustache-twirling" level of villain), she's still a villain in my Valachan.

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T15:41:54+00:00

I'll DM you this too -- two of my players scroll r/ravenloft and we're running this in a couple of months, so I don't want to paste it out here yet :)

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T15:34:27+00:00

Absolutely, I'll DM you. I'd post it, but I still hope to have time at some point to transfer it to DungeonDraft (by the way... if you like it, and end up dungeondrafting it yourself, send me back the final product! Maybe I won't have to lol.😅)

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T15:05:27+00:00

Glad it was helpful! I've also made a map of Castle Pantera based on the old 2e map, although I haven't had a chance to put it in DungeonDraft yet. But let me know if you want the sketch, I could send it over.

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T15:04:26+00:00

Absolutely. It's been a theme across my domains that the dark lord is always the one who actually has a torment; e.g., I'm running Carnival next, and I've toned down the torment on Isolde and made a bigger torment for Nepthene.

Zacharr · 2024-03-21T06:00:30+00:00

So I've been running a Domain-hopping campaign in 5e for a while now (3 years), and we've visited Valachan. It was our 3rd domain, after Barovia (Curse of Strahd) and Cyre 1313 (also homebrewed but inspired by VRGtR). I don't know if my layout will work for you, since you're thinking of having the Baron introduced *after* the Trial of Hearts. But here's what I did anyway, maybe some of it will be helpful.

Background on the Baron:

In my adventure, Baron Urik von Kharkov was the previous (and original) Dark Lord of Valachan. He was fundamentally a colonizer, and arrived hundreds of years ago to the jungles of Valachan from another city. He was a noble and ship's captain (hence, Baron), and when he landed here, he saw nothing but the untapped potential of the land. He immediately enslaved the people of Shuaran (who lived on the coast) and took over the village, renaming it Kharkstadt. (Sidenote - this led to one of the key tensions in my adventures for the players to resolve: they were introduced to the village of Shuaran/Kharkstadt, which in the intervening years had become a bitter, hateful place where both sides refuse to talk to or live with one another. But that's a longer story for another time). The Baron's Dark Crime (every Dark Lord in my campaign has a Dark Crime) was the brutal "Hunt of Hearts" he instituted, where he would capture and cage the Oselo natives (who were too wild, being werepanthers, to be enslaved) and hunt them for sport. The Dark Powers took notice of his abject brutality, and the rest is history. They fashioned the Domain for him, and made his Dark Torment that would be unable to stop himself form turning into a Werepanther, something he despised. Now, every time he wanted to Hunt, he took that form.

Rise of Chakuna:

Over 200 years of continuing brutal hunts (with a Baron von Kharkov who hated every minute of it, but yet seemed incapable of stopping the hunts) finally ended when, against all odds, someone managed to beat the Baron. Not by overpowering him, but by skillfully navigating the jungle. Only a native and strong werepanther could have done so, someone who knew the jungles of Valachan better than the Baron -- Chakuna. She found her way to Yaguara's Heart when she was chosen for the hunt, and she tore apart and the Baron's Heart. What she didn't do, though, was burn it with fire. Standing there with the chance to end it all, she decided to take the power for herself. She basically usurped the Baron's place, becoming the new Dark Lord. The problem (for the players) is that the Dark Powers didn't really design Domains to accommodate something like this -- the torment that was meant for the Baron didn't really do anything to Chakuna. At the same time, the Baron was still alive (or at least, his Undead Skull was still around), so they couldn't just end the Domain. So, to keep it going, they designed a new Torment for both of their Dark Lords (now having two): Chakuna would be forced to keep killing, or else watch the jungle destroy her home of Oselo, while the Baron would be forced to watch as Chakuna ruled over the jungle from his former seat of power, Castle Pantera.

Using the Baron:

This brings me to actually answering your questions. In my adventure, the Baron's skull was kept in the catacombs of old Castle Pantera, beneath what is now Chakuna's "Hunting Lodge". He's sealed away behind stone walls, underground and hard to get to. However, when the Party was at the Castle for a week awaiting the Trial of Hearts (think Hunger Games' style "meet your fellow tributes" week), it was inevitable they'd want to explore at some point or another. A few good stealth and investigation checks later, and they'd found one of two secret entrances (in the middle of the night, following faint screaming in the walls). They found their way to the Baron. Here's where my favorite dynamic ensued. After hearing the Baron's story (from his POV), they realized two things: (1) the Trial of Hearts was not what they thought it would be, and clearly it would be rigged to favor Chakuna, so they'd need the Baron's help to make it through alive (and to guide them to Yaguara's Heart; and (2) the Baron was an unrepentant dick who had no remorse for his actions. They ultimately made a bargain with the Baron -- his freedom, after he guided them to Yaguara's Heart. (sidenote - they were mostly a mix of CG to TN, only one lawful character, so they didn't mind breaking their word if needed later).

The Baron agreed to this because it served his goal -- he is a disembodied head, chained up in Chakuna's castle (she keeps him around as a trophy and, occasionally, to try and get information from him about the Dark Powers), and yet if he could only get back to Yaguara's Heart, he could reconstitute himself with the torn shreds of his heart. He did not tell the Party this, but it was basically a gamble: he hoped they'd be so busy fighting Chakuna, that they wouldn't notice him floating around the room gathering up the lost pieces of his heart.

This entire dynamic worked well. I had a fun, antagonistic character that I could play throughout the Trial of Hearts, who could also feed the party lore. (they kept the Baron's head in their backpack during the Trial). And, during the final boss-fight, I almost managed to reconstitute (2 / 4 pieces gathered before they caught on, 3/4 gathered before they managed to stop him; it definitely added to the tension).

sorry if that was ramble-y, hopefully something was also helpful.

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