Friday, May 3, 2013

Dragon's Maze

For the release of Dragon's Maze I have decided to do something special. In the comments, post your favorite guild. Each comment you post is worth 1 point for your guild. And if you are a subscriber your guild gets 2 points. For the winning guild I will make a special post. If you want to take Wizards guild quiz, you can find it here.

I will post a brief description of the guilds below.

Azorius
Also known as the High Judges, the Azorius Senate is Ravnica’s ostensible government. The guild considers itself to be the mediator and controller of all other guilds’ activities, even though most of its countless decrees are largely ignored. The Azorius Senate does wield real power, and other guilds are aware that if the Azorius had their way, they would be in charge over the entire metropolis. The Azorius’s reach has waxed and waned depending on economics, cultural trends, and other guilds’ activities.
Orzhov
The Orzhov guild is founded on the beliefs that wealth is power, that structure breeds wealth, and that guilt creates structure. The guild is run like a combination religion, credit-lending agency, and crime syndicate. An ostentatious hierarchy of priests, enforcers, and ghostly councilors rules over a congregation of guilt-bound loyalists, indebted undead, and thrull servants. Many Orzhov guild members truly believe that their rule is necessary for making Ravnica the best it can be, and they are unscrupulous in their methods of seizing power. Most Ravnicans see the Orzhov for the corrupt organization they are, but many are lured in by their promises of wealth, prestige, and longevity.
Dimir
In the dark, slick corridors of the undercity lurks the unfathomable network of the Dimir guild. House Dimir is Ravnica’s dark but open secret: the populace knows Dimir exists but they pretend it doesn’t. The Dimir’s role in Ravnica is to provide covert services that other guilds can’t or won’t, using their secrecy as both weapon and defense. Dimir is hidden even from itself, using pockets of covert agents who are aware of only a few other contacts. Dimir agents leave no trace, destroying memories of witnesses to their crimes, and even going so far as to eliminate their own memories of their assignments.
Izzet
The Izzet are obsessive experimenters, the epitome of keen creative intellect combined with an unfortunately short attention span. The original mandate of the Izzet guild was to provide solutions for public works projects (sewers, boilers, roadways), but their experiments often produce mana geysers, spatial rifts, or arcane portals instead. As of late, their guildmaster, the dragon Niv-Mizzet, has driven the Izzet to delve deeper and deeper into more dangerous and experimental magic. The purpose of these experiments is unknown.
Rakdos
The Rakdos Cult is a large group of hedonists, sadists, criminals, and psychopaths under the leadership of a powerful demon named Rakdos. The Rakdos Cult combines an instinctual bloodlust and desire for power. They’re sadistic and cruel simply for the fun of it. Opportunistic violence is their modus operandi. Mayhem and personal enjoyment is their goal. They want Ravnica to bow to their whims and anything that gets in their way—or happens to be walking by—is fair game.
Golgari
The Golgari Swarm fuses the opposite values of life and death, fostering growth in Ravnica's decaying communities but also fostering decay in places of growth. The elves, zombies, insects, and undead/plant hybrids of the Golgari are like one massive growing, feeding organism, collectively spreading across the plane wherever they can fit. The Golgari provide a necessary service in Ravnica: they dispose of the carcasses civilization leaves behind, and mysteriously they also provide sustenance for the forgotten and the needy. They are the scavengers and decomposers at the fringes of the food chain, but yearn to be the predators at the top.
Gruul
The Gruul are a loose affiliation of savage clans who squat in Ravnica’s alleyways, abandoned zones, and overgrown ruins. Many Gruul warriors and shamans have come to occupy the Rubblebelt, a broken thread of war-ruined land and settlements that begins near the outskirts of Ravnica’s Tenth District. Warfare among the Gruul is constant and almost ritualistic; the Gruul believe that only the strong should survive and rule. The Gruul are the most anti-civilization and disenfranchised of all of Ravnica’s guilds, and as such are the most ill at ease in a world covered by city.
Boros
The Boros Legion is the guild of righteous law and fierce justice. The most formidable military force on Ravnica, the Boros are efficient, self-assured, and zealous in the pursuit of their ideals. The Boros believe passionately in law; to them it is the structure by which society functions and the road map for the community’s health and safety. Anything that violates the letter of the law, threatens the spirit of the law, or obstructs the enforcement of the law is considered an enemy of the Boros Legion. In effect, anyone who disagrees with the Boros is an enemy of the Boros.
Selesnya
The Selesnya guild sees itself as the voice of Mat’Selesnya, a mysterious consciousness they believe to be the manifestation of nature itself. All within the guild are considered mouthpieces of that singular voice, and they seek to expand their guild by evangelizing their message and adding members. The Selesnya message is personal as well as public: individuals must silence their own consciousness in order to hear the will of their guildmaster, a three-headed dryad who is the spiritual transmitter of Mat’Selesnya. 
Simic
The Simic Combine is Ravnica’s steward of nature and the wild; its mission is to preserve and advance the natural world even as Ravnica’s cities continue to grow. The guild seeks to protect the elements of the plane that are incompatible or mutually exclusive with its overpopulated, urban conditions. This is not easy, of course, because the forces of civilization are so prevalent on Ravnica that they threaten to subsume anything that runs counter to them. But the Simic practice a strange combination of detachment and holism that provide a kind of separation from the larger urban systems—a separation on which their conservation mission depends.

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