► Guilds

Information:
Founded by parun Razia, a militant flaming-sword-wielding archangel capable of using flame and light magic who fervently and firmly believes in harmonious coexistence on Ravnica, even if lives are lost and blood is shed in achieving this, the Boros Legion functions as the righteous and zealous constabulary and standing army of Ravnica, as the League of Wojek and Boros Army, respectively, and enforces Ravnican laws created by the Azorius Senate.

The Boros Legion has a complicated, contrived, and highly stratified hierarchy, with the upper levels comprising angels and guildmages and lower levels comprising the League of Wojek and the Boros Army. Within the lower levels, Boros Army officers that outrank League of Wojek officers may issue orders to such individuals; but, the reverse is not true for League of Wojek officers that outrank Boros Army officers.

Species and Races:

• Angels
• Elementals
• Giants
• Goblins
• Griffins
• Humans
• Minotaurs
• Rocs
• Viashino
  

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Believing that their legislation to be the singular force that prevents Ravnica from descending into chaos, the Azorius Senate mediates and regulates the activities of all of the other guilds and of the plane despite numerous of their decrees being ignored.The Azorius Senate are characterized as being aloof, bureaucratic, excessively formalistic, and fastidious, spending hours upon hours with legal documents and ensuring action, if any should occur, stringently adheres to protocol. For such reasons, the Azorius are deeply disdained by Ravnicans, whom the Azorius believe will effect a change and subsequent crime, chaos, and general decline in civic life. The Azorius are said to act through inaction.

The Azorius Senate works alongside the Boros Legion and Selesnya Conclave to see to the enforcement of the law and the Orzhov Syndicate, to the provision of advocates and lawmages for accusers/claimants/complainants/plaintiffs and defendants. Ultimately, however, the Azorius advocates for blind justice, peace, and the status quo, doing so via their intrinsic involvement in all affairs on Ravnica and with their legions of knights and paladins as well as mages adept in countermagic, magic to disable and hinder those who would break the law, and other law magic.

The rigid hierarchy of the Azorius Senate is reflected in the guild's triangle-shaped crest; most Azorius functionaries report to one superior, and are reported to by two subordinates.

Species and Races:

• Archons
• Birds
• Cats
• Elementals
• Golems
• Griffins
• Humans
• Sphinxes
• Spirits
• Vedalken
  

Classes:

• Advisors
• Knights
• Soldiers
• Wizards

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Information: 

House Dimir was founded by the ancient vampire Szadek. The vampire was one of the ten paruns that signed the Guildpact and remained in charge of the guild for the subsequent 10,000 years. One of the crucial clauses of the Guildpact was that none of the signatories (including Szadek) could reveal the existence of the Dimir to Ravnica's people, protecting the guild's anonymity while forcing it to remain hidden. This created a flaw in the Guildpact's structure that would eventually allow it to be broken.

Officially, the guild does not exist. The Ravnican people generally believe that there are only nine guilds and that if there ever was a tenth, it dissolved thousands of years ago. The name Dimir is not known by most people and those that do know it believe it to be a myth, children's story or a paranoid conspiracy theory. This misinformation is actively propagated by the Dimir themselves as a method for avoiding suspicion.

The guild operates on a strictly need-to-know basis. At the top of its hierarchy is the leader. Only he is fully aware of all of the guild's activities. Beneath him are the necrosages, who oversee the guild's activities from Duskmantle. They manipulate the flow of information, keeping the guild informed on all things whilst keeping the rest of the plane ignorant. Few individuals are ever allowed to meet the guild's leaders, as instead a network of middlemen are employed to pass on messages to cells of field operatives. Agents at the very bottom of the guild only meet a mysterious individual in a back alley that gives them some basic information on their target and nothing else.

The Dimir's guildmages use their magic to influence the minds of others. They can send messages to operatives over distances or strike people with amnesia, magically alter memories or even perform lobotomies on victims to cover their tracks. The Dimir also practice necromancy, creating undead minions such as skeletons and wights to carry out missions. Such minions are employed as they are single-minded, easy to create and dispose of, cannot be interrogated in the event of capture and are easily blamed on the Golgari instead. 

Spirits are also used by the Dimir to pass on messages, carry out surveillance invisibly or even to possess important figures such as judges and senators. Nobody is beyond the reach of House Dimir.

Species and Races:

• Drakes
• Humans
• Horrors
• Shapeshifters
• Skeletons
• Spirits
• Vampires
• Zombies
  

Classes:

• Rogue
• Wizards

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The Golgari Swarm is the embodiment and amalgamation of life and death.The guild believes that life and death are both natural and are essential to, and as essential as, one another, with life and death being natural elements of a cycle with no intermediary break. Growth, and thus power, however slowly but ruthlessly and inevitably, are key to the Swarm, As a consequence of their necromantic magic, the Golgari are the largest Ravnican guild.

The Golgari Swarm is known to refer to, and revere, its parun, the legendary necromancer Svogthir, as the "god-zombie".

Species and Races:

• Beasts 
• Elementals 
• Elves (Devkarin) 
• Fungi 
• Gorgons 
• Horrors 
• Humans 
• Hounds 
• Imps 
• Insects 
• Oozes 
• Plants 
• Saprolings 
• Scorpions 
• Skeletons 
• Trolls 
• Wurms 
• Zombies
  

Classes:

• Druids
• Shamans
  

Information:

The Gruul decentralized, lacking any sort of real leadership. Now the guild is nothing but a loose affiliation of clans and they are angry. They have been exploited and ignored and they've had enough. They take any reason to cause chaos, any reason to destroy a symbol of civilization.

It is common for Gruul clans to raid an area, destroy it, and live there until the resources gleaned from the destructive raid are used up. Once that happens, they move on to a new area, leaving smoldering ruins in their wake.

Borborygmos is the largest and angriest of many large and angry clan leaders. He is not the official guildleader of the Gruul as there is little official about the guild, but when he gives orders, the Gruul listen. As his orders are in line with the rage of the abused guild, they are happy to do so. There is also Ulasht, the Hate Seed. Though it isn't a part of any clan, it is revered by many Gruul as a natural embodiment of pure destruction and mindless rage.

Clans:

The Burning Tree Clan is the most influential in the guild, and is also the home of Borborygmos. They make sure that everyone in the Clans remembers who has held them down and destroyed their guild and then lets that rage loose on civilization. They are often tattooed with the crest of the guild.

The Scab Clan is the most violent of the Gruul Clans for every member of it has been tortured, or mutilated, or crippled by the organizations of civilization. The members of this clan make up for physical deficiency by cooperating with each other.

Little is known about the Ghor Clan, however, Rauck-Chauv, a holiday celebrated many times a year by the Gruul, is named after their two-headed leader. It is likely the Ghor are the most hedonistic clan. 

Species and Races:

• Centaurs
• Cyclopes
• Elementals
• Giants
• Goblins
• Humans
• Phoenix
• Viashino
• Wurms
  

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Information:

The Izzet League are charged with attending to Ravnican civic works,including water supply systems, sewers, heating systems, boilers, and roadways. In addition to carrying out these functions, the Izzet members — obsessive, keen, and creative intellectuals, who often have short attention spans — are known to perform magical experiments, ever with reckless abandon and sometimes with spectacular but severe results. Unlike the other guilds, the Izzet do not strive for hegemony of the city and plane of Ravnica or power at all; integral to the Izzet League, a guild of masters of both theoretical and applied science and spellcraft, however, the passionate seeking and thirst for knowledge. Combined with their drive for discovery and child-like curiosity, the brilliant but capricious and whimsical Izzet magewrights jump to and from ideas as they see fit, discarding old ideas for new ones that attract their attention. In this regard, they can likened to ambivalent or benevolent mad and absent-minded scientists/professors.

Similarly to the Cult of Rakdos, the Izzet League, with its worship of its parun and guildmaster of the Izzet League, Niv-Mizzet, has been described as a cult of personality.

Species and Races:

• Djinni
• Dragons
• Drakes
• Elementals(Weirds)
• Faeries
• Goblins
• Humans
• Ogres
  

Class:

• Wizards

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Their white flavor can be seen in that they have a strong sense of tradition and community, reflected by the fact that they still go through all of their ancient rituals and customs despite not truly worshipping any gods, and by that they hoard all their wealth to themselves but will gladly share with family members or close friends. Their black flavor can be seen in that they regularly deal with the dead, they never give to charity if they can help it, and continually violate the spirit of the law solely to meet their own ends.

The Syndicate is famous for dealing with ghosts. They are presided over by a council of ghosts, the Obzedat, in Orzhova, the Church of Deals. Should somebody be in debt to them (as many are), that person must work off their debt even beyond the grave. The Orzhov work so thoroughly with death that they even know how to make thrulls out of the remains of the dead.

The high-ranking members of the Orzhov use magical means to extend their lives, and are mutated in many ways that they pass on to their offspring. For example, one of Teysa Karlov's legs is practically useless, and therefore she has been forced to use a walking cane since she she learned to walk.

Species and Races:

• Angels
• Bats
• Gargoyles
• Humans
• Spirits
• Thrulls
  

Classes:

• Advisors
• Clerics
• Wizards
  

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Members of the demon-worshipping guild are referred to as cultists. Like extreme utilitarians or hedonists, the Cult of Rakdos are a guild that places a premium on personal pleasure, or "fun", even if it cruelly causes pain and suffering to others and themselves. Some of the crueler, more evil, and more sadistic members of the Cult directly and intentionally inflict pain on others. Other than being a guild of miscreants, the Cult of Rakdos does have a civic function in Ravnican society per the Guildpact; some members work as manual laborers and even slaves.

Rakdos is the undisputed center of attention of the Cult when he is awake; when the demon is hibernating, however, there is an acting guildmaster. At the time of the Decamillennial, the acting guildmaster was the human sorceress Izolda (or Lyzolda).

Formally, the guild has no structure, and is not organized; however, members are affiliated with loose groups referred to as "rings", each of which is led by a ringmaster and with its own sphere of influence, commodities, and cult followers.

Species and Races:

• Avatars
• Demons
• Devils
• Dragons
• Goblins
• Horses
• Horrors
• Hounds
• Humans
• Imps
• Nightmares
• Ogres
• Rats
• Shades
• Thrulls
• Zom
  

Classes:

• Berserkers
• Clerics
• Shamans
• Warriors
• Wizards
  

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Information:

Despite their superficial, and readily misapprehended, appearance of being a "good" and "peace-loving" guild, the Conclave, often employing their quietmen and other members to silence the civilians of Ravnica and wreak havoc to Ravnica, are, in truth, hypocritical and as sinister, if not more so, than other Ravnican guilds.

Species and Races:

• Centaurs 
• Dryads 
• Elephants (loxodons) 
• Elementals 
• Elves 
• Humans 
• Hydras 
• Plants 
• Saprolings 
• Wolves 
• Wurms
  

Classes:

• Archers
• Clerics
• Soldiers
• Shamans
• Warriors
• Wizards
  

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Information:

With the fall of Momir Vig, the Simic were left in desrepair, until Ravnica's subterranean merfolk emerged, and with them the new guildmaster, Zegana. The new Simic have returned to their holistic, druid-like roots, embracing the Upwelling/Holdfast principles.

The emotionally distant relationship that the Simic biomancers have with the rest of Ravnica's society makes the common man wary of the guild, thinking of them as crazy mutant makers. Even so, the Simic make up the physicians of Ravnica and so injuries and illness are taken to the reputable doctors.

Novijen is the genetics laboratory where the Simic design and perfect their biological experiments. It is a hybrid of living matter and sculpted stone held in place by thick cables designed to keep it isolated from the surrounding structures.

Species and Races:

• Basilisks
• Drakes
• Elementals
• Elves
• Faeries
• Humans
• Merfolk
• Mutants
• Saprolings
• Trolls
• Vedalken
  

Classes:

• Doctors
• Nurses
• Wizards