Guildmasters Guide To Ravnica

(Jeff_L) #1

Golgari Swarm


A S!vlALL CROWD OF PALE ELVES AND HUMANS STEPPED


into the light. Bits of bone and detritus woven into their
matted hair clicked lightly. Their chitinous armor swarmed
with tiny, riotous insects that moved in and out of the sheen
of moss growing on their shoulders-a bed for sprouting

fungi. Whether it was the Golgari themselves who had made


the chittering sound or their bugs. Ra/ could not be sure.
-Doug Beyer, Return to Ravnica: The Secretist

The teeming masses that compose th e Golgari Swarm
see themselves as pragmatic above all else, uncowed by
the simple fact that death is part of the cycle of life. They
believe the idea of life and death as opposing forces to
be nothing more than naive sentimentality. They know
everything crumbles and rots in the end, and then new
life springs from that rot. Time inevitably passes, bring-
ing both destruction and new creation to all things.
The original mandate of the Golgari Swarm under
the leaders hip of Svogthir, its Devkarin founder, was to
maintain Ravnica's agriculture and manage its waste.
But Svogthir's interest in necromancy, and his eventual
transformation into a lich, shaped the course of the
guild's activities and gave birth to its philosophy of em-
bracing death as part of nature's cycle.

I NSIDE T H E SWARM
The leadership of the Golgari has undergone several
major changes, but the nature of the s warm makes it
easily adaptable to the churn of continuous cycles. Being
alive isn't a prerequisite for leaders hip, as demonstrated
by the ru le of the current guild master, the elf lichJarad
Yod Savo. Assassination is seen as a perfectly valid
means of effecting political change, which is how Jarad's
s ister, Savra, took control of the guild before him. Var-
ious groups of people and monsters coexist within the
swarm, their relative power waxing and waning with the
years, and through it all, the guild goes on.

The three most important power groups within th e
Golgari are th e Devkarin elves, the medusas (also
called gorgons in Ravnica), and the insectile kraul.
Jarad is an undead representative of the Devkarin, so
the elves claim a privileged positi on within the guild for
the moment.
Members of the Golgari Swarm live in the shadow
of Jarad and the leaders of the individual factions. The
machinations among elves, medusas, kraul, and other
creatures rarely bring any significant improvement to
the lives of the s warm's countless members, but often
cause dis ruption and occasionally disaster. Most guild
members believe it's best to keep their heads down and
stay out of th e political conflict and to avoid attracting
the disfavor of the Och ran, the guild's order of assas-
sins. More adventurous members might enjoy intrigue
and politics, or might unwittingly become tangled up in
the schemes of the guild's leaders.
Jarad maintains a council of shamans and rogues to
serve as a combination of advisory parliament and spy
agency. These high chancellors rarely convene pub-
licly, preferring to disperse themselves throughout the
swarm to keep information flowing from the nucleus to
every part of the organism.

GOALS OF THE GOLGAR I
The Golgari Swarm celebrates the growth and vibrancy
of the natural world, but gives equa l attention to nature's
facets of destruction, decay, and death. It finds allies and
agents in the form of fungi, oozes, insects, diseases, and

Dark Elves of the Golgari

Also called the elves of shadow, the Devkarin are one of
the three branches of Ravnica's elf race. Like other elves,
the Devkarin are adept spellcasters, counting most of the
Golgari's shamans among their number.
After being cast out of the nascent Selesnya Conclave
millennia ago, the Devkarin found a home amid the cor-
rupted and overgrown places of Ravnica, and the Devkarin
necromancer Svogthir became the founder of the Golgari
Swarm. Since then, the Devkarin have been a major influ-
ence in the guild, even during the times when they didn't
hold absolute power. Regardless of who rules the guild, the
Devkarin follow the guidance of a high priest, called the
matka. The matka's spiritual leadership usually aligns with
the guildmaster's temporal commands, but during times
when the guild is ruled by a non-elf faction, the matka can
be a significant dissenting voice.

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