Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica

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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