Gruul Clans

The Gruul Clans are a wild people in a civilized land, a loose affiliation of bands that squat on the fringes of Ravnican society. They shun the centers of civilization, which they see as a source of oppression and weakness, and instead haunt Ravnica’s alleyways, abandoned zones, and ruins. They want to see the edifice of civilization torn down so the world can revert to the pure wilderness that thrived before the city grew to cover everything. Then the true order of nature can be restored — an unbridled and brutal state in which only the strong survive and the strongest rule. In a world covered with city streets and towering buildings, the Gruul are the most out of place, the most ill at ease, and the most eager to topple it all and start fresh. Constant ritualistic warfare reverberates among the clans, every skirmish reinforcing their doctrine of the survival of the fittest. They frequently send sorties into civilized areas to secure goods — and to wreak havoc. The first leader of the Gruul was Cisarzim, a cyclops who was purportedly the ancestor of Borborygmos , the current guildmaster. Cisarzim was called the Lord of Chaos, and his guild’s original function as maintainers of Ravnica’s natural places meant keeping his faction as remote as possible from the civilized parts of the world. The gradual expansion of the city, however, has driven the Gruul into smaller and smaller refuges.