The Golgari Swarm

OVERVIEW

The Golgari Swarm live deep below the city surfac ein a massive network of channels and caverns in The Undercity. They believe that the constant circle and recycling of nature is critical to the survival of civilisation. Their organization is mad eup of Devkarin(Undead Elves), Medusas, Elves, and the Insectile Kraul, although any race is welcome to join their ranks; dead or alive. The Golgari Swarm is the embodiment of life and death. The teeming masses of the Swarm believe that life and death are both natural and equally essential too. To them, these aspects are natural elements of a cycle with no intermediary break. Growth is power that comes slowly, but it is also ruthless and inevitable, and this makes growth a key virtue of the Swarm's power. Their necromantic magic has made the Golgari the largest Ravnican guild. Much like a swarm of insects, the Golgari often seem to behave more like a single organism than as a group of individuals. The whole Swarm is driven by a primal instinct to survive and reproduce. Their revered Parun is the legendary necromancer Svogthir, the "God-Zombie".

PURPOSE

The original mandate of the Swarm under the leadership of Svogthir, was to maintain Ravnica's agriculture and manage its waste. The Golgari accomplish this task by recycling and reusing everything. They grow food from decay in the Rot Farms and employ everything from giant ants to fungal zombies to gather the trash from the rest of the city and bring it down into the undercity. Because of their work with waste and their turf being beneath the surface streets, many above ground inhabitants loathe or fear the Swarm.

CORE VALUES

Their Parun's interests in necromancy and eventual transformation into a Lich shaped the course of the guild's activities and gave birth to its philosophy of embracing death as a part of nature's cycle. The Swarm believes that the notion that life and death are opposing forces is nothing but a naive sentimentality. They know everything crumbles and rots in the end, and then new life springs from that rot. Time inevitably passes, bringing both destruction and new creation to all things. The Swarm celebrates the growth and vibrancy of the natural world, but gives equal attention to nature's facets of destruction, decay, and death. It finds allies and agents in the form of fungi, oozes, diseases, and other unsavory aspects of nature, and it uses the power of nature actively toward the goal of advancing its own place in the world. But the Golgari have also learned patience from nature; they are content to work from the shadows, harnessing the energy that comes from decay while the above ground civilization of Ravnica slowly erodes and destroys itself.

GOALS

The teeming Swarm believe it is finally their time to shine. They have dwelled under the streets and under the sway of the other guilds for too long. They are convinced that Ravnica's institutions are now on the verge of collapse and the absence of the Guildpact proves it. The Swarm is not surprised by this development, knowing that all things decay and bloom new life. As such, they see the looming interguild conflict as a necessary final push to bring about a new era - their era. In preparation for this glorious day, and to protect Golgari interests in the meantime, Savra maintains a council of shamans and rogues to serve as a combination of advisory parliament and spy network.

ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

The leadership of the Swarm has undergone several major changes, but the nature of the guild makes it easily adaptable to the churn of continuous cycles. Being alive isn't a prerequisite for leadership, as demonstrated by their current Guildmaster Savra. Assassination is seen as a perfectly valid means of effecting political change. Various 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. Lower ranking individuals of the Swarm live in the shadow of the various factions and their leaders. The machinations among Elves, Medusas, Kraul, and other creatures rarely bring any significant improvement to the lives of the Swarm's countless members, but often cause disruption and occasionally disaster. Most guild members believe it's best to keep their heads down and stay out of the political conflict and to avoid attracting the disfavor of the Ochran, the guild's order of assassins. More adventurous members might enjoy intrigue and politics, or might unwittingly become tangled up in the schemes of the guild's leaders. Unlike the rigid hierarchy of most other guilds, the Swarm are shaped by the factions within them. Each of these have their own goals and agendas parallel to the function of the guild.

Teratogens The Teratogens are the large, monstrous side of the swarm. This faction consists of mostly non-humanoids like plants, harpies, and nagas as well as monstrous humanoids like Gorgons, Sporefolk, Mutants, and other monsters. In the earlier days, this faction reigned through sheer force, but eventually, most likely because of the monstrous and often unintelligent nature of many Teratogen monsters, their place in the swarm fell down to simple security, keeping overworlders out of Golgari turf; however, the more intelligent among their ranks, namely the Gorgans, take this responsibility to the next level and leverage their positions as speakers for the monstrous hordes of the Swarm to gain political clout.

Devkarin The Devkarin, or "Elves of Deep Shadow" in ancient Ravnican Lore, are a brooding winsome race of Elf that are often quite ambitious. For vast swaths of history, the Devkarin existed within the Swarm, serving as powerful guildmages, loyal spies, and even reliably doing blue collar work such as Fungal Farming. Eventually, the Devkarin ascended to the top of the Swarm, forming their own political faction within it. Not every Devkarin is a member of this faction in the Swarm, some belong to the Street Swarm or the Ochran. The leader of this faction is known as the Matka, the High Priestess. The current Matka is Izoni Thousand-Eyes. A group of chosen Devkarin known as the Cilia guard and assist the Matka and even the Guildmaster if the current master is themself a Devkarin.

Lotleth The Lotleth are the Golgari's irregular faction of undead, necromancers, fungus-binders, and other members associated with the restless dead that assist the Swarm. Although most Golgari undead are mindless fungal constructions maintained by necromantic magic, the Lotleth do have some more or less intelligent undead among them, plus a few higher-ranked necromancers who speak for the faction. Generally, the Lotleth serve as a labor force for the Golgari's constant program of reclamation and expansion. The current leader of the Lotleth is Wratislav, a skilled but conceited human necromancer.

Kraul The Kraul lived for ages on the periphery of the Swarm as part of the Teratogens, but they are now an ascendant and unique faction with the Swarm. These six-legged insectile beings are hard-headed and literal-minded. Their current leader is Mazirek and their military are known as the Krunstraz. Because of their strange perspective, this faction is often very difficult to work with depending on who the leader of the Swarm is, sometimes refusing to help or hindering the political machinations of a Guildmaster they don't respect.

Streetswarm The Street Swarm forms Golgari's labor class. This faction includes corpse scavengers, low-ranking street shamans, rot farmers, tunnel trolls, and various other worker insects and creatures that assist in the menagerie duties that contribute to the function of daily Ravnican society. Each neighborhood of Ravnica tends to have its own chapter of the Street Swarm, and each chapter is led by a local Swarm-Boss. Spore Druids specialize in fungi, moss, molds and other decomposers. Reclaimers are Elf and Kraul scavengers who patrol the city and gather the dead to be recycled

Ochran Although many discount them as an urban legend, "the assassins of the Ochran" are a Golgari cult of mercenaries operating out from the Undercity and specializing in vengeance killings. The word cult is used because the Brotherhood of Assassins have their own unique bylaws that are separate from the rest of the Swarm. Members belong to the Ochran and owe no other political party besides the Swarm as a whole their allegiance. The Ochran, most of them Devkarin elves, are known for the virulence of their poisons and the excruciating ways they can extinguish a life. Most of these poisons are made from the remains of previous assassination targets. Ochran can be excommunicated from the cult for breaking their bylaws or other heinous acts against the family or the Swarm as a whole. Ex-Ochran operatives are in great danger because their previously unknown association with the cult are revealed to everyone in the community.

Erstwhile A delicate and sophisticated race of elves known as the Erstwhile once were an important faction in Ravnica. They were laid to rest in coffins in Umerilek, Mausoleum of the Erstwhile. They returned as Zombie Attendants of Vraska. In contrast to the regular fungus-animated zombies of the Golgari, they retain a higher degree of intellegence and agency. They continue to wear their stately attire, despite its moldering and rot. The leader of the Erstwhile is the powerful lich Storrev, who is solely responsible for keeping her entire race in a state of undeath since countless centuries ago until this very day.

The Golgari, and especially the Medusas and Elves among them, tend to be a little arrogant about their importance to Ravnican life. Indeed their pursuits are important. The Golgari ensure nothing is wasted, recycling waste and refuse, corpses, food, and vegetation. They also provide a great deal of aid to the poor of Ravnica so that no one would ever have to go without a meal, even if it is recycled corpse gruel.