 Howdy how's it going? My name's Davy Chappy, and do you know something? I don't really know much about Magic the Gathering. I played it a little when I was younger, but it just- it never clicked with me outside of reading the story that came with the cards. But, lucky for me, I happen to be friends with someone who does know all about Magic, so this video is just gonna be me hanging out with the nerdiest nerdcore rapper this side of the coast, Rustage. Hello everyone, my name's Rustage. I'm like an anime rapper guy, but I'm also a huge fan of Magic the Gathering. Alright, let's do this! My name is Davy Chappy and I'm here to say I'm gonna get cringy in a major way! Um, what are you doing? I'm rapping. Why? What's wrong? Are my beats not fresh enough? I can get fresher beats. Uh, I mean, I just thought I was coming on to talk about Magic the Gathering. Oh, yeah, that- right, yeah, no, that would be a better idea. Yeah. Okay, um, so, in rapidly- I mean, who would want to hear me rap? I mean, come on, that's so lame. Um, are you okay? Do you need a second? No, no, no, just go on. Keep going, why'd you even start? Right, alright, okay. So, the world of Ravnica is best understood as one huge world-spanning city with ten vastly different organizations vying for total control over it. The organizations are called guilds, and they have effective control over at least one important facet of the life of Ravnica, to the point where about half of Ravnica's entire population belongs to one of the ten. Long ago, these guilds would battle in the streets, and their conflict threatened to level all of Ravnica. But before the world could fall, a pact was made. A pact between each of the ten guilds of Ravnica, that segmented each guild into a specific lot in life and prevented any guild from expanding its power, or trying to take it from another guild. And, for a time, Ravnica was at peace. However, ten thousand years later, the magic of the pact was broken, and Ravnica was plunged into guild warfare once more. For a short time, the guilds were able to postpone mutually assured destruction by imitating the rules of the guild pact, but it was only a band-aid on the wound. Until one day, a contingency was found, one that would forge a new guild pact. Through a series of magical misadventures, the guild pact was reforged in a new way. Its power and authority bestowed onto one man, named Jace Bellerin. As the new living guild pact, any word that Jace said became law, and was unbreakable by any of the guilds. However, for reasons that he would never share, Jace Bellerin had a habit of disappearing for long stretches of time, his location impossible to track, leaving Ravnica without a guild pact until he sees fit to return. This new reality doesn't sit well with any of the guilds, and time will tell how long it will take for all of them to descend back into war. But before you can start prepping for the end of days, you have to know all the key players, so let's delve into each and every one of the guilds in Ravnica! The Azoria Senate is the police force of Ravnica, set to be the magical beat cops that have nine other guilds worth a shit that they are too tired for. The Senate is made up of three columns, the Gelling column which makes up laws, the Sova column which debates laws, and the Liev column which enforces laws. While the ultimate idea is for the Azoria Senate to create a utopia out of Ravica, they tend to overlay their plans right on top of all the other guilds, which causes a lot of pushback from anybody that doesn't want the fuzz on their bums. Still, their legal authority over all matters makes it hard to say no to them, and they pride themselves on having very powerful law mages that use their magics to protect the innocent, enchant people into telling the truth, and use powers of divination to both uncover the secrets of crimes and stop future crimes before they can happen. Where the Azoria Senate takes an imperialist approach to the law, the boros legion finds strength in, well, strength, embodying the might and zeal of a religious force, bolstered with the power of angels, and tempered with the duty to protect all that is good. The boros legion shines a staunch middle finger in the face of the Azorias' unflinching and unbendable laws, by instead sending all of its newly recruited members to the Horizon Military Academy, where members learn not how to follow the rules as written, but how to enforce the rules as intended, which often causes the Azoria Senate to see them as vigilantes instead of true allies, when a member of the boros legion has to break a law to get that good boy job done. If you've ever wanted to join a plant cult that worships life and death as the same basic thing, then the Golgari Swarm might be good for you, ruled by an elf lich named Jarad. The Golgari want the world to go back to the wild, untamed world it once was, and they keep a symbiotic relationship with all of nature's creations, even the scary ones. This symbiotic relationship forms the face of the Golgari personality, as each member doesn't see themselves or other members as individuals, but as pieces in a great whole swarm, a swarm that will never deteriorate with death as death is just the next stage of life, with Jace having gone to nowhere in particular, and with Ravnica starting to show its cracks as a result, the Golgari are taking this as a sign that it's time for civilization to go back to its roots. What can I say about House Demir? No, really. What can I say? The whole organization is a spine network dedicated to controlling the world through misinformation and instigating fear about everybody else among the populace. So most of the information about them is shrouded in so much secrecy that any fact about them could just be another one of those lies. They may not even be a House Demir. I may not even be called Rusted. I could just be Dabby Chappy with a voice changer. That's how deep this rabbit hole goes. Demir is so dedicated to keeping their secrets that they even went so far as to create a unique spell that only members of their guild can use, which lets them pull memories out of themselves and others and turn them into little strands of magic that can only be read by other members of the Demir. The only thing that is for certain is that their spine network has feelers in every other guild. So members need to be careful when speaking to even their own guildmates, or they risk feeding their own sensitive information to the Demir. Now, if you want all that wild emotion but packaged into a nice little glass bottle and shaken in with a jar of smart stuff, the Is it League of Inventors and Magicians wants to create the greatest inventions they can as fast as they can, and they want to go out with a bang. Is it guild members all share an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that would rival House Demir? But where Demir goes out in search of secrets that somebody else already knows, the Is it League prefers to question, answer, and twist all in one. They create invention after invention just to see what it's possible to make, and their experimenting is often fueled by their saying that the only action worth taking is one with an unknown outcome. And they could give a damn about the rest of the guilds unless they start to ruin their projects or, better yet, just come to join in. Another guild that would prefer it if all of Ravnica's cities crumbled and burned away had the Gryll Clans of Barbarians, Berserkers, Brutes, and Brigands. Where the Gorgari swarm wants the world to revert back to nature's grand design, the Gryll Clans don't want any design at all. Whether that be civilized or natural, they detest the idea of anyone telling them what to do and they emphasize the importance of letting your emotions run wild and trample anything or anyone in its path. If they had it their way, the world would be a lawless wasteland populated by those that society rejected but owned by those who rejected society themselves. They say that no good deed goes unpunished and no one knows that better than the Orzav's Syndicate. The Orzav have their hand in any and every money-making scheme in Ravnica and if they don't, they will. From being the main bank where all money comes and goes to being the religious center of Ravnica, where for a commensurate fee you could buy your way free of all divine punchments, the Orzav Syndicate seeks to grow into the most powerful and influential guild using the language that everybody can understand, money. And for the Orzav, your debts aren't freed and debt. Not only are the leaders of the Syndicate undead creatures themselves, but they will bind the soul of anyone who still owes a debt to them and in doing so, they have created a small army of what they call indentured spirits who will work until their obligations are paid off. The Orzav Syndicate seeks a binding control of the world for the ultimate purpose of bringing order and stability to Ravnica by keeping everybody on a level playing field. Everybody but them. But maybe if you don't like the idea of being a nefarious bad guy hiding behind the public facade of a good guy, maybe you would enjoy cutting off all of that BS and just being a bad shit, crazy Kotis! The Cult of Ractos, otherwise known as the Cloud Cult! Sorry, I'll stop there. The Cult of Ractos has no reason to be tolerated, and yet it is as it populates its members with gestures, performers, and artists looking to entertain the masses with the greatest show but just behind that cover to the point where they not only don't hide it but actively revel in it and make it part of the act is a worship of the great demon Ractos, the embodiment of selfishness, lust, hedonism, and evil. Cultists of Ractos believe that life is always just a stone's throw away from death. Anyway, so why fear it by putting up rules and regulations that will just slow down your life and prevent you from doing things that you really want to do? And so the Ractos Guild members have nothing to do all day but mess with the other guild. Since, honestly, there's really no structure too sacred when everything else can go to hell. The guild that understands that nature will always find a way but isn't interested in waiting for that process is the Simic Combine. The guild dedicated to body modification and biological experimentation. They believe that expediting nature's evolution will help all of Ravnica achieve a higher sense of being, but will never let their experiments venture beyond the natural, lest they encroach upon the domain of the is-it. Promotion and perfection are the principles that punctuate the Simic Combine and they are sure that, as long as the other guilds don't try to muck anything up, their way is the way to a perfect utopia. But not if the Celesnya Conclave has anything to say about it. Many guilds have a problem with civilization. They want a controller or they much rather burn it to the ground. But the Celesnya Conclave sees that there doesn't need to be such a divide between nature and modern life. The two can easily connect in harmony and that's what the Celesnya aims to achieve. By following the teachers of Matt Celesnya, that's like the lead of the Demir was named David Apostrophe Demir. Following the teachers of Matt Celesnya, the world soul, who is, by the way, a union of several dryads. So he is essentially seven dryads in a trench coat. It's not even a heat. What is it? What are you? Anyway, the Conclave is a peacekeeping guild, not through laws and arbitration, but through peace, tranquility, and failing that, a large fuck-off army that could crush almost any other. The guild isn't naive enough to think that happiness and sunshine is all that it takes, but it also isn't jaded enough to think that the world still isn't full of happiness and sunshine, regardless of whether you want it to be or not. And the Celesnya Conclave knows that making such arrogant assumptions is why none of the other guilds were outlast Matt Celesnya. But that'll about do it. Hope you enjoyed this video. Thank you so much for Rustage coming on the show, talking about Magic the Gathering. Thank you so much for having me. You can check me out on YouTube, YouTube.com slash Rustage. Anyway, like that, I do raps about anime mostly, but if you're interested in that, come and check me out. I, you know, it's music. Listen, with your ears. Please go check him out on his channel, where he is way cooler than I am. Be sure to subscribe to him, like him, follow him on Patreon. Does he have a Patreon? I don't even know. If he doesn't, follow me on my Patreon. Or better yet, save your money. It's your money. Do what you want to do with it. But yeah. Davie out.