Chapter 4: Creating Adventures

This chapter provides a toolbox to help the Dungeon Master create adventures featuring the guilds of Ravnica. The tensions among the guilds, a constant current of animosity, provide a solid foundation for building adventures.

“Krenko’s Way” can be used to launch a Ravnica campaign.

The tables and advice in this chapter expand on the material in chapter 3 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Monsters and nonplayer characters mentioned on the tables can be found either in the Monster Manual or in chapter 6 of this book. When a creature’s name appears in bold type, that’s a visual cue pointing you to the creature’s stat block in the Monster Manual. If the stat block appears elsewhere, the text tells you so.

Guild-Based Adventures

Each guild gets a section in this chapter to help you craft adventures inspired by that guild. In a guild’s section, four basic seeds for creating adventures are provided: guild locations, guild villains, character objectives, and adventure hooks.

Guild Locations

Each guild’s entry in this chapter includes a map of an iconic location associated with the guild. Any of these sites can serve as the location for an adventure.

The description of each guild location includes a table that lists possible goals for an adventure based there. You can choose an adventure goal, or roll one randomly, from the table in the description of the site you’ve chosen. If none of those goals inspires you, choose a goal or roll one randomly from the Guild Location Goals table instead.

Guild Location Goals

Linked Locations

You can create an adventure that links two locations together. The Location Connections table offers broad suggestions for how you might lead your players from one adventure location to another.

Location Connections

Guild Villains

Player characters might belong to any guild, and their adversaries might as well. The guild entries in this chapter offer examples of the kinds of villains and villainous schemes that might be connected to each guild.

Certain kinds of goals and schemes are common to villains in every guild. Some generic villainous schemes appear on the Guild Villains table. You can also use the Villain’s Scheme and Villain’s Methods tables in chapter 4 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide to flesh out a villain’s activities, and a guild’s section in this chapter points to specific parts of those tables that characterize how villains from that guild enact their plans.

Guild Villains

Character Objectives

The impetus for adventuring might come from within the player characters' own guilds, rather than from external guilds. Each guild entry in this chapter provides some examples of missions that the guild might send its members on. These missions can also serve as side quests that a character is asked to fulfill while engaged in a larger task that involves the whole party.

Guild Character Objectives

Adventure Hooks

Each guild section includes a table of adventure hooks—events that might drive adventures but don’t necessarily involve specific locations or villains. They offer a general description of circumstances that can lead to adventure.

Choosing a Guild

Here are the main ways to approach the choice of guild for your adventure:

• Choose a guild that has an aesthetic or a story that excites you and that will lead to the sort of villain or type of adventure you want to build. The following section, “Adventure Types,” shows how different guilds are natural fits for certain types of adventure.
• Pick a guild that fits your players' tastes. The introduction to the Dungeon Master’s Guide offers some guidance for crafting adventures to please different kinds of players. The guild or guilds your players choose will also help you understand your players' desires. It’s a safe bet that a player who creates a Rakdos character is looking for mayhem and combat, while a Dimir player is more interested in intrigue and sabotage. Armed with that understanding, you can better craft an adventure experience aimed at your players.
• Go with a guild that easily provides a villain to face. A few guilds make very straightforward villains: Gruul, Rakdos, Dimir, and Golgari.
• Let a die decide the guild, using the Random Guilds table in this book’s introduction.

The guild you choose will provide a potential location, villain, mission, or adventure hook, as well as point you toward the type of adventure you’re going to run.

Quick Build

To make a simple location-based adventure quickly, follow these steps:

1. Choose a guild (or use the Guilds table in chapter 1 if you want to choose randomly). The adventure will take place in that guild’s location, as described in this chapter.

2. Determine the adventure goal using the table associated with that location.

3. Use creatures associated with the guild (shown on the tables in chapter 6) to populate the location. Optionally, you can use the Location Connections table in this chapter to link the location you’re using to a second location. You can either select a location based on the result of that table or determine the second location randomly.

Adventure Types

Certain guilds lend themselves to particular types of adventures better than others, as shown below. If you’re interested in running an intrigue adventure, where the heroes must unravel twisted plots within plots, you’ll want to choose a different guild from what you would select if you want to run a dungeon delve that will take the adventurers into the labyrinthine undercity.

Dungeon Delve

Beneath the urban environment of Ravnica is an entirely different city—the dark, dank undercity, where vermin and horrors lurk and the Golgari Swarm maintains its elegant courts. Indeed, thousands of years of development have buried countless layers of construction beneath the current surface streets, making the undercity much larger than the surface city, though much of it is inaccessible. But if a sinkhole or other catastrophe opens long-sealed vaults and exposes them to the surface again, who knows what horrors might be revealed?

Dungeon Delve Guilds

Wilderness

Though the world is covered with streets and buildings, Ravnica also has its wilderness areas, including the ruined rubblebelts haunted by the Gruul and the sylvan wilds cultivated by the Selesnya.

Wilderness Guilds

Plots and Intrigue

Every guild has its internal politics, making it easy for characters to get caught up in intrigue—particularly within their own guilds. Certain guilds are more likely to involve themselves in the politics of other guilds, which makes them particularly good villains for intrigue-based adventures.

Intrigue Guilds

Mystery

Ravnica is rife with crime, presenting law-abiding adventurers with ample opportunity to put their mystery-solving skills to the test. Identifying a guild assassin, tracking a stolen treasure, or unmasking a corrupt bureaucrat could all fall into this category. Of course, the adventurers need not be virtuous or law-abiding themselves: the Orzhov are more apt to send their own enforcers after thieves than they are to turn to the forces of law for assistance.

Mystery Guilds

Disaster

When a cyclonic rift sweeps through the streets, an uncontrolled wurm crashes through buildings, or a laboratory experiment goes haywire, heroes might be called upon to shelter the innocent, stop the disaster at its source, or hunt down the villain responsible.

Disaster Guilds

Protection

When the innocent are victimized by the powerful, heroes step in. Criminal shakedowns, military raids, endless riots, and more are chances for characters to prove their mettle and earn the adulation of the populace.

Protection Guilds

Guild versus Guild

Interguild conflict is such a fundamental aspect of life on Ravnica that the player characters' guild membership is an easy starting point for choosing an adventure villain. If you choose a villain from a guild that’s already in conflict with one or more guilds that the characters belong to, it’s easy to craft villainous goals that are at odds with the characters' goals.

If all the player characters belong to a single guild, choosing almost any other guild will provide opportunities for conflict. The natural state of the relationship between any two guilds is tension at best, and open warfare at worst. All it takes is a villain willing to upset the balance of power, and the characters' guild or their own motivations should easily bring them into conflict with the villain. A party’s own guild could even provide a villain, given the amount of scheming and intrigue that exists even within the guilds. A guild official gone rogue, members of the same guild at odds with one another, or even a corrupt guildmaster can put characters in conflict with their own guild.

If the characters come from different guilds, a common enemy provides a good reason for them to work together. Any guild that isn’t represented by one of the characters is a fine choice for a villain.

Involving the Characters

Once you’ve chosen an adventure seed—a villain, a mission, or a general hook—you need to figure out what gets the player characters involved in the adventure. The answer could be as simple as a guildmaster or other authority sending them on a mission, but it’s generally good to hook the characters in personally. What motivation do they have to thwart the villain?

The best answers to this question stem either from the adventurers' personalities, ideals, and histories, or from their guild affiliations. The characters might have a common reason to fight the villain (especially if they all belong to the same guild or have been adventuring together for a while), or they might all oppose the villain for different reasons.

For example, say your villain is a group of Gruul anarchs raiding in a densely populated area. A Boros character might be assigned to protect innocent bystanders, or might just happen to be in the area and leap to the defense of the innocents. An Izzet character might be trying to make sure that an Izzet laboratory in the area isn’t damaged or its secrets looted. A Dimir spy might leap at the opportunity to steal some Izzet secrets when the laboratory comes under attack.

The Cross Purposes table can help you involve the characters in an adventure by suggesting ways that a villain’s activities might directly conflict with the player characters' goals or interests.

Cross Purposes

Complications

An adventure that pits player characters against a single guild is relatively straightforward, but adding another guild can make an adventure even more interesting.

The involvement of a second guild can be as simple as the appearance of a bumbling innocent who needs the characters' protection, or as complex as a second villain who pursues an entirely separate scheme. The Secondary Guild Role table presents a range of options.

Secondary Guild Role

Guild Intrigue

Intrigue in Ravnica most often involves interaction between two guilds, so you can use the Guild Intrigue table to find the nugget of a plot. The villain tables in the guild entries can help you determine the nature and motivations of the individuals involved.

Guild Intrigue

Allies and Rivals

A friendly contact can act as a patron, sending a character on a mission or a side quest either as a formal assignment or as a favor. Friendly contacts also have a knack for getting into perilous situations from which they need to be rescued, which can sometimes force characters into making difficult choices between saving friendly nonplayer characters and capturing villainous ones. In extraordinary circumstances, a friendly contact might even join the adventuring party for a short time.

Contacts who have a more antagonistic relationship with a character can hinder the adventuring party’s efforts in a variety of ways. They might appear at inconvenient times to delay the party, or catch the group in the midst of some illegal activity. They might leak information to the adventure’s villain, subtly aid the villain’s efforts, or even become villains themselves.

Contacts can complicate things even more when they interact with multiple player characters or with each other. Consider what might happen when two people who are friendly contacts for two different characters are bitter enemies of each other, or when a single NPC is a good friend of one character and a rival of another. The characters might have to navigate those complex relationships in order to achieve their goals.

Random Nonplayer Characters

Any time you need an NPC for an adventure—for example, if the player characters are sent on a mission to rescue a member of their guild—you can use the contacts tables in chapter 2 to help flesh out the NPC. If you don’t know the NPC’s guild affiliation, you can roll on the Random Guilds table in this book’s introduction to determine the guild. Then you can choose an appropriate stat block to represent the NPC’s game statistics.

Azorius Senate

Adventures involving the Azorius Senate naturally revolve around law enforcement. Player characters who find themselves on the wrong side of the law might be forced to confront well-meaning Azorius arresters as enemies, even if the characters are innocent of any wrongdoing. Lawful characters might also assist the Azorius in maintaining law and order on the mean streets of Ravnica.

Arrester Station

Map 4.1 depicts an arrester station, which serves as the law enforcement hub for a precinct or neighborhood.

Arrester Station Adventures

Characters might be drawn to the arrester station because of prisoners held there, information or items stored there, or crimes occurring there. The Arrester Station Adventures table presents some possibilities.

Arrester Station Adventures

Arrester Station Map

Two separate buildings make up this station, separated by an elevated plaza. One end of the station includes a courthouse (the lower level) and a prison (upper level).

Wide, impressive stairs lead to the main courthouse entrance, which opens into a large waiting room. All the doors leading out of the waiting room are kept locked, so they can be opened only from the other side. To either side of the waiting room are private meeting rooms, which lead back to an extensive area of offices for the large staff that keeps the place running.

The twin courtrooms include bench seats for spectators and witnesses. The judges preside from platforms that hover in midair, with shallow pools of water below. The accused are seated on balconies that overlook the same pools. Doors at the back of these balconies lead to a central hallway that ends at a staircase that ascends to the prison level.

Direct access to the prison area from outside the building is provided by two long, narrow staircases that lead up from the plaza. The stairs end at a balcony that is guarded at all times by archers behind arrow slits. A narrow hall leads through several locked doors to the cells—the general population on one side, where prisoners are allowed to mingle to some extent, and a high-security area on the other side, featuring smaller cells keeping prisoners in complete isolation.

The opposite end of the station is a headquarters for a local detachment of arresters. The main level includes two meeting rooms, an office for the commander, and a break room. The upper level provides working space where arresters can interview suspects and complete paperwork, as well as space for storing evidence. The lower level includes a morgue and a large area where the whole local force can be assembled.

Azorius Villains

Examples of Azorius villains appear in the Azorius Villains table.

Azorius Villains

Azorius as Campaign Villains

The Azorius become villains when they abuse the power of the law. A local magistrate might imprison innocent people, or the senate might pass oppressive legislation, thereby drawing the ire of the Boros and the Selesnya, who care about the folk who get caught in the crosshairs. Arresters might decide to crack down on unsafe Izzet laboratory practices, illegal Rakdos performances, or the Gruul presence in the city. Self-righteous prison wardens or precinct captains might abuse their authority in the name of the law, and corrupt bureaucrats might use their positions to garner favors for themselves and their relatives.

Low-level characters might suffer harassment at the hands of overzealous arresters. As the campaign progresses, they might be able to identify a particular imperator who is driving this heightened aggression, who then becomes something of a nemesis for them. As they gain experience, this imperator continues to be a thorn in their side and advances through the ranks of the senate as well, becoming a minister and eventually the arbiter who dictates law enforcement policy for the entire guild. Along the way, this villain uses every available means to hinder the characters, probably veering into covert illegal activities (evil means for a good end). The climax of the campaign might involve a violent confrontation with this arbiter and a group of arresters, or a tense verbal argument adjudicated by Supreme Judge Isperia herself.

Azorius Character Goals

Characters who are members of the Azorius Senate might be sent on missions of law enforcement by their superiors or contacts in the guild, and trusted characters might be tasked with apprehending criminals without killing them. The examples on the Azorius Assignments table might be side quests specific to an Azorius character, undertaken while a party of adventurers is engaged in a larger mission.

Azorius Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Azorius Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures involving the Azorius Senate.

Azorius Adventure Hooks

Boros Legion

Adventures involving the Boros Legion might have a military bent, focusing on small-scale conflict between groups of Boros soldiers and bands of rioters or raiders. The legion is generally a prominent force for law and good in Ravnica, which makes it an appropriate home guild for noble-minded player characters. Its holy bent also makes villains drawn from its ranks particularly dangerous and perhaps tragic.

Legion Garrison

The Boros Legion maintains garrisons throughout Ravnica, ensuring that every neighborhood has a strong military presence. They range from towering fortresses to small bunkers like the one shown in map 4.2.

Legion Garrison Adventures

Designed with defense foremost, a Boros garrison is well suited for adventures that challenge the characters to find a way in or fight their way out. The Legion Garrison Adventures table offers a number of possibilities.

Legion Garrison Adventures

Legion Garrison Map

Access to the garrison is limited to a pair of 20-foot-wide walkways elevated above street level and protected by archers behind arrow slits. Two antechambers give the Boros soldiers and angels ample opportunity to screen anyone who seeks to gain entrance. Beyond them is a large hall where troops can be mustered. To one side of the mustering hall is a barracks area, with a kitchen, a mess, food storage, and guest quarters on the other side.

An extensive array of wall niches in the lower tier (at street level) provides storage space for archived records and the like, and a basement beneath that includes food storage and a well for fresh water, enabling the garrison to withstand a long siege.

The upper tier includes more large halls, the commander’s quarters and office, and several niches—accessible only by flying from outside the garrison—that serve as living quarters and watch-posts for the angels stationed here. Parapets on the rooftop provide cover for humanoid archers as well, and the broad open space that they surround offers room for training and sparring. Grass-covered ridges separate different training areas and add a contrasting touch of nature’s beauty to the otherwise stony building.

Boros Villains

Examples of Boros villains appear in the Boros Villains table.

Boros Villains

Boros as Campaign Villains

Not too long ago, the leaders of the Boros Legion valued zeal more highly than justice, believing that their military might made their cause right and just. Although the current guildmaster, Aurelia, has reversed her stance on the issue, some voices within the legion still espouse these views. Boros villains are typically intolerant, self-righteous warmongers who abuse their power in pursuit of their own private visions of justice. And because the lower echelons of the guild are taught to follow orders without question, even the villains among the Boros can command companies of soldiers to help them carry out their schemes.

Boros villains are inclined to engage in activity that involves pursuing one’s passion, acquiring power, or exacting retribution. The Boros make good campaign antagonists if the adventurers represent the forces of chaos that the legion opposes—Rakdos revelers, Gruul raiders, Golgari corrupters, or Dimir spies.

You could structure a campaign around the legion’s slow progress in taking over the authority of the Azorius Senate and imposing a sort of martial law on the city. A campaign of this sort is particularly effective if the characters initially work alongside the Boros, especially if one or more characters belong to the legion. They might help Boros soldiers drive off Gruul raiders or uproot Dimir spies—clearly fighting against evil on the side of the good and just. As time goes on, though, their Boros allies might start taking their war against evil too far. Innocent citizens get caught in the crossfire, most punishment is cruel and excessive, and any resistance is met with overwhelming force, to “set an example” for anyone else who might consider opposing the legion. A Boros ally (or even a close friend) of the characters might become fully caught up in this fervor. Perhaps the characters can talk some sense into their old friend, but the resolution of the campaign might force them to take more extreme measures to curb the legion’s excesses.

Boros Character Goals

The Boros Legion sends individuals or small parties on small-scale military missions, usually to help quell riots or protect bystanders from dangerous situations. Trusted characters might also be involved in internal investigations of suspected wrongdoing, especially if they’re associated with the Wojek League. The Boros Assignments table provides examples of missions or side quests that Boros characters might undertake.

Boros Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Boros Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Boros Legion.

Boros Adventure Hooks

House Dimir

Masters of misdirection, infiltration, and espionage, Dimir spies and assassins pursue their objectives behind layers of deception. Dimir agents make ideal villains for adventures involving intrigue and mystery in the shadows of dark alleys and the tunnels of the undercity.

Safe House

House Dimir maintains safe houses throughout Ravnica, many of them tucked away in the undercity, for guild members who need to elude the ready reach of the law. These sites are protected by magical wards that confuse and misdirect all who approach—in particular, spells that make intruders forget where they are or what they’re doing there.

A safe house can also be used to hold prisoners for interrogation, with its protections equally effective in preventing escape and in deterring intruders. Often, a single site serves both purposes.

Map 4.3 presents the floor plan of a typical Dimir safe house.

Safe House Adventures

The first task in almost any mission involving a Dimir safe house is to find the place. Most people who have been to a safe house or its environs have no memory of the event, thanks to Dimir mind magic.

The Safe House Adventures table offers some reasons why characters might need to visit such a location. In addition, you could use any other guild’s sample location as the site for a location-based adventure, with a simple mission: uncover a Dimir spy in that location.

Safe House Adventures

Safe House Map

This safe house is a domed building encased in a stone exoskeleton characteristic of Dimir construction. The ground level is a comfortable living space that features accommodations for at least five people. It has five bedrooms, abundant storage space, a central lounge, a recreation space, a dining room, a kitchen, and a pantry.

A secret door in the back of a shared closet leads to a spiral staircase that descends to the basement, which contains three small holding cells. A watch post at the end of the hall allows a guard to keep an eye on the cells and anyone coming down the stairs. An interrogation room can be outfitted with equipment designed to extract information. One-way mirrors offer a view on the interrogation proceedings from an observation room.

Safe House Wards

You can make a Dimir safe house hard to find and hard to get into by using some of these options:

• The safe house is underground and accessible only through a maze of tunnels and crevices.

• The area surrounding the house is protected by a guards and wards spell. Navigating the ancient underground corridors or the modern alleyways above ground becomes more complicated when intersections are clouded by fog, doors are hidden and magically locked, and magical compulsions drive visitors away.

• A glyph of warding might cast fear, phantasmal force, or crown of madness on a character who triggers it—or simply explode in a blast of cold energy.

• Dimir agents might use alarm spells to ensure that they know when intruders are approaching the safe house.

Dimir Villains

The Dimir can be masterfully sly villains. Example villains appear in the Dimir Villains table.

Dimir Villains

Dimir as Campaign Villains

Dimir villains favor schemes involving captivity and coercion, defamation, impersonation and disguise, murder, politics, theft, and torture. Perhaps the most insidious technique employed by the Dimir is the erasing and modifying of memories.

Because their tendrils reach into every other guild, Dimir villains could turn out to be the link between plots that initially seem to be unconnected. Even when individual missions might be straightforward dungeon crawls or battles in the streets, the campaign revolves around the mystery of determining the true villain.

At low and middle levels, the characters might find themselves engaged in important but apparently unrelated tasks. They might kill or drive off a monster that is lairing in an abandoned arrester station (unwittingly clearing the way for a Dimir agent to be placed in the station). They might help the Boros capture a dangerous Rakdos ringleader (who is actually a Dimir agent working to destabilize Azorius influence). They might unmask a Dimir spy within one of their own guilds (who is an internal rival of the Dimir villain).

As the characters advance in level, they might come to realize that a powerful and ambitious Azorius figure is going too far in spying on the populace, despite that guild’s great success in using precognitive mages to arrest evildoers—especially Dimir spies. Ultimately, the Azorius villain is revealed to be a high-ranking Dimir agent, a confidant of Lazav or even Lazav himself, who is trying to take over the Azorius Senate and turn it into a surveillance and espionage organization under the villain’s control.

Dimir Character Goals

Characters who are members of House Dimir are spies and saboteurs. It’s possible to let these characters experience all the most enjoyable tropes of the spy genre while skirting the more sinister aspects of House Dimir.

The missions on the Dimir Assignments table can work for a team of Dimir agents or as secret missions for a Dimir character to pursue under the cover of the larger adventure plot.

Dimir Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Dimir Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around House Dimir.

Dimir Adventure Hooks

Golgari Swarm

A dominant force in the undercity, the Golgari Swarm is ideally suited for dungeon-based adventures. The Golgari represent corruption and decay, counting many villains among their ranks even though most members are mainly concerned with the balance of the natural cycle of life and death.

Undercity Mansion

The Golgari are a strange underground aristocracy in a city that mostly lacks a noble class; they are like throwbacks to an ancient time when one’s birth determined one’s station. The mansion depicted in map 4.4 is a stately relic of such a time—a grand hall that happens to be buried hundreds of feet beneath the streets of Ravnica.

Undercity Mansion Adventures

The Undercity Mansion Adventures table provides some possible challenges based in and around the Golgari undercity mansion.

Undercity Mansion Adventures

Undercity Mansion Map

This structure is built in a large depression, perhaps part of Deadbridge Chasm. A bridge crosses just above it, and a wide, curving stair leads down from the bridge to the grand ballroom on the top level of the mansion. The rest of the structure is built down from there, with the main, elegant halls and parlors on the second level. Notably, a wide hallway on this level connects with a passage leading to other areas of the undercity. A couple of areas on this floor have crumbled with the weight of the ages, but the place retains its stately grandeur.

The bottom level might be a basement excavated in the floor of a chasm, or it could hang above still more open space like a giant stalactite. It includes living quarters for the owners, servants, and guests.

Golgari Villains

Examples of Golgari villains appear in the Golgari Villains table.

Golgari Villains

Golgari as Campaign Villains

Given their affinity for death, necromancy, and decay, the Golgari make excellent villains. Because they consider life and death as equal parts of the natural cycle, they have no qualms about subjecting entire neighborhoods to poisonous gas or strangling vines to achieve their various goals. When a Golgari assassin goes on a killing spree, when a patch of their vegetative growth begins “reclaiming” an area that isn’t yet abandoned, or when their fungus-bearing zombies emerge from the undercity to haunt the city streets, heroes are duty bound to act against the threat.

The Golgari possess a combination of ambition and ruthlessness that makes them extremely dangerous adversaries. The tension among the various factions of the swarm (the elves, the medusas, the kraul, and the rising erstwhile) adds an element of instability to the mix. But perhaps the Golgari Swarm’s most dangerous quality is the widespread confidence among its members that it will survive any catastrophe that might befall the surface world. This certainty means Golgari villains will stop at nothing in an attempt to provoke such an event—triggering a virulent plague, causing explosive plant growth, or inciting the other guilds into open war, for example. Over the course of a campaign, a group of adventurers might foil Golgari plans to accomplish all these things, or the characters might be constantly struggling against one ongoing disaster.

For example, the characters might spend the early part of the campaign resolving disputes between guilds, unaware that the Golgari are actually the instigators of those conflicts. Perhaps incidental to these missions, they also face a spore druid who is in the early stages of testing a terrible plague. Then, as the campaign reaches higher levels, the plague breaks out again, this time spreading rapidly. The crisis heightens tensions among the other guilds, especially when food sources are threatened. At the climax of the campaign, the heroes must defuse conflict among the guilds while finding a way to get at the druid at the cause of it all, who is locked in an undercity mansion waiting out the catastrophe.

Golgari Character Goals

Characters who are members of the Golgari Swarm might be sent on missions into the undercity, particularly jobs that involve retrieval or salvage. The secretive agents of the Ochran are more likely to pursue goals that call for theft or even assassination, while shamans could participate in the swarm’s work of “reclamation” in surface neighborhoods. The Golgari Assignments table reflects this range of possibilities. An assignment can also serve as a side quest for Golgari adventurers to undertake while pursuing a larger goal with a mixed-guild party.

Golgari Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Golgari Adventure Hooks table offers ideas for additional adventures themed around the Golgari Swarm.

Golgari Adventure Hooks

Gruul Clans

An adventure involving the Gruul Clans typically revolves around combat. The Gruul provide characters with opportunities to fight huge monsters and vicious berserkers. The Gruul bring chaos and destruction with them wherever they go, so they can easily disrupt and complicate adventures involving any other guild. Any time an adventure needs an injection of brutal violence, the Gruul are a good tool for the purpose.

Rubblebelt Encampment

The Gruul have no interest in the buildings, streets, and markets of Ravnica, except as targets for their raids. The encampment shown in map 4.5 represents a temporary shelter in the ruins, the sort of place the Gruul might call home for a time.

Rubblebelt Encampment Adventures

Many Gruul adventures begin with a raid into a settled part of the city. Adventurers might be able to follow the raiders back to their camp—for the sake of revenge, in an effort to retrieve something, or perhaps in chains.

Rubblebelt Encampment Adventures

Rubblebelt Encampment Map

Built in a plaza surrounded by crumbling ruins, this camp offers some defensive advantages to its Gruul residents. An old tower is the one intact structure the Gruul use, because it offers a good vantage point over the surrounding area. A sluiceway provides potable water, and a handful of scraggly trees are a reminder of nature’s potential to grow and flourish even among the ruins.

Otherwise, the camp is little more than a handful of tents around a bonfire. A trash pit serves as a means of waste disposal, a few makeshift cages can hold prisoners, and a partially enclosed area to one side has been converted into a pen for the beasts used by the Gruul.

Gruul Villains

The Gruul are straightforward villains, employing direct action and violence to tear down civilized society. They aren’t schemers, and they have little patience for political maneuvering. Their cunning is that of a hunter stalking its prey, and the threat they pose is rampant, aggressive destruction. Examples of Gruul villains appear in the Gruul Villains table.

Gruul Villains

Gruul as Campaign Villains

Using the Gruul Clans as the main antagonists in a campaign could be an opportunity to explore the apocalyptic religious beliefs of the Old Ways—the expectation of the return of an ancient god, Ilharg the Raze-Boar.

At low levels, characters could be drawn into seemingly coincidental clashes with the Gruul, perhaps as minor events in adventures that involve other guilds. Only later does a pattern emerge: the raids correspond with certain astronomical events, the movements of wurms, or another sign that the druids of the Old Ways consider significant. As the adventurers' power grows, so does that of the Gruul druids behind the trouble, and soon the druids are actually instigating natural disasters—earthquakes and mighty storms, for example. As the campaign reaches its climax, the Gruul Clans all come together to perform an enormous ritual meant to summon the Raze-Boar and bring an end to civilization on Ravnica—and the adventurers must stop it.

Gruul Character Goals

The goals shown on the Gruul Assignments table can be objectives in themselves, or side quests that a Gruul character pursues in the course of undertaking an adventure with a larger purpose.

Gruul Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Gruul Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Gruul Clans.

Gruul Adventure Hooks

Izzet League

Adventures involving the Izzet League typically concern magical mishaps, dangerous inventions, and feats of engineering (for good or ill). Player characters might be called upon to help clean up in the aftermath of a magical disaster, contain the damage, or rein in an ongoing danger. Or they could test or steal or destroy Izzet inventions, perhaps inadvertently causing magical catastrophes in the process.

Experimental Workshop

The fundamental responsibility of the Izzet League is building and maintaining Ravnica’s infrastructure, and the guild’s work is responsible for many of the magical–technological conveniences that make life in the city relatively safe and comfortable, from paved roadways to running water. Under the leadership of the draconic genius Niv-Mizzet, the Izzet have continued to innovate, taking their work far beyond the essential needs of infrastructure and into the realm of wild invention. As a result, the workshops and laboratories of the Izzet are prone to magical mishaps, with results that range from personal injury to district-wide destruction. It is perhaps best for Ravnica as a whole that most of Izzet’s work takes place in small workshops scattered throughout the city, rather than being concentrated in one place (with the guildhall of Nivix being the notable exception).

Experimental Workshop Adventures

Izzet workshops like the one depicted in map 4.6 are notable for three things: the brilliant minds at work there, the incredible inventions they produce, and the destructive events that can occur when things go wrong. Adventurers might be drawn to a workshop to steal, thwart, or protect any of those things. The Experimental Workshop Adventures table shows some examples.

Experimental Workshop Adventures

Experimental Workshop Map

An Izzet workshop is a chaotic place, buzzing with energy and activity. A mana generator in the basement fuels all the experimentation and construction above. The generator draws power from the city infrastructure, and ultimately from the Blistercoils, but the construction depicted in map 4.6 is designed to amplify and focus the magical energy. The machinery is fragile, so visitors are strongly discouraged from entering the basement.

Some parts of the generator extend up to the ground floor and the laboratory mezzanine above it, with portions of those floors open to the basement or covered only by metal grates. The ground level is typically cluttered with devices attached to the generator below, as well as cast-off pieces of such devices, awaiting new homes in new inventions. The laboratory mezzanine includes three spaces where projects can be developed in isolation, with thick walls providing some shielding from potentially explosive results. Additional equipment related to the generator system is housed in a tower and on the workshop’s roof, culminating in a storm siphon that can harness and channel atmospheric energy (including lightning).

The Bizarre Magical Effects table provides suggestions for the sort of events that might result from a failed (or successful!) Izzet experiment, which can add spice to any Izzet adventure.

Bizarre Magical Effects

Izzet Villains

The behavior that members of the Izzet League display most often is careless disregard for safety, which causes frequent upheavals on both small and large scales. The true villains among the Izzet, though, aren’t just accident-prone but also committed to widespread destruction. Out of madness or despair, they might plot the destruction of precincts or districts. Hungry for profit and power, they develop weapons capable of destroying large groups of people and commit crimes to get the resources they need to complete their research.

The Izzet Villains table includes examples of villains as well as those who have less sinister intentions.

Izzet Villains

Izzet as Campaign Villains

A campaign involving the Izzet League could revolve around an Izzet researcher’s efforts to gain personal power or greater influence for the guild through the wonders of modern magical science.

At low levels, the characters might help deal with a small-scale mishap in an Izzet workshop that is presumed to be an accident. Maybe something in the manner of the responsible researcher stirs up their suspicion, but there’s no evidence of wrongdoing at this point. As the campaign progresses, the characters might continue having run-ins with the same researcher, whose work seems to be growing more dangerous. Eventually, they discover evidence that this researcher is developing weapons to use against the other guilds, and as a result the researcher has to move to a secret workshop, perhaps tucked away in the undercity. Or perhaps the guildmaster intervenes, declares this issue to be an internal matter for the Izzet to resolve, and assures the authorities that the researcher will be properly dealt with. As the campaign reaches its climax, the adventurers are tasked with discovering the researcher’s secret laboratory and disabling the super-weapon.

Izzet Character Goals

Characters who are connected with the Izzet League might be asked to run errands for higher-ranked researchers, or to take on more difficult tasks on behalf of colleagues. The Izzet Assignments table provides examples of goals that can serve as adventure hooks for a party or as side quests for an Izzet character to pursue in the course of a larger adventure.

Izzet Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Izzet Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Izzet League.

Izzet Adventure Hooks

Orzhov Syndicate

The Orzhov Syndicate is a sprawling network of organized crime that operates behind a facade of legitimate banking, robed in the trappings of religion. Adventures involving the Orzhov often include some combination of fighting their criminal activities, interacting with their wealth, and dealing with the haunting spirits and sinister monsters that make up a significant part of the guild’s leadership.

Grand Basilica

Combining the guild’s interests in organized crime, banking, and religion, Orzhov properties are ornate basilicas as grand as any cathedral, though the business conducted within them is driven by greed and lust for power rather than altruistic motives. Each location includes a grand space used not for purposes of worship, but to ensure that petitioners feel small and abased before the Orzhov oligarchs. Its lower level contains vaults to store the ill-gotten riches of its leaders, as well as crypts that hold the corpses of family members whose spirits might still be active above.

Grand Basilica Adventures

An adventure in an Orzhov basilica, like the one shown in map 4.7, can feel like the action in a gangster movie, a bank heist, or the exploration of a haunted house. The Grand Basilica Adventures table provides some examples.

Grand Basilica Adventures

Orzhov Basilica Map

The Orzhov basilica is a huge church with the primary function of intimidating those who come to confess, atone, borrow, or pay. The nave features lofty archways, towering statues of proud oligarchs, and a huge central statue that depicts the Ghost Council surrounded by supplicants. A pair of tall doors behind the statue leads to a sanctuary where minor treasures—worth more than most citizens will ever see in their lives, but less than the true treasures hidden in the vaults—are put on display to encourage devotion. Another statue of a patron oligarch (usually the basilica’s founder) stands at the end of this room, flanked by spiral staircases leading up into the spire and down to the crypts. The stairs are secured behind ornate wrought iron gates.

The three levels of the spire hold luxurious apartments where living oligarchs dwell. The doors can be locked from the outside, making them also suitable for holding valuable prisoners.

The crypts and vaults below the basilica hold the bones of ancient oligarchs and their most cherished treasures. Some crypts contain just bones, others just valuables, and some hold both. A security station keeps watch on the entire level, and the guards there are typically the only ones who have keys to open the metal portcullises that obstruct the hallway.

Orzhov Villains

Examples of Orzhov villains appear in the Orzhov Villains table.

Orzhov Villains

Orzhov as Campaign Villains

Orzhov villains often scheme to achieve immortality (if they are still alive and have been denied the prospect of becoming a spirit after death), to gain influence, and especially to gather wealth (because too much is never enough). Their favorite methods include coercion, confidence scams (mostly relying on the fine print in magically binding contracts), murder, politics, theft, torture, and vice.

You could build a campaign around the Orzhov Syndicate’s efforts to gain control of the adventurers. Recognizing the characters as powerful agents for change, one or more pontiffs scheme to make sure that the syndicate can direct that force toward goals of their choosing. In typical Orzhov fashion, that generally means trying to force the characters into debt, either to the Orzhov in general or to an individual pontiff.

At low levels, the Orzhov might be nothing more than a gentle force behind the scenes. If the adventurers need help, an Orzhov agent might appear and offer it. If they commit crimes, the Orzhov find out about it. The characters' valuables can be kept safe in an Orzhov vault, and Orzhov ministrants can provide healing and other clerical magic at reasonable prices.

As the campaign progresses and the characters acquire more influence in their guilds and in the city at large, the Orzhov begin trying to exert pressure. They call in favors in exchange for the help they have previously offered, they make subtle threats about reporting the adventurers' illegal acts, or they point to the fine print in agreements made with the ministrants. Initially, their motives might not be outwardly sinister. (The Orzhov Assignments table can serve as inspiration.) But if the characters work against Orzhov interests, the syndicate interferes more forcefully. All the while, Orzhov leaders are looking for ways to trap the characters under their ghostly thumbs.

As the campaign builds to a climax, the adventurers might be forced to make sacrifices in order to throw off the yoke of Orzhov debt. That turn of events could lead to a confrontation with an undead pontiff or even the entire Obzedat. And if a member of the adventuring party has died along the way, the other characters might find themselves fighting the spirit of their dead companion!

Orzhov Character Goals

Characters who are members of the Orzhov Syndicate, as well as those who are indebted to the Orzhov, might receive missions or errands that further the interests of their corrupt overlords. The Orzhov Assignments table includes examples of quests and side quests that such characters might undertake.

Orzhov Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Orzhov Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Orzhov Syndicate.

Orzhov Adventure Hooks

Cult of Rakdos

On most worlds, a cult dedicated to an ancient demon lord would be an obvious villain, to be rooted out and exterminated at all costs. On Ravnica, though, the status of the Cult of Rakdos isn’t so clear-cut. It is a guild like the others, and its existence is mandated by the Guildpact, so exterminating it and its founder would violate the fundamental social order of the world. Although the ranks of Rakdos include outright villains who crave blood and mayhem, most of its members are performers who just want to put on a good show. Not every performance ends in violence, and even when a riot does break out, it’s not always easy to pin the blame on the entertainers.

Nonetheless, the Cult of Rakdos has more than its share of truly villainous members, and the guild provides ample opportunity for adventurers to fight against true evil.

Notorious Nightclub

Catering to all sorts of demented desires, nightclubs like the one shown in map 4.8 are permanent venues, in contrast to the portable tents and stages set up by Rakdos performers in streets and plazas every night. Much of what happens here would be illegal if it weren’t consensual—and if the city’s rich and powerful weren’t as drawn to its forbidden pleasures as anyone else in Ravnica.

Notorious Nightclub Adventures

Characters might be drawn to a Rakdos nightclub for reasons that have nothing to do with adventuring, but adventures unfold in these places regardless. The Notorious Nightclub Adventures table includes a variety of examples.

Notorious Nightclub Adventures

Notorious Nightclub Map

Security, privacy, and terror are the priorities of this nightclub. Visitors are channeled through a large entry vestibule into an upper area with tables tucked away in nooks. From there, they can watch the violent antics of ferocious beasts or performers in cages suspended from the ceiling. Stairs lead down to the area of the main stage, where headlining performances are held. Offices and storage areas fill the rest of the main level.

A second stage in the lower level provides a more up-close experience, which often means audience members are showered in blood or drawn into the show. Several private booths surround the backstage area, with doors that include shuttered windows to enable those inside to keep an eye on the show or carry out private business.

Rakdos Villains

Rakdos villains range in power from demented cultists to sadistic demons. Most of them are driven by a desire for unfettered mayhem. A hunger for a certain form of immortality (being an artist who is remembered forever) often feeds that desire, and insofar as Rakdos can be considered the “god” of his cult, objectives related to magic—carrying out his wishes, offering him sacrifices, and rousing him into action—are also significant objectives for some cultists. Driven as they are by selfish impulse and emotion, Rakdos villains also sometimes pursue schemes related to passion, power, or revenge. Specific examples appear on the Rakdos Villains table.

Rakdos Villains

Rakdos as Campaign Villains

You could build a campaign around the Cult of Rakdos’s efforts to stir its demonic patron into action against the other guilds. The campaign might unfold amid steadily increasing violence, escalating to episodes of widespread rioting and rampaging demons.

At lower levels, the adventurers might encounter incidental violence spilling over from Rakdos venues: a brawl outside a nightclub, overenthusiastic devils spreading fires around a street stage, or the “accidental” death of a few performers at the climax of their act. As the campaign progresses, the characters might be drawn into combating the efforts of blood witches who are trying to exterminate the cult’s most active enemies. The more they foil the cult’s efforts, the more the characters themselves become targets of both ridicule and violent action.

At the campaign’s climax, the adventurers might have to interrupt a ritual performed in Rakdos’s lair in order to prevent him from rampaging through the city—or if they are too late to do that, they might have to fight the ancient demon lord himself.

Rakdos Character Goals

Characters who are members of the Cult of Rakdos are expected to be self-motivated and rarely take orders from anyone other than Rakdos himself. The Rakdos Assignments table includes some suggestions for adventures or side quests that Rakdos characters might undertake on their own initiative, or perhaps at the request of a ringmaster or a fellow performer.

Rakdos Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Rakdos Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Cult of Rakdos.

Rakdos Adventure Hooks

Selesnya Conclave

The Selesnya Conclave is most likely to be involved in adventures as a force for good, since many of its members are healers, diplomats, and mediators. It is a natural home for player characters—especially clerics and druids—so it might serve as a patron. Nonetheless, the guild has a militaristic bent, and like nature itself it isn’t beyond corruption.

Vernadi Center

The basic unit of the Conclave’s organization is the vernadi—a community centered on a large tree and led by the voda of the enclave, a dryad whose spirit is linked to that tree. From the outside, a vernadi might resemble a peaceful commune, and thus seem to be an easy target for theft or assault. But its temple gardens are protected by soldiers and archers, and even the seemingly serene initiates have some military training.

Vernadi Center Adventures

Though a vernadi lacks the defensive fortifications of, for example, a Boros garrison, it is still a difficult place to attack or infiltrate. Because of the sheer numbers of initiates that might be inside, stealth is probably a better tactic than frontal assault. The Vernadi Center Adventures table offers some suggestions.

Vernadi Center Adventures

Vernadi Center Map

The temple shown in map 4.9 is at the heart of the vernadi, built in and around a large tree. A circle of white marble with several archways surrounds the base of the tree, encompassing both a decorative garden where meetings are held and a vegetable garden that provides food for the vernadi. The meeting garden includes benches and a fountain of fresh water. Two small buildings at ground level offer rustic accommodations for members of the vernadi or guests.

Gracefully curving ramps sweep around the trunk of the tree, leading to various other small buildings. Several of these are open to the air, offering sheltered places for gatherings or quiet contemplation. Others are apartments where leaders of the vernadi live. Near the top of the tree is a large, round temple space.

Selesnya Villains

True evil is rare among the members of Selesnya, with misplaced religious zeal being the impetus that most commonly pushes its members into acts of villainy.

Examples of Selesnya villains appear in the Selesnya Villains table.

Selesnya Villains

Selesnya as Campaign Villains

You could structure a campaign around the efforts of the Selesnya Conclave to finally bring all of Ravnica into its welcoming embrace.

At lower levels, Selesnya might be an ally to the player characters, offering support in the form of healing and other magic. By the time the characters reach middle levels, Selesnya emerges as a threat: perhaps it becomes clear that several vernadi are using magical charms (or other forms of coercion) to win converts, and the conclave might even try to coerce the player characters to join. Eventually, their strategy evolves toward extortion and conquest, as they unleash wurms and similar powerful beasts to threaten those who refuse to convert, and they use the might of their armies to eliminate other guilds and bring whole precincts under their control. The climax of the campaign might involve the heroes leading or coordinating the efforts of all nine other guilds to unite against the Selesnya threat.

Selesnya Character Goals

Characters who are part of the Selesnya Conclave are usually sent into the world to help ease suffering, make peace, win converts, and advance the other objectives of the guild. The Selesnya Assignments table includes a number of side quests for individual Selesnya characters as well as adventure hooks for a whole party.

Selesnya Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Selesnya Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the conclave.

Selesnya Adventure Hooks

Simic Combine

Adventures that involve the Simic Combine delve into the world of weird magical science. The Simic breed the hybrids known as krasis, and those creations can break free of their controllers and rampage through the city streets. The Simic also infuse sapient races with animal features, creating hybrids with adaptations designed for combat and espionage.

Growth Chamber

Although most Simic research is concentrated in the nine zonots distributed all over Ravnica, mages affiliated with the guild construct laboratories in various other locations, particularly when they are seeking a particular combination of environmental factors such as air and water temperature, humidity, and ambient light. Growth chambers like the one depicted in map 4.10, built for the creation and incubation of krasis and hybrids, could be located anywhere, from deep in the undercity to the top of a tall spire.

Growth Chamber Adventures

Adventures in a growth chamber often involve dealing with Simic experiments. The Growth Chamber Adventures table shows some examples.

Growth Chamber Adventures

Growth Chamber Map

This structure is attached to the side of some other structure, much as a coral affixes itself to a solid surface. It might be built on the inside wall of a zonot or a chasm, or it could abut another building at street level. The chamber consists of a series of overlapping domes with large, green-tinted windows.

The main entrance leads into a lobby with three decorative pools and three functional growth pods showcasing the most innocuous research being done here. The pods are glass and metal devices filled with greenish, vaguely glowing liquid, designed to allow life forms to gestate and grow until they are ready to emerge. The pods might be growing homunculi or category 1 krasis, but it would be highly unusual for the Simic to display the maturation of a hybrid soldier in such a public way. Four smaller growth pods to one side serve the same function. On the other side, a meeting room (containing one more growth pod) offers a place for researchers to meet with outsiders.

The first level above the main floor is dedicated to living, cooking, and eating space for the researchers and others who live here. A single large room acts as a barracks for the scientists, with folding screens offering some degree of privacy.

The other levels of the chamber are entirely dedicated to research and space to grow the laboratory’s creations. Growth pods are found in nearly every room.

Simic Villains

Examples of Simic villains appear in the Simic Villains table.

Simic Villains

Simic as Campaign Villains

Many Simic researchers are driven by the belief that the guild must adapt to the prospect of imminent war among the guilds. Thus, villains among their number are often those who seek to provoke the war they have foreseen, or those who go to extraordinary, unethical, or illegal lengths to conduct their work.

In the early stages of the campaign, the adventurers might face Simic-related threats such as rogue hybrids and rampaging krasis, which seem to be unrelated to each other and more or less accidental. As the campaign progresses, it becomes clear that these Simic creatures are part of a military build-up. The wrath of the other guilds turns toward the combine, but this conflict is exactly what the guild has been preparing for. Ultimately, it falls to the characters to either prevent the war, disable the Simic creatures that are poised to obliterate the other guilds' armies, or find another course of action that can maintain the balance of power in Ravnica.

Simic Character Goals

The Simic Assignments table presents some ideas for missions that could drive an adventure or serve as side quests for a Simic character.

Simic Assignments

Other Adventure Hooks

The Simic Adventure Hooks table presents ideas for additional adventures themed around the Simic Combine.

Simic Adventure Hooks