Page 46 - Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica

ultimately receive their orders from this source without
having any idea of who issued the order or why. Mes-
sages to agents are funneled through thought strands
(see '"Spell: Encode Thoughts" later in this section) and
telepathic couriers.
By design, you don't have much interaction with other
members of your guild. You might never meet your pri-
mary guild contact face to face, instead receiving assign-
HOUSE DIMIR ments and sending reports by way of secret message
drops and codes.
A VAMPIRE APPEARED OUT OF THE DARKNESS, AS Q.UIET
as a breeze. He was stripped to the waist despite the chill GOALS OF THE D IMIR
underground. and his eyes reflected light like a cat's. He House Dimir is all about secrets and misinformation,
floated effortlessly down from the upper reaches of the even where its own members are concerned. Any given
Dimir agent knows of no more than a handful of alley-
chamber. and alighted on the chamberfloor near the
way contacts and dossier drop spots. One agent knows
two of them. another only by a code name, or receives communica-
- Doug Beyer, Return to Ravnica: The Secretist tions only at a particular meeting spot at a specific place
and time. Every self-proclaimed expert with an opinion
House Dimir is Ravnica's dark secret: behind a facade on the matter has a theory about the guild's intentions,
of respectable messengers and reporters lurks an and all those guesses about Dimir's motivations and
association of spies and assassins whose existence is pursuits contradict each other, frustrating any attempt
barely suspected by the populace at large. Secrecy is to get to the truth of things. The public face of Dimir
both House Dimir's best weapon and its best defense, remains inscrutable, which some interpret as the best
and much of the guild's work is hidden even from other evidence that the guild's true plans mean something
members. Oimir agents leave no trace of their covert dire for the Ravnican populace.
activities, warping the memories of witnesses to their To House Oimir, knowledge is power. The guild
crimes and even wiping their own minds to remove any hungers to learn everything it doesn't already know,
evidence of their completed assignments. especially the weaknesses of its adversaries, and to ex-
The first guild master of House Dimir was a vampire ploit those weaknesses for its own gain. Conversely, the
named Szadek, whose organization agreed to serve as house holds its own secrets tightly, because it doesn't
Ravnica's couriers, information brokers, and librarians. want its enemies to turn the tables. The Dimir lurk in
But Szadek also used his guild's expertise at gathering the shadows, methodically gathering the knowledge
information to build a vast spy network, and before long, they need to remake Ravnica to their advantage.
the secret operations of the guild vastly outweighed its House Dimir's progress toward its goals depends on
overt ones. Eventually the guild disappeared into the a web woven from meticulously gathered intelligence.
shadows, and most Ravnicans came to doubt its exis- Unpredictable behavior by other guilds can destabilize
tence. An immortal entity, Szadek ruled the guild for ten that web. When the Boros take sudden. forceful action
thousand years until he was arrested and kHled in the inspired by an unexpected burst of zeal, the Dimir can
turmoil of the Decamillennial Celebration. be caught off guard. The Selesnya behave predictably on
the whole, but the members of the conclave are so nu-
INSIDE THE HOUSE merous that it can be hard for the Oimir to keep track of
their activities. Of all the other guilds, the Izzet and the
House Dimir has a clandestine aspect hidden from all Gruul concern the Dimir the most; their erratic methods
but its most important members. The guild master, La- of decision-making, combined with their unflinching
zav. and his direct contacts guide and manipulate the approach to danger, can quickly undermine any Dimir
covert operations of the guild. Members of House Dimir strategy designed to contain them.

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