#Selesnya Conclave

[etrata]

Made this poll on a Discord server but thought it'd be funny to post it here

#selesnya conclave #war of the spark #march of the machine #magic the gathering #ravnica #azorius senate

[sun-3-160]

Here are all of my guild playlists lol

#mtg #magic the gathering #music #now i shall tag every single guild + just the color combo name uhhhh #boros #boros legion #izzet #izzet league #selesnya #selesnya conclave #golgari #golgari swarm #dimir #house dimir #orzhov #orzhov syndicate #gruul #gruul clans #azorius #azorius senate #rakdos #cult of rakdos #simic #simic combine #Spotify

[1llus1on1st]

Ravnica

Izzet: the future is now whether you want it or not

Orzhov: give us all of your money

Selesnya: one with nature

Golgari: one with psilocybin specifically

Gruul: aren’t you tired of being nice?

Boros: the fun police

Simic: i’m not like other girls. i have crab legs

Rakdos: man, prostitutes cost an arm and a leg these days

Azorius: my dad works at azorius and can get you banned from ravnica

Dimir: what are you talking about? there are only 9 guilds of ravnica. you’re just imagining things again

#mtg #ravnica #mtg meme #izzet league #orzhov syndicate #selesnya conclave #golgari swarm #gruul clans #boros legion #simic combine #cult of rakdos #azorius senate #house dimir

[not-so-innocent-bi-sander]

Sanders Sides/Magic the Gathering

Today on “Combining extremely different things I really like” I was thinking how the colors in MTG (almost) line up with the sides pretty nicely, but the guilds (in universe groups based on two of the colors) don’t exactly match up with the boys just because of the colors alone. So I made two little.. Things. Just for the hell of it. 

They aren’t perfect.. But I did as I could.

#sanders sides #mtg #logan sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #azorius senate #boros legion #selesnya conclave #simic combine #golgari swarm #orzhov syndicate #izzet league #house dimir #cult of rakdos #gruul clans

[the-chessboard-is-personal]

I was going to make a long hermitcraft theory-style post about how I think the Selesnya are evil and do bad stuff to people but then I did some research and turns out that's just Canon

I thought of my theory after finding this card's flavor text very suspicious

And then I checked out other cards' flavor text and they were also very suspicious, for instance (under cut bc this got long Anyway)

Camaraderie - "Within the song of Mat'Selesnya, one becomes all." Ah yes, one [being] becomes all [people], that doesn't sound sinister at all

Druid's Deliverance - "Selesnya's roots reach deep into the Worldsoul, and we will not be moved." Last I heard, "reaching" into a soul is, uh. Bad.

Dryad's Caress - "I awoke to the face of beauty, my body fully healed. In that moment I knew my destiny was the Conclave's to shape." Just because someone has healing powers, in a world full of people with magical powers, doesn't make that person automatically your leader. Either Rogad is, uh, not the smartest or there was a certain other power being used along with that healing...

Glare of Subdual - "The righteous light of Selesnya is channeled through the devout, striking out to blind the nonbelievers." Ok cultist

Hour of Reckoning - "Ravnica, like a hedge, must be pruned, leaving only leaves of verdant uniformity." Hedges thrive in the wild tho. Like without being pruned. Selesnya's the kind of guild to absolutely 404 when you try to explain the simple fact that Diversity Is Good. I bet they're homophobic too

Selesnya Guildgate - "The Selesnya welcome all to help heal the city's wounds. The price, however, is devotion to the guild and a selfless belief in Trostani." Oh, finally, a normal o- NOPE, CULT AGAIN!

Unflinching Courage - "As Trostani's influence grew, vitality spread throughout the Conclave much to the other guilds' dismay." Growing influence that people outside (the majority of people by far) don't like, HMM...

Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage - "Preachers of freedom forget that conformity can be beautiful." I- huh?? Do you hear yourself??? I genuinely hated typing that

Chorus of the Conclave - "We are many, yet one. We are separate in body, yet speak with a single voice. Join us in our chorus." Hivemind behavior

And they brand everything and everyone with their logo. Helmets, chestplates, tunics, even the armor they have custom built for wurms has the Selesnya sigil plastered all over it.

#asdfjshdjk #mtg #magic the gathering #mtg selesnya #selesnya conclave #the fuck up won't shut up! #yes i am thinking about magic the gathering again thanks for noticing

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Conclave Mentor by Raoul Vitale

#Magic the Gathering #MtG #Magic 2021 #Core Set 2021 #Ravnica #Selesnya #Conclave Mentor #Centaur #Fantasy #Art #Raoul Vitale

[almostlookedhuman]

#mtg #emmara #voice of the conclave #ravnica #emmara tandris #selesnya symbol #nereida

[racefortheironthrone]

fantasy sometimes doesn't afford itself the ability to fantasize about a better world with many of the same problems of real life. thankfully ive found fantasy thatfantasize about things like gender roles, orientations, social status, etc. being more accepting, and the world kinder more often than not. question is, as hard as it is to find solid urban fantasy, are there anyworks you know of that use itself to imagine a optimal city for us urban nerds? magic public works, free dragon transit?

So there is a real problem in the fantasy and sci-fi genres that they often have a failure of revolutionary imagination, as I’ve termed it. We’re so used to not just the world as it is but also the public historical imagination of how change happens, that even in art that’s supposed to be about radically reimagining our world or new worlds, we often revert back to the familiar. (I find this tic particularly annoying in alternate history, which is supposed to be about imagining how the world could have evolved differently, but often reverts back to a retelling of (often bad) history with the numbers filed off.)

(A sadly rare counter-example.)

You raise a fascinating question about the potential for urbanist fantasy. This is often quite rare in urban fantasy, because often out of a desire to maintain the verisimilitude of urban life, they default to a masquerade scenario which renders it impossible to explore the impact of magic on transit, housing, and other aspects of urbanism because the central conceit is that people with magic are trying to hide and thus have no impact on the mundane world.

However, it does crop up sometimes in Magitech settings, because their central conceit is all about how magic would function in place of science and lead to new ways of organizing societies, urban and otherwise. For a popular example, look at how Arcane examines the social impacts of Hextech and Shimmer. My personal favorite example of urbanist fantasy is the plane of Ravnica from Magic the Gathering.

Ravnica is a ecumenopolis, a city-state that covers the whole planet. The city is governed by a guild council, each of whom are responsible for an aspect of the city’s physical and social infrastructure:

The Azorius Senate is responsible for running the courts and the legal system, and sometimes they run the police as well (although they have a jurisdictional dispute with the Boros Legion on that front).

House Dimir are couriers, messengers, journalists, private investigators, spies, assassins, thieves, and librarians, as well as the city’s clandestine intelligence service - if it deals with information in any way, the Dimir have a hand in it…or do they?

The Cult of Rakdos run the city’s entertainment, food service, retail, and labor recruitment (lots of shanghaing and press ganging goes on in Ravnica) - and they’re also a crazed juggalo bdsm blood cult who are responsible for keeping an ancient arch-demon entertained so he doesn’t try to destroy the city, again.

The Gruul Clans are an anarchist collective responsible for the planet’s wilderness areas, which they try to maximize by violent raids that tear down developed areas any chance they get - which also makes them Ravnica’s main demolition industry. The Boros Legion spends a lot of time defending built-up areas from Gruul rampages.

The Selesnya Conclave are a hippie nature cult commune who manage the city’s parks and other green spaces, as well as providing basic welfare services (food, “shelter,” clothing, etc.) to the city’s poor. They also use magic to do weird hivemind brainwashing in the name of harmony and unity, and they can raise giant Ent-Kaiju to defend the city in times of need.

The Orzhov Syndicate are a vampire banker mafia, and also one of the city’s biggest religions. They believe in debt on a spiritual level, and their religion fully embraces indulgences to their logical conclusion. The Orzhov preach that you can literally buy your way into heaven, and that debts to the (Catholic by way of Prosperity Gospel Evangelical) Church or its many front organizations and legitimate businesses will carry over into the next life; the Orzhov practice debt slavery on both living people and ghosts. And lest you think it’s all a cover for profit-making, they can summon dark angels to conduct rituals, lead services, and make war on their enemies. Something above is answering their prayers…

My personal favorite is the Izzet League, an institute of mad scientists and engineers and elementalist wizards who combine science and magic to research, build, and maintain the city’s infrastructure (as well as funding all tech R&D and theoretical and experimental research in physics, chemistry, and engineering) - the power grid, water and sewer systems, heating and gas lines, as well as the city’s mass transit and transportation/freight system, are all powered by their steam and fire and lightning and Magitech gadgets and robots and cyborgs made out of a magic metal named mizzium. Yes, a lot of their devices explode, and yes their golems and robots and elementals have a tendency to go rogue, but that’s the price of progress!

The Golgari Swarm are a subterranean necromantic cabal who run the city’s waste disposal, burial services, and do the bulk of the agricultural production for Ravnica’s hungry masses. All of Ravnica’s citizens are entitled to a food dole provided by the Golgari’s fungi farms as a form of basic income. Just don’t think too hard about what went into the compost heaps or what your rations might be made of…

The Boros Legion is Ravnica’s main police and military, led by a literal host of warrior angels. Imagine the combination of a police force entirely made up of noir detectives and loose cannon Dirty Harry-esque cops and an army with flying fortresses led by fiery angels who are all deeply dramatic lesbians. True believers one and all, the Boros are here to mete out justice and divine wroth upon evildoers wherever they hide. If they had their way, the Orzhov would all be in prison along with the Gruul and the Rakdos, but the damn bureaucrats in the Azorius Senate keep trying them up in knots with paperwork.

The Simic Combine are responsible for the city’s environmental quality, ensuring biodiversity and sustainability in a global metropolis; they are also the city’s universal health care providers. All Ravnicans have access to free health care, as long as they consent to the Combine’s biomantic research. See, the Simic are the other group of mad scientists/mages in the city, except they went into genetics, environmental science, and (marine) biology and they believe in individual and societal evolution through the use of augmentation, cloning, and splicing. After all, why stop at curing someone’s respiratory illness when you could also give them gills? Or giant crab claws? Or tentacles?

I love the world-building and the attention to urban systems and infrastructure in Ravnica. More than most, they’ve thought about what urban life needs to function and made it magical.

#fantasy genre #urban fantasy #revolutionary imagination #genre fiction #urbanism #alternate history #city-states #guilds #ravnica #mtg #arcane #magitech

[raakdos-battlemap]

[Ravnica Battlemap]Selesnya Loft Gardens

Despite their appearance of being "good" and "peace-loving", in truth the guild has a sinister streak. The Conclave used to employ its quietmen and other members to silence the civilians of Ravnica. The defenders of the Selesnya are the Ledev Guardians. Equenauts ride pegasuses, combining the role of mounted warriors and scouts. Sagittars are elven archers that defend key guild locations.

Other variations of this map:

#mtg art #ravnica #battlemap #dnd maps #murders at karlov manor #roll20 #ttrpg #dnd art #dnd #dnd5e #d&d oc #d&d 5e #d&d art #dungeons and dragons #d&d #battlemaps #dndart

[dimestoretajic]

THE MAGIC THE GATHERING FACTIONS BRACKET

HELLO EVERYONE! Oh, this is gonna be a fun one! I have semi-randomly set up a 32-faction bracket to see who is the greatest faction in all the Multiverse. What does "greatest" mean? That's up to you! I'm just here to facilitate the squabbles and watch with popcorn in hand, honestly. Can't wait to see what you all decide!

And... yeah, reblog if you like. No pressure, but this is so much more fun when more people participate!

Here are the seeds!

Quandrix College vs. Clan Atarka

House Dimir vs. The Mirrans*

Lorehold College vs. The Sultai Brood

Simic Combine vs. Silverquill College

The Cabaretti vs. The Jeskai Way

Boros Legion vs. The Maestros

Clan Dromoka vs. Izzet League

Selesnya Conclave vs. Clan Kolaghan

Abzan Houses vs. Cult of Rakdos

Orzhov Syndicate vs. Prismari College

Obscura vs. Gruul Clans

The Phyrexians vs. Witherbloom College

Clan Ojutai vs. Golgari Swarm

Brokers vs. Temur Frontier

Mardu Horde vs. Azorius Senate

Clan Silumgar vs. The Riveteers

Have fun, everyone! I know I will! Get voting!

*I know there's a typo on that one. You can't edit polls after you post them and there's SIXTEEN and I was doing them in reverse order, okay? :P

#magic the gathering #mtg #magic factions bracket #mtgfb week one

[justavulcan]

Backgrounds With Class: Simic Scientist

I'll be honest: Ravnica has always fascinated me. I was a high schooler when the first set came out, and I was immediately consumed creating characters for the setting. Now that we've actually received my long-awaited crossover, I thought it would be nice to write a love letter to the setting in the form of another Backgrounds with Class series. After all: some guilds have natural class choices tied in, from a conceptual standpoint. Boros and Fighter, Izzet and Wizard, Selesnya and Druid. But guilds aren’t class-restricted, and so I wonder what it would look like if you paired every class with every guild background, even the ones that seem at odds, like Izzet and Barbarian, or Gruul and Artificer.  So I thought about it, and this is what I came up with.  Some character concepts for each class, and each Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica background for each class.

The Simic Scientist Artificer was always a practical sort.  Enamored with the surgeon’s art from his youth and with a fast friend of decades working in the Izzet League, he’s found ways to adopt the other science guild’s technology for medical use on a number of occasions, particularly their chemistry.  The reverse is also true- unbeknownst to those around him, he’s been trading insider secrets for his colleague’s aid.  He doesn’t view this as a betrayal- to his mind, it’s a crime that there isn’t already an exchange of innovation in the regular course of things.  Surely their fields would advance much more quickly with the aid of other points of view.

The Simic Scientist Barbarian is an experimental direction for the Guardian Project, a soldier with adaptive talents flexible enough to change specialization on the fly or between engagements.  Trained with weapons and spliced with at least a little sluiceway scorpion, she believes wholeheartedly in the assurances of her experimental overseer that she will one day no longer need armaments of steel, as her hybrid traits and experimental mutagenic adrenal glands grow into full maturity.

The Simic Scientist Bard has a job as an educator, putting her keen understanding of biology and biomancy to work in the classroom imparting wisdom to her students.  Adept at teaching by multiple avenues to suit different learning styles, she is always conscientious to mix the practical and hands-on with deep concepts, and takes the careers of her students very seriously after graduation.  In her off hours, she works as a consultant for other matters, both in the lab and on the street, and has started to make a name for herself as one of the public faces of the Combine.

The Simic Scientist Cleric kneels at no altar that the people of Ravnica would know, but many of her peers would understand, if not condone.  The Simic Combine is not a religious organization, but surely they can see that knowledge itself is a thing divine no less than the Worldsong of the Conclave or the Orzhov’s Church of Deals.  While her colleagues view this eccentricity with bemusement and even occasional suspicion, she is more than welcome in the lab, as her work has an uncanny prescient feel to it, often making breakthroughs just when it would be useful.

The Simic Scientist Druid is an oddity even among Simic Biomancers.  Originally a Guardian Project volunteer, this druid is technically a krasis rather than a hybrid, as the ratio of hermit crab to vedalken is too high to qualify her as a simic hybrid.  Still loyal to the combine that reforged her into a clumsy new shell-bearing body, the druid serves the Hull Clade, her defensively-oriented mind an asset to guardian squads in the field and biomancers working with shell, carapace, and scale in the lab. 

The Simic Scientist Fighter is a typical product of the Guardian Project: a disciplined, careful, and tactically gifted elf with latent mollusc traits.  Trained for both long-range and short-range combat, he is being groomed for a position as a squadron leader to field both terrestrial and aquatic threats- a true amphibious soldier.  This flexibility is reflected in his mindset- despite his participation in the Guardian Project and aggressive skillset, he is a Holdfast advocate, claiming it’s far more important for the Combine to ground themselves than to expand aggressively; overreach is a mistake.

The Simic Scientist Monk is an experimental departure from tradition.  Raised deep underwater as a potential Deepsage, their tradition of unarmed combat has met with modern biomancy and medical knowledge to produce a warrior with a literal healer’s touch.  Mastering the flow of vital energies and fluids through their own body and those of others, they are as skilled a healer as a bodyguard, equally adept at setting bones and force-healing contusions as bringing death with a touch.

The Simic Scientist Paladin follows an uncommon tradition among elves, a holdover  from his time among the Selesnya growing up.  While he’s firmly an Upwelling adherent, confident that change is the way forward for the Combine, his own magical tradition is among the oldest on Ravnica, as he swore an oath to life itself to be a light in the world.  Many of his colleagues shake their heads at the juxtaposition, but he’s not dissuaded by their confusion- after all, Upwelling is a resurgence of old matters and ways, not an act of genesis.

The Simic Scientist Ranger is a field researcher, a lab assistant who, after his amphibian hybridization, seeks to assess the results of his guild’s work in the field.  From chill ocean below to lofty aeries above, he ranges to see that the Combine’s work finds its niche, and observe how the web of life on Ravnica changes to fit.  He’s also one of the hunters the Combine turns to when they have need of samples from exotic wildlife, or when a krasis proves disastrous for its environment and must be euthanized.

The Simic Scientist Rogue was part of the Combine’s covert troubleshooting force before the inception of the Guardian Project, and remains so to this day.  Usually dispatched as an investigator or recovery specialist, as the guild has ramped up its preparations for wartime she has found herself more and more involved in guerrilla action against threats preemptively.  Always a proponent of striking harder sooner, she is keen to do whatever she can to keep the Simic at its best.

The Simic Scientist Sorcerer, as a prospective member of Gyre Clade, often finds herself involved in the less physical of the guild’s pursuits.  Be it assessing the mana currents of the hidden oceans or seeking strange weather phenomena to observe the dispersal of energy, her apprenticeship has been anything but dull.  It’s helped to give focus to her talents, though, which run toward the stormy, and often leave her struggling to pay attention to things if she’s not confronted with novelty now and again.

The Simic Scientist Warlock came up from the zonots with the second generation of merfolk to grace the surface.  Having long ago made peace and pact with a great beast of the deep, she quickly found her talents for team support in high demand among Guardian Project strike teams and Crypsis Clade scouting missions.  She’s very protective of the fine abalone necklace she wears loose around her neck; it’s both a mark of her pact and the only thing she brought with her to remember her parents by.

The Simic Scientist Wizard is, by all accounts, brilliant- surgeon extraordinaire and transmuter-scientist of the Fin clade, it seems there is little he cannot do if he sets his mind and hands to it.  Of the two, the surgeon’s path is far more important to him, as he would rather save lives with tools and expertise than work at biomancy- so much so that he’s rejected or missed opportunities for more profitable apprenticeships in favor of earning his surgical license and trying for a private practice.  Unfortunately, the money’s run out, and he’s recently had to turn his mind from clean, sterile lab work to the rough conditions and uncertain developments of field work.

#D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #Dungeons & Dragons #Character Ideas #Character Designs #Character Concepts #Ravnica #Alchemist #Beast #Lore #Knowledge #Land #Champion #Mercy #Ancients #Hunter #Thief #Storm #Fathomless #Pact of the Talisman #Transmuter

[etrata]

Would like to say after posting that essay just a side tidbit I always have thought of that just felt so weird. On Ravnica, Rakdos is said to have a Cult, but ironically it feels far less like an actual cult than the Selesnya Conclave, and I don't know if it warrants a full length essay but it's interesting that the difference between those from the mana colors and their focus (red and black being so primarily self focused and green and white being focused on others) makes the one actually named a Cult actually feel less like one, because it encourages more forms of self expression. I always found that weird about Ravnica and interesting to note but didn't wanna make a full essay about it like I did here

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Selesnya Guildgate

Enter and rejoice! The Conclave stands united, open to one and all.

Artist: Howard Lyon TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #$0.18 #howard lyon #selesnya guildgate #commander 2013 #land #gate

[werewolftits]

#mtg

[ourlittleforever]

before I take a nap here's my self insert for Lazav!!

they're half-elf and a member of the Selesnya Conclave and run a sanctuary for cats left ownerless or stray by the two invasions. after New Phyrexia invaded, Lazav wanted to lay low, and shapeshifted into a cat and stayed with their sanctuary for awhile, eventually becoming their favorite cat. He intended only to stay until he could return to House Dimir and well. Now he has a treehugger cat-loving gf to take with him.

[they/them ONLY]

#self insert #self ship #self shipping #self ship community #millieart #s/i: ravnica

[lamasia-creations]

Helga my beloved dwarf fighter <3

She's currently dripped out for a Ravnica campaign, so the iconography is for the Selesnya Conclave 🌿

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #dnd character #dnd charcter art #art #digital art