The Izzet League
Progress at Any Cost
“The first thing a magewright needs to understand is to never sit on any idea too long. I’ve always been taught to strike while the iron’s hot – comes from growing up in the Kilnspire District I suppose, but we’re no simple smiths in this guild. You let a spark of imagination alone too long, and it cools in your mind, and you can’t shape it like before. That is why the best time to invent is when struck with an idea, as soon as possible. You must take your inspiration like it’s burning your hands, mold it while the need to create is still warm, and you may surprise yourself what you can do when not mulling over whether it can succeed or not – that can come later. Find the plausible. Understand the probable. Don’t make the passable; create the impossible!”
-Magewright Jinhel, speech to new recruits
Made up of crafty inventors, bold tinkerers and misfit mages with strange ideas, the Izzet League is a guild of artifice and mechanical discovery. Every major technology on Ravnica, from the floating sky resevoir to the common glowpost, owes a little something to the Izzet and their intricate designs. The Magewrights are the only guild that understands metamagic, the science of magic itself, and they use this to keep the technical aspects of Ravnica running like clockwork, from water systems to heating networks. They have even managed to work out methods to stop just about all of the plane’s natural disasters, (though this doesn’t prevent the occasional unnatural disaster).
Unlike most other guilds, the Izzet fail to see the importance of power, dominion, or wealth. The rabid pursuit of knowledge is the guild’s only concern. Inspiration can strike an Izzet magewright like lightning, who usually drop what they’re doing and get started on their next idea while the spark lingers in the mind. The Izzet love creation and destruction in almost equal tandem, watching their ideas manifest into something wonderful or picking up the pieces when their project blows up in their face (sometimes literally). The ideal goal of these capricious mages is to create something that will impress the Firemind, Niv-Mizzet, and receive direct communion with his thought process – the ultimate boon for an Izzet. Those who fail are immolated by the bored dragon.
Not methodical researchers, the Izzet are resolute in their work, carrying on if even the worst should happen. This undaunted nature and unwavering loyalty to their vain guildmaster gives the Magewrights the capacity to work as maddening a job as monitoring and fixing the mechanical functions of a plane-wide city.
Structure
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Domains: Air, Artifice, Fire, Luck, Weather
Guildmaster: Niv-Mizzet
Guildhall: Nivix
Values: Emotion tempered with learning. The Izzet are driven by a thirst for knowledge that is nigh-insatiable. They create and tinker to satiate their own passion for study, and each magewright is known to follow her or his impulses in order to invent something true to a personal vision.
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