Basics

My Belief. My People. My Guild.

The Selesnya guild sees itself as the voice of Mat’Selesnya, a mysterious consciousness they believe to be the manifestation of nature itself. All within the guild are considered mouthpieces of that singular voice, and they seek to expand their guild by evangelizing their message and adding members. The Selesnya message is personal as well as public: individuals must silence their own consciousness in order to hear the will of their guildmaster, a three-headed dryad who is the spiritual transmitter of Mat’Selesnya.

Individuality can prevent people from identifying with each other. Each one of us has the responsibility to make sure that the needs of others are met. It is good for a group of people to have the same interests and goals."

-Fonn Zunich, Ledev-Guardian

The guild’s goal is to subsume the identities of individual members, transforming them into instruments of the Conclave. Selesnya has an immense reach. The guild is spread across Ravnica. Each settlement, called a vernadi, is a small commune built around a central tree and led by a dryad leader. The vernadi expand outward from Vitu-Ghazi, and all are connected through an underground network of roots.

Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

Although Selesnyans believe power is not centered in any one location, the massive tree of Vitu-Ghazi serves as the focus and guildhall of the Selesnya guild. Other communes reflect the perfect form and structure of Vitu-Ghazi, and its trunk acts as a cathedral for worshippers from all around Ravnica. Suniel the Woodwise, an elf woodshaper, was responsible for healing the damage to Vitu-Ghazi after an assault by the vampire Szadek, then guildmaster of House Dimir. Now an elder within the guild, Suniel is the head architect of Selesnya, overseeing the immense gardens, parks, and arboreal pathways through the great Selesnya forests.

Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice

Trostani, the Selesnya Guildmaster. The triune dryad, Trostani, rules the guild. The Selesnyans, however, would say she is ultimately led by the will of Mat'Selesnya herself. Each of the three dryad identities that comprise Trostani embodies a particular Selesnya value. The rightmost head is Order, who speaks in a metered, plain chant. The leftmost head is Life, and speaks in a lilting, singsong voice. The central head is Harmony, who speaks in a silvery whisper. Each head is adorned in its own unique manner, with eyes that range from verdant green to shimmering silver. The central head of Harmony rarely speaks, but when she does, her counsel is considered by all to be sacrosanct.

Emmara Tandris

Emmara was one of the highest ranking members of the Selesnya Conclave to survive the riots that tore the guild down following the dissolution of the Guildpact. She is an excelent Healer and was the chosen maze-runner of the Selsnya Conclave. She is one of the most active advocates of cooperation between the Ravnican guilds.

„Whatever hatred destroys, a single act of trust can revive.”

-Emmara Tandris

Page 1 | Basics

Everyday life inside the Conclave

The Selesnya Conclave is organized into enclaves called vernadi, which are communes built around central trees. The vernadi are smaller versions of the guildhall, the great city-tree Vitu-Ghazi. A dryad, called a voda, is called forth from that central tree to be the leader of the community, connecting the vernadi and its devotees to the Worldsoul and uniting them with the will of the entire conclave.

A voda is accessible to all the guild members in her care. You have regular contact with your voda, who knows your name and has a good idea of your interests, goals, and strengths. And since your voda is mystically linked to the guildmaster, Trostani, through communion with the Worldsoul, it's safe to assume that Trostani knows who you are as well.

In addition to the voda, military and religious leaders in each vernadi regularly communicate with its members. Ordinary members of the conclave spend a few hours every day training with a military instructor and studying with a religious teacher.

Goals of the Selesnya

Despite the growing tensions that now grip the world, in the long view of the Selesnya Conclave, not much has changed. Ravnica is troubled, but Ravnica has always been troubled. The Living Guildpact is absent, but the Guildpact comes and goes. The Worldsoul has not changed, nor has the will of Mat'Selesnya: the conclave's main goal is to grow, as it has always been. Its strength lies in its numbers.

The conclave clings to the ideal of a peaceful collective in which individual desires are subordinate to the good of the whole group. The guild wants to see this beloved community grow, flourish, and thrive in peace. But as much as it values peace within the community, it displays incredible ferocity when that harmony is threatened.

Selesnya's vision is centered on the idea of harmony between civilization and nature. To advance the cause of civilized society, the conclave believes in the need for an ordered structure that orients the group toward
the pursuit of the common good. At the same
time, the guild's connection with the natural
world gives the conclave a fervent appreciation
for the interconnectedness of all things.

Selesnya doesn't tolerate selfishness or ambition, instead urging its members to put the needs of others ahead of their own desires and to use the power of nature—including nature's wrath—to drive away those whose selfishness threatens the coherence of the group.

The greatest danger that Selesnya faces lies in the ambitions of other guilds, which are flourishing in the absence of the Guildpact. Selesnya's way of curbing this grasping selfishness has always been to outnumber the other guilds. Its members aren't naive; they fully realize that the ambitions of other guilds will lead to violence. And they aim to be prepared for that violence when it erupts.

"For my seedlings to survive," Mat'Selesnya says, "we must grow an army capable of overwhelming such ambitions." Some of that army is literally grown, in the case of plant creatures and elementals. A great many members grow up in the guild from childhood and learn their martial skills at the guild's training grounds. And still more join the guild through recruitment—especially in these troubling times, when rumors of war and a sense of imminent doom make Selesnya's message of harmonious community sound ever more appealing.

Members

In the Conclave everybody who is willed to join the Conclave and adopt their philosophy is welcomed with open arms. Nonetheless most of its members are connected to nature in some way. Thats why elves, loxodons aswell as dryads are a common sight among the members of the Selesnya Conclave. Humans and other races are also strong in numbers within the Conclave. Goblins and Minotaurs are a more rare sight. The wild Viashinos wont be seen often aswell. Most creatures and races that arent that keen of the bright daylight stay away from the Conclave as well. The Conclave has religious             recruiters and evangels that extend their hands to                potential converts and welcome new initiates into                     the life of the Selesnya Conclave. They include                         fervent preachers who speak the will of                             the Worldsoul in the promenades and                                    marketplaces and centaur warriors                                                 who evangelize in Gruul                                                     territories where words                                                          of war speak louder than                                                           prayers of peace.

Enemies and Allies

The Selesnya philosophy is one that embraces all of Ravnica. Everyone is a potential ally, until the moment they demonstrate their hostility to the conclave or the will of the Worldsoul. The Selesnya have difficulty with the riotous Rakdos, the sinister Dimir, and the chaotic Izzet, but their focus on ordered community and verdant nature gives them some amount of common ground with every other guild.

Any guild can become an enemy of the conclave, though, if its guildmaster's ambitions—or rogue agents within the guild—upset the balance of power on Ravnica. From the other side, many other guilds see the Selesnya as a quiet threat and seek to diminish its strength before its numbers grow out of control, so as a member of the conclave you are duty-bound to oppose their operations of sabotage. The wanton plunder of Ravnica's natural resources can also provoke the Selesnya to take action.

When members of other guilds pursue noble aims—promoting peace, strengthening community, and opposing other guilds' efforts to expand—they act as allies of the conclave and thus your allies. Furthermore, they are potential recruits into the fold, since they have demonstrated their sympathy for Selesnya's goals and their value to the community.

The Selesnya View on Other Guilds

In the Selesnya vision of a perfect Ravnica, the guilds would be abolished and all people would live in harmony with nature and each other. Until such a vision comes to pass, the conclave judges the other guilds against that standard of perfection.

The Worldmind

The Worldmind, also known as the Voice of the Conclave, is the subtle transmission of Mat'Selesnya's consciousness. The Conclave also picks up on experiences and wisdom from members of the guild which they then transmit. The clarity of this wisdom is proportional to the depth of a member's devotion to meditation and his or her service to the guild. Through a magical ceremony upon death, a Selesnyan guild member's full experience (spirit) is "uploaded" into the Worldmind. The deeper a guild member's devotion, the deeper his or her access to the Worldmind. Some of the most devout Selesnyans have the capacity to wield immense power thanks to their connection to the Worldmind.

Temptations of Power

In a perfect world, the Selesnyans consider all of their leaders, no matter how tenured, to be fallible and mortal teachers, nothing more. However, some of the Selesnyan elders are prone to a bit of self-aggrandizement, due to their own personal ambition ,and take pride in the growth and beauty of their own particular vernadi.

Violence and Hypocrisy

A not-so-well-kept secret is Selesnya's hypocrisy about the taking of life. Because of their doctrine about the sanctity of life, one might believe that they would be stringent pacifists. On the contrary, they have no problem with throwing away countless lives in combat. One of Selesnya's main tactics in battle is to create a living shield of bodies to stall opponents until one of their massive elementals or avatars can show up to destroy en masse. Post mortem, Selesnyans make a large, ceremonial fuss about the sacrifice of noble warriors and how all life returns to Mat'Selesnya, but a mound of corpses is hard evidence to cover.

Keepers of Beauty

The Selesnya guild is the guardian of natural and structural beauty. There are entire sections of scrolls and codices within Vitu-Ghazi about the correct way to order the landscape, the best stone to use, how to arrange specific kinds of trees, and the most pleasing way to layer foliage. There are some who believe in keeping every stone clean of debris and some who want to arrange without there being noticeable signs, but all agree that beauty is a crucial value of life.

Wurms

Selesnyans are quite proud of their wurms. With Ravnica being a crowded bustle aboveground, travel belowground is something that gives Selesnya an advantage in locomotion about the plane. Wurmcallers are a particular branch of shamans who have found a way to harness and ride upon these massive beasts. On Ravnica, wurms shift the earth with powerful, subsonic emissions that displace the soil, rendering it into a liquid-like state and allowing the wurm to move through it at great speed. Shamans have attached armored chariot cabs to the wurms capable of holding several passengers on a subterranean trip. Mostly, wurms are used for defense, where the shamans direct the wurms' movements from within their armored cabs.

Elementals

Elementals within Selesnya are usually comprised of roots and brambles intertwined together. Sometimes, with the larger elementals, white marble chunks or slabs of limestone are wielded as weapons or worn as armor. If elementals are sufficiently large enough, they are often used as public buildings and temples that can uproot themselves and move to other locations or defend a vernadi.

Living Tempels

These are moderately sized to enormous organic elementals that dwell beneath the ground and exist for most of their lives as root structures with their aboveground vines and tendrils holding masonry in place. This masonry is often a temple or an amphitheater that Selesnyans use in day-to-day life. If threatened, a priest or shaman can summon the living temple and the whole elemental rises from under the earth, the chunks and pieces of masonry still incorporated into its body for use as armor or weapons. After it defeats its foes, the living temple then returns under the earth and assembles its stonework back into place as if nothing had happened.

The Ivory Oaks

This stand of massive trees is guarded by an order of albino loxodon warrior-priests. The priests wear silver armor with green tabards emblazoned with the insignia of their order. Their weapons are generally blunt and made from the Ivory Oaks themselves. The strength, purity, and longevity of the oaks are the reason why they are considered sacred. Oaths and ceremonies are conducted among the gleaming limbs of the Ivory Oaks. Marriages, treaties, rites of passage, and contracts take place within the grove under the auspices of the priests. The cleric who oversees the entire site is Troslon, a rugged loxodon who is a bit of a rebel by Selesnyan standards in that he puts the natural world before the desires of the guild. This is illustrated in his defense of the sacred tree of Belokos. High ranks in Selesnyan leadership would love to claim this tree for their own, but Troslon adamantly keeps the tree open to all Ravnicans, guilded or unguilded, who wish to pay respects to the tree or utilize the properties of its magical auras.

Sumala, the Topiary Grove

Imagine a massive, dense forest that has been meticulously kept so that every plant and tree is left in place but has been manicured and sculpted so that it is not entangled or encroaching upon the space of another. Sumala is a giant meditation garden and home to some of the most magnificent Selesnyan architecture and scenic artistry. The Topiary Grove of Sumala is known across Ravnica and is the masterwork of an elf woodshaper named Sadruna. Sadruna's designs and techniques are sought after, copied, and duplicated throughout Selesnya and other guilds.

Votary

Votaries are soldiers who protect the vernadi gardens in the area immediately around its central tree.

Sagittar

Sagittars are archers who defend key guild locations, including the guildhall at Vitu-Ghazi. Their range and accuracy are so great that a common saying has arisen among Ravnicans: "Sagittars aim their bows using maps." If a conclave mission would benefit from the support of disciplined archers, Trostani herself might call on sagittars to render aid.

Equenaut

Equenauts are knights who ride pegasi and serve as warriors and scouts. In addition to surveilling enemy forces and terrain, they are also on the lookout for places where a new vernadi can take root.

Ledev Guardians

The Ledev guardians are knights who were originally protectors of Ravnica's roadways but now serve the Selesnya as champions. Their ranks include a number of centaurs. The humanoids among them ride dire wolves, which they raise from pups to forge close bonds between rider and mount.

Precinct 3

Ample parks, busy stables, and large gardens combine to create a vibrant environment in Precinct Three. Natural and urban life intermingle throughout the precinct, and the people who reside here view it as a respite from most other places in the Tenth District. Folk here tend to live simply, and generations of families have dwelt in the same structures for hundreds of years. During the day, the gardens, small pastures, and stables are tended by young and old. Evenings are given over to communal gatherings, sometimes featuring performances by trained beasts or storytelling.

The people of Precinct Three are comfortable with living around nature. They have no problems with pets or beastly companions sharing their space as well as residing in multifamily structures. Good neighbors help tend to plants, animals, and children whenever necessary.

Vitu-Ghazi:

The Selesnya guildhall, a towering tree that also serves as a cathedral to Mat'Selesnya, is the epicenter of Selesnya culture and law. Members of the conclave from across Ravnica make pilgrimages to Vitu-Ghazi in hopes of finding a spiritual connection with the heart of the guild. All who come without ill intent in their heart are welcome to visit the public areas of the tree.

The Canopy:

The northern neighborhood of the precinct is covered in tall trees, all of which are overshadowed by Vitu-Ghazi. To accommodate a growing population, buildings are situated around the trees and on the larger branches, making use of a network of ladders and rope walkways.

The Great Concourse:

A network of elevated roadways links many of the most important Selesnya communities near Vitu-Ghazi. The polished white stone of the roadways gleams in the sun, and the pathways are topped with lush trees, grasses, and flowers. On high holy days, its central hub, called the Great Concourse, serves as a gathering place for throngs of Selesnya devotees. On most other days, the Concourse is a teeming marketplace where goods transported across the city on the great roadways are bought and sold.

Concordance:

Once known as the Old City, the eastern neighborhood of Concordance is the oldest section of the precinct. Many buildings in this area were once Orzhov structures, but they have been reclaimed by moss, shrubs, and other growth that make them blend in with the homes, parks, and the Selesnya vernadi that fill the rest of the neighborhood. The Great Concourse runs overhead through most of the neighborhood.

Beast Haven:

The western neighborhood has many small pastures and stables, some of which are on open, multilevel structures. The area is filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of beasts of many sorts. Here, beasts are trained for labor and sold to customers from across the city. Every so often, a beast escapes captivity and rampages through the neighborhood, but the tough residents are usually able to bring any disruption under control quickly.