Guildpact

Writer - Cory J. Herndon
Cover Art - Todd Lockwood
First Printing - January 2006

SUMMARY

We begin a few decades befor the last book, with Izzet Magelord Zomaj Hauc exploding some sort of bomb above the plague ridden "Utvara Reclamation Zone" that is supposed to kill all life while leaving the buildings so its Orzhov owners can start redeveloping it. The machine kills all the local Gruul with an implosion, but doesn't explode. Instead it creates a strange fold in space called the Schism that starts sucking up all the ghosts of those who die in Utvara...

Chapter two moves us to 12 years after the Decamillennial. Advokist Teysa Karlov is pulled from her job by her uncle, the owner of Utvara, to help him with that redevelopment, of which she will become baroness once her uncle dies and takes his place on the Ghost Council. We learn that there is now a township for prospectors (who are mining for gold in long-forgotten banks, and seen as squatters by Uncle) in the middle of Utvara. The plague wasn't eradicated by Hauc's experiment though, it instead mutated into a much more deadly, airborne version of itself. Selesnyans have set up a huge tree called Vitar Yescu (still minuscule compared to Vitu Ghazi) which keeps the plague outside of the village, prospectors have to wear protective gear when journeying out, and the Gruul clans that have moved into the outskirts grow antigen fungus on their body, but still live short and brutal lives. 

This is her years later of course, but showing her Guildpact art when it's already on the cover you've just seen would be odd.

Speaking of the Gruul, we learn one of their clan leaders, Aun Yom, has been provided weapons by the Izzet only to get killed and possessed by... something. His possessed clan attacks the caravan Teysa and Uncle are traveling on. Also on the caravan is Crix, an Izzet messenger goblin who was magically and technologically enhanced by Zomaj Hauc. She's on her way to Hauc, who is still in Utvara, overseeing the Cauldron project that provides energy to the region. She gets captured by a Gruul clan who are rivals of Aun Yom, but not before seeing Teysa standing over the corpse of her uncle.

Teysa and her uncle's servant Melisk bring the dead body to the township, where they are welcomed by their local agent: Pivlic. He now runs a pub called The Imp's Wings, employing Agrus Kos as a guard. Teysa says her uncle was killed by the Gruul. Kos is send home but talks to the old Gruul centaur Trijiro, who says the man was still breathing before he was brought to the pub. Kos tells Trijiro to warn the other Gruul, because whatever is really going on here, they will certainly get the blame. Meanwhile Teysa, Melisk and Pivlic go through the rituals needed the send Uncle's ghost to the Ghost Council. After that Teysa settles in on her new role as baroness, meeting the locals, including the Simic doctor Nebun, who she charges with curing the plague.

Not much of Utvara made it into the cards of the original Ravnica block...

From Zomaj Hauc's perspective we learn that Niv-Mizzet made a deal with the Ghost Council because he wants something from Utvara, but Hauc is dragging his heals because he has plans for himself. He send Crix with the final components of a spell instead of bringing it himself, because otherwise Niv-Mizzet could've learned about it through the 'Firemind" that connects all the Magelords to their Guildmaster. He contacts Melisk and asks for Orzhov aid in retrieving the goblin, telling him the spell is required to get the Cauldron to function at peak efficiency. Unbeknownst to them Trijiro meets with the Gruul that captured Crix and tells them to bring her to the Cauldron to keep the Izzet friendly. 

Meanwhile we learn Kos, who is having heart problems and anxiety attacks over potential Dimir shapeshifters following him, uses a telescope on the refracting effect of the Schism to scan half the globe for Feather and the Parhelion. The angels are still all gone though. What he does see is the Gruul with Crix. He tells Teysa and she sends him and Pivlic, along with her thrull servants the Grugg brothers, on a rescue mission. They immediately get into a fight with a few prospectors, until it turns out one of them is Garulsz, an ogre who ran a bar Kos used to frequent while he was still a wojek. Kos's protective gear is broken in the battle, but he decides to push on anyway. After some more adventures facing a nephilim and Aun Yom's possessed dead clan, Kos, Pivlic, Crix and Golozar, the Gruul that was delivering her, arrive at the Cauldron.

Between Feather, Borca and Ferrous we've seen a lot of Boros characters get cards later on, but there's still no Pivlic, Crix, Melisk, Hauc...

Teysa goes to doctor Nebun because she is suffering from narcoleptic spells. She disovers he has already produced a cure, but for it to work the entire region needs to be inoculated within days. She also notices she starts having headaches every time she's reminded of the Gruul supposedly killing her uncle, so she confronts him. He has her swear obedience to the Obzedat, then reveals that he had Melisk mind-control her to kill him so he could take his place on the Council (suicide is frowned upon among the Orzhov apparently). This also reveals to Teysa that she doesn't have narcolepsy at all; Melisk has been doing these mind-control things to her for years.

In the Cauldron Hauc takes the crew prisoner and reveals three dragon eggs. He's going to use the power of the souls trapped in the Schism to bring them to life (which is according to the deal the Obzedat made with Niv-Mizzet) and then he's going to telepathically take control of them with the spell Crix brought and lay waste to civilization (which isn't). The mutated disease was actually a way to make the air breathable for the ancient dragons. He worked with Dr. Nebun on that, thus explaining why the Simic already had a cure at hand.

Teysa sets out to rally members of all the guilds in the township into her own little "Guildpact" in order to spread the cure. Melisk shows up with Aun Yom's Gruul, which he had possessed by Orzhov "Taj" assassins. Teysa's pure Orzhov blood allows her to take control over them herself and has then tear him limb form limb for what he did to her. She then leads her new allies to the Cauldron, because despite her vow to the Obzedat she thinks releasing new dragons on the world is a terrible idea. (For context, these dragons are MASSIVE. Newborn their eyes are bigger than Teysa's whole body. Don't expect some random humans to Merrevia Sal them!)

The attack interrupts Hauc's plans. One of the dragons seemingly dies when its egg is crushed by debris. Hauc takes control of one of the others, and Teysa, who took Draconic in law school, manages to use his spells to take control of the last. As the two duke it out in the air Kos & Crix follow inside an Izzet flightsphere. In the big final battle (which always comes across as anticlimactic in these summaries...) Hauc, the two dragons and Kos are all killed. Just as the old man is about to expire, Feather suddenly appears.

In the stinger Hauc's ghost is sucked into what he thinks is what remains of the Schism, which turns out to be far greater than it is supposed to be and filled with millions of souls, far more than there could be from just Utvara...

REVIEW

While I still very much enjoy this novel, I do think Guildpact is the weakest of the original Ravnica trilogy. All three involve grand plans of evil masterminds slowly being unraveled, but where in the other two cases those plans involve breaking the convoluted rules of the Guidlpact and thus have a reason for being fairly byzantine, here it is ultimately very simple: Hauc just wants to awaken some dragons and burn down the world. In order to turn this into a book-length mystery additional stuff has to be piled onto this, like the plague being used to make the air breathable to the dragons, or the Schism being used to fuel the machinery hatching the eggs.

Which honestly might have worked if not for another problem: nobody is actually trying to solve the mystery. Kos thinks about coming out of retirement, but ultimately doesn't do much besides trying to bring Crix to Hauc, at which point the wizard starts monologuing about dragons. Similarly Teysa wants to know about what happened with her uncle... and then he just tells her, and his death doesn't have anything to do with the dragons anyway. Ultimately the audience learns what is going on because every once in a while the story cuts to a few paragraphs of Hauc talking to himself. Not the most dynamic way of revealing a mystery, and a lot of the magi-babble about the Schism and plague are overly complicated when it all comes down to "he needs it for dragons". And while we learn Hauc's plan, we never hear why Niv-Mizzet wanted the dragons revived, or what he gave to the Ghost Council to be okay with that. Which is a shame, as it is ultimately the start of all this. Plus... it's Niv-Mizzet! He's so cool! Hinting at his involvement and then not delivering is a bit of a let down.

The other mysteries also kind of peter out. Yeah, Uncle makes Teysa swear loyalty to the Obzedat before revealing the truth, but that doesn't seem to do anything to influence her afterwards. She just says "I crossed my fingers" and there are no repercussions. Besides, the revelation that "I couldn't commit suicide to make it into the Ghost Council, so I had someone mind-control you to kill me" is a bit of an anticlimax, and a bit of a weird loophole. You'd think the other patriarchs would immediately see through such an obvious ploy.

It's certanly not all bad though. The characters are still very fun. Kos is still a great character as a conflicted old man full of regrets and PTSD from the Dimir shapeshifters. Crix's losing her innocence and gaining her independence, as she come to realize how horrible Hauc is, is also very well done. Teysa, like Jarad last time, does some horrible things but still manages to get you to like her strong character and sharp wit. Pivlic is just fun, and even Uncle is interesting in a smarmy, love-to-hate kind off way. The only weak characters are Melisk, who is a bit of a cipher, and Hauc, who is just a ranting madman.

In this week's installment of "Ravnica is a terrible place"; Teysa is introduced getting a Simic who killed loads of people convicted... because he didn't give the corpses to his Orzhov contractors. She also thinks about either hiring or killing the opposing advokist, and later shoots a goblin engineer in the face to send a message to Hauc when he doesn't turn up himself for an audience with her. Yet she still ended up being a pretty popular character. Perhaps it's just because she's not that bad compared to the actual bad guys, or perhaps we simply have a certain distance from these events due to the fantasy setting. Whatever the case, these books walk the very tight rope of writing characters that are likable, while still participating in a fundamentally broken system. 

Here we do get the first discussion of breaking that system, when Hauc says "Once they [the dragons] were free, the world would be free as well. Freed from ten thousand years of unnatural order and abominable law" Unfortunately other than that one quote he's a complete power hungry nutjob though. Magic's been aware of the dark side of Ravnica from the start, but don't expect any Gateless uprisings here.

CONTINUITY

Still not much continuity to cover here. Fonn and Jarad show up for Kos's funeral, and chapter 6 opens with Saint Bayul describing the Gruul and criticizing the Guildpact, which is a nice use of a character from the previous book. Other than that... well, there's a bit more about species going extinct that doesn't really work given later stories and concurrent cards: Teysa runs into a a solifuge-look-a-like golem guarding the Orzhov cathedral called Pazapatru and thinks about how solifuges are long extinct, and Golozar thinks Niv-Mizzet is the last dragon. Perhaps Tesya just doesn't know much about arachnids, and perhaps Golozar was just thinking about "proper", intelligent dragons, not the more beast-like versions we see walking around on the cards?

TRIVIA

• The Izzet goblins believe the City of Ravnica, from where civilization spread over the entire plane, had been the Izzet's gift to the other guilds after the Guildpact was signed. Supposedly it was secretly shaped as a humongous sigil that would've given Niv-Mizzet absolute power, if it hadn't been sabotaged by goblins. The city-as-a-power-sigil thing is interesting considering Niv's later interest in Azor's Implicit Maze. Perhaps the Izzet goblins somehow found out about that and and their myths are a misremembered version of the Maze?
• Izzet Goblins get rewarded with extra syllables to their names if they do good work. Thus Crix will show up next novel as Crixizix.
• There's a constellation called, quite inexplicably, "Qeeto, the Cat-Thief"
• Teysa uses an Izzet teleportation system in the central city, which is legally off-limit to wojeks.
• To get to the Karlov Cathedral you have to cross the Bone Walk, a path made from the polished femur of an ancient pre-Guildpact stone giant that crosses a mysterious dark water, apparently full of horrible creatures.
• Teysa suspects there were no matriarchs because no woman in their right mind would want to spend eternity with the Orzhov patriarchs. However, Uncle later reveals that there were several matriarchs throughout history, and that the full text of the Book of Orzhov, their religious text, is hidden form the living. Wel don't learn more about the Book, other than that greed and ambition are the holiest motivations according to it.
• Were told Orzhov angels are created with blind devotion to the patriarchs, which "often led to scenes that [Teysa] would rather not consider for too long." Make of that what you will...
• Uncle Karlov is actually Teysa's great-great-great-great-granduncle, but also her direct ancestor because he once slept with his brother's wife. He kept this info from her until he needed to arrange for her to inherit Utvara.

Note that this guy apparently isn't Teysa's uncle. When he first shows up in the story Family Values Teysa talks about Uncle but calls this guy Grandfather. At that point they could still be the same, just confusingly named, due to the revelation that Uncle is also her (great-great-etc.) grandfather, but the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica made it clear that Grandfather has been dead for "many centuries", while Uncle hasn't even been dead for a century. Not that this will stop anyone from calling this guy "Uncle Karlov". Nothing harder to get rid of than a nickname!

• We can see things getting worse in Ravnica: the Ledev haven't guarded the pass to the plague-free zone of Utvara since the Decamillennial.
• House Karlov's sigil is a "serpentine ouboros symbol". I don't think we ever see that depicted anywhere though.
• Crix & her Gruul captors meet a nephilim at one point, which is described as "junk elemental", but that's just from its looks, don't put too much stock in the description. Cory Herndon has said that this was originally another monster because when he wrote it the nephilim weren't concepted yet. He editor asked him to include them here, which will lead to them playing a bigger role in the next book.
• This book has some more examples of Ravnica's many species mixing and matching. We meet another half-demon, Wageboss Aradoz. While Crix is with the Gruul she describes them as "quarter-everythings". And when the crew reaches the Cauldron it is protected by a half-djinn. All this intermixing of species is something we don't see much of in later Ravnican sets (not counting Simic hybrids).
• True Djinn were the original rivals of the dragons, and the last of this gigantic species are kept imprisoned at the "polar water stations".
• Oh, and speaking of the poles, Kos & his third wife honeymooned at the North Pole.
• You know all those "Izzet" "Is it?" jokes? This novel actually gets there first and puts one in continuity!

"We lost the goblin, so Hauc says the goblin is our responsibility"

"Is it?"

"Izzet?"

"Is. It."

Hilarious.

• We're told that the language Hauc and Teysa use to control the dragons was "The original tongue spoken by the first dragons when Ravnica was a world of jungles and monsters". Also, since the dragons are born with both knowledge and speech... any chance these are Elders?
• Here's an important lore fact that I can't wait to complain about if it ever gets contradicted: Imp's don't have tear ducts.
• At Kos's burial Fonn & Jarad seem "affectionate". More on that next novel.
• Golozar was a wojek recruit before dropping out and joining the Gruul. In the end he becomes Teysa's minister of security.

TIMELINE

Again, we'll save the big timeline discussion for the end. Suffice to say for now that chapter 1 (Hauc's experiment) happens in 9965 Z.C., and the rest of the novel in 10.012 Z.C.. Importantly for our future discussion: the experiment happened "shortly after" Teysa was born. In  addition to this there are a few extra dates mentioned that may or may not be interesting:

• When the first dragon dies it is said to have been "15 times 15.000 years in the making". Which would make this dragon, or at least its egg, 9x as old as Nicol Bolas.
• Kos's dates are given as "3 Paujal 9895-3 Cizarim 10012 Z.C"
• Chapter 7 opens with Niv-Mizzet's "last recorded public statement"...all the way back in 7425 Z.C.!
• Zomaj Hauc was young "300, 400 years ago".
• And in case anyone is interested in tracing the membership of the Obzedat, patriarch Enezesku joined in 9103, patriarch Fautomni was a member in 4211, and patriarch Xil Xaxosz joined in that same years and is specifically stated as still being a member. These three will actually be remembered years down the line and be included in the Ghost Council stat-block of the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica!

I don't know where Vuliev came from though.

And that's it! Check back next week for more Guildpact, off the online variety.