House Dimir

House Dimir

Colors:
Mechanics:	Transmute / Cipher

House Dimir is the guild from the plane and city of Ravnica.

Information[]

Enter and become a mastermind of spies, lies and deception.

In the dark, slick corridors of the undercity lurks the unfathomable network of the Dimir guild. House Dimir is Ravnica’s dark but open secret: the populace knows Dimir exists but they pretend it doesn’t. The Dimir’s role in Ravnica is to provide covert services that other guilds can’t or won’t, using their secrecy as both weapon and defense. Dimir is hidden even from itself, using pockets of covert agents who are aware of only a few other contacts. Dimir agents leave no trace, destroying memories of witnesses to their crimes, and even going so far as to eliminate their own memories of their assignments.

Guild Hierarchy[]

Guild Leader: Lazav, Dimir's New Guildmaster

Lazav may be uniquely qualified to be the Dimir guildmaster: he is a shapeshifting mage whose mysterious genius flashes with telepathic impressions of the entire Dimir network. He shapeshifts into a variety of guises as his needs and plans require; he may step out into the Ravnican streets as an elderly widow to eavesdrop at the bazaar, become a vedalken hussar of the Azorius Senate to sidestep a checkpoint, or transform into a Tin Street merchant to deceive a passing noble. Some Dimir agents believe that Lazav now plots against Niv-Mizzet to discern the dragon's hidden endgame and twist it for his own purposes.

Guild Division: The Levels

There are at least two levels of the Dimir: the overt level, the face of the guild the general public of Ravnica is allowed to see, and the covert level, that which consists of the inner guild and the members Ravnicans suspect exist but rarely, if ever, see.

Overt Level. The Dimir are just like any Ravnican guild, serving a public purpose for the good of the city. They often serve as couriers, investigators, reporters, and archivists. They serve twin purposes: to give the rest of Ravnica a "friendly" face of the guild and to be the street-level eyes and ears of the Dimir. Many entry-level candidates to the Dimir guild begin as overt agents until they can prove their trustworthiness.

Covert Level. The Dimir are a network of agents, spies, assassins, and mind mages. The covert level of House Dimir uses secret symbols, runes, and signals to communicate, often in plain sight. Covert Dimir also employ various mysterious forms of mind magic, such as telepathic communiqués that are erased from memory as soon as the operation is completed.

Clandestine Level. But there is a level of Dimir hidden even from its own members. At its lowest level, the guildmaster Lazav and his direct contacts guide and manipulate the operations of the guild. Members of House Dimir assassinate, extort, and destabilize without knowing who made the order or why. Orders pass through thought trails and mindcouriers, leaving no trace of their connections with this deepest level. This bottommost level of the guild is protected by Lazav's memory wards, powerful one-way enchantments that allow contacts and witnesses to receive their orders but prevent permanent memories from taking hold.

Guild Mechanics[]

Transmute (Guildpact): (Discard this card: Search your library for a card with the same converted mana cost as this card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library. Transmute only as a sorcery.)

Cipher (Gatecrash): (Then you may exile this spell card encoded on a creature you control. Whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, its controller may cast a copy of this card without paying its mana cost.)