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Smashing and pillaging their way across Ravnica, the Gruul Clans live only for today, reducing buildings to rubble and surviving only on what they fund in the ashes.

The Gruul Clans celebrated base urges and lived by instinct, considering all of civilization to be an elaborate cage that suppresses desire. Once a powerful guild, the Gruul were an assemblage of beggars, gangs, and raiding parties, with the largest of their gangs led by the cyclops Borborygmos.

The Gruul are a loose affiliation of savage clans who squat in Ravnica’s alleyways, abandoned zones, and overgrown ruins. Many Gruul warriors and shamans have come to occupy the Rubblebelt, a broken thread of war-ruined land and settlements that begins near the outskirts of Ravnica’s Tenth District. Warfare among the Gruul is constant and almost ritualistic; the Gruul believe that only the strong should survive and rule. The Gruul are the most anti-civilization and disenfranchised of all of Ravnica’s guilds, and as such are the most ill at ease in a world covered by city.

The last refuge for civilization's castaways, Gruul forces include beings as diverse as misshapen humans, bloodthirsty goblins, and wurms and beasts that trail their armies, eager to dine on fallen armies and nest in the piles of rubble left behind. The Gruul's power lies in their sheer destructive force. Whole city blocks have been destroyed by just one war clan, and their splintered nature means that dozens of raids can occur at once, making it a lot harder for the "civilized" guilds to stop the threat or destroy the Gruul entirely. Though the Gruul have no one leader, they respect power, and Borborgymos is the most powerful chieftain of all. He is one of the Gruul's fiercest fighters, leader of the largest war clan, and is rumored to be a descendant of the Gruul Parun. Thus, this savage cyclops is usually at the head of the largest, most destructive raids.

The Gruul are not a gang of thick-headed fools with nothing better to do than to beat people up. They are also not a pack of wild animals with running on attack instinct. They are exploited, downtrodden, disenfranchised and brushed aside. They have an axe to grind and they choose to do it on your skull.

10,000 years ago when the Guildpact was signed, the Gruul were the guild of the wild, a noble guild charged with keeping civilization in check and maintaining the wilderness spaces where many of the (then) Ravnican races made their homes. Over the next 10 millennia, the unstoppable inertia of civilization, progress, and nine greedy guilds pushed the Gruul aside and mowed down the wilds. The other Green guilds began to scavenge on the Gruul's piece of the Guildpact pie, claiming bits of “nature” as their own. The Simic claimed to be stewards of nature's future, while the Selesnya preached about nature in attempts to pull the last remnants of the wilds into their fold. The old Gruul identity was slowly wrested from their hands - leaving them with no official duty to the Guildpact. Without a part to play, they were seen only as outlanders and savages by the other nine. The Azorius began to exclude them from written law and official guild conventions, and the Boros began to see them as rabble-rousers to be put in their place. The worst came from the Orzhov, who took advantage of their falling status and put many to labor and others into slavery. The new laws did not include them, and therefore could not protect them. They were ostracized.

With their official guild leadership no longer recognized, the guild decentralized. Leaders were built up and torn down often, as power struggles ravaged the guild. The somewhat “recognized” leader of the guild is usually the biggest, angriest, most vocal badass on the block – or the latest one to rally interclan support by smashing down an Azorius courthouse or newly-built Izzet foundry. In most respects, the Gruul have fallen apart, hardly a guild at all. But, through all the years of pain, oppression, and ostracism, there is one thing that binds this guild together like no other. Revenge!

After thousands of years as the red-headed stepchild of the Guildpact, the Gruul have acquired a universal taste for revenge. They may not have a strict code to follow, or a regimented chain of leadership, but they've all got payback on their minds. Nothing brings people together more effectively than a common enemy. When everybody is the enemy, you've got yourself a bloodthirsty band of raging red-heads.

Gruul guildmages pass on the lore and the tradition of rage to the downtrodden masses. The guildmage's focused anger and charismatic fire whip the guild into a frenzy and point it at the right things to smash. Whether from the guilds or oppressive royalty, the Gruul aim to "take the power back!" But the guildmages are not the only source of Gruul fanaticism.

When the Gruul raid the territories of the other guilds, they employ ferocious beasts and monsters like a combination pack animal and battering-ram. Some Gruul clansmen specialize in handling these raiding beasts. Wurms in particular are employed by the Gruul as a kind of living explosive device.

Gruul Philosophy

In the time before the guilds of Ravnica were formed, the Gruul were a collection of druids and shamans who celebrated and claimed the wilds of the plane. Obviously, the Gruul failed at this task. Some sages surmise that it was the moment when a Gruul shaman saw the last towering druid-tree fall, and the last sacred grove was dug out for a stone quarry, that the spark of outrage was kindled. That spark became an all-consuming need to take vengeance on civilization and those who worked for "progress."

In this current age, most Gruul clans simply live by the rule that "the strong survive, the strongest rule," but there is still a small spark of the old ways left in certain Gruul clans. The Zhur-Taa believe that the quakes that rumble across the Rubblebelt are a sign that the gods of the deep earth are awakening and preparing to rise up and destroy the "cobble roaches." The Zhur-Taa believe that the first sign of this apocalypse will be the coming of Ilharg, the boar-god.

The Gruul observe few consistent traditions but love to celebrate Rauck-Chauv, an irregular, calendar-mocking festival characterized by several days of rioting, feasting, looting, and destruction. Scholars note that Rauck-Chauv honors the principles of the Gruul's anti-intellectualism, having its roots in an ancient druidic promise to root out the artifice that underpins the unnatural institutions of city life, but the Gruul just revel in the excuse to smash things.

Breaking of the Guildpact

Freed from the magical shackles of the Guildpact, Borborygmos leads his guild with more ferocity deep into the civilized world, smashing and pillaging where he can while brutally snuffing out any attempts to usurp his dominance over the Gruul. Claims into the Utvara region by the Izzet League cause turf wars between the two guilds, with some new Gruul clan leaders rising to the forefront for their skill in combat—namely a two-headed leader of the Ghor clan, Ruric Thar.

Groups within Gruul Clans

  • Bolrac Clan: A clan of large, lumbering brutes - ogres, trolls, giants, and the like.
  • Burning-Tree Clan: the most fearsome and powerful of the clans, they are proud and angry zealots of the guild
  • Ghor Clan: a clan of crazed berserkers
  • Scab Clan: The most vengeful and violent of the clans; most have suffered mutilations and tortures, and yearn to avenge themselves.
  • Slizt Clan: A clan of sly, stealthy warriors who use stealth and caution rather than berserk rage
  • Zhur-Taa Clan: A clan led by their shamans; they are very close to the beasts they use as war-companions

Members

NameTitleRaceClass/Profession
BorborygmosAlpha of the ClansCyclops
Ulashtthe Hate SeedHydra

Sites controlled by Gruul Clans

NameSite Type
SkarrgStronghold

Burning-Tree Emissary, Skarrg Guildmage

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