Ral Zarek
RalZarekNiv-MizzetIzzetGuildSummit
A high ranking member of the Izzet League Ral Zarek, who is also apparently a planeswalker, has recently been making rounds to the various guildhalls talking to other leaders about unifying against a “common threat”. His progress is almost non existent as most guilds consider his proposition to be ludicrous at best and intentionally malicious at worst. Cooperation between the guilds has always been difficult to achieve and since the decamillenial and the relocation of the guildpact to a living person interguild relations have only become worse. Ral Zarek claims his guild’s leader Niv Mizzet has warned him about the coming of a powerful being whose vicious plans would put Ravnica in the middle of a major destructive conflict. There are scarce few who believe this, even though I have found evidence of this entity’s presence within several guilds namely Gruul, Golgari and Azorius. The entity’s name still eludes me, as does it’s goal, purpose and plan, but I know this: they are trying to divide us and are manipulating the guilds from behind the scenes to achieve that.
The Dimir are gathering information on this enemy and if what we have found out is true it might fall to us to unite the guilds. So much is still uncertain however, I just hope we can find out what we need to know in time.
Haaliryl’s security check
Crator.. strange things are happening on Ravnica as of late. It would seem that whoever this enemy is he has a powerful grasp on multiple guilds. This includes us. I am pretty sure that we are still on the right side of things, and most of us are working towards protecting our plane, but I have news of the second Dimir agent this week to have been caught secretly working for the “Adversary”. I have found out more about Izzet’s inclinations and knowledge but, I am sorry, I can’t be sure you haven’t been compromised. If I am to share any of this information with you I will need some kind of assurance.
Understand this Crator, it isn’t that I don’t trust you. I know that YOU wouldn’t betray the Dimir, however neither would these agents that we caught. They were mind controlled and forced to do someone’s bidding against their will. A moroii was caught with his brain all mangled and flayed, something had gotten to him and forced him into servitude. That said you weren’t here when these infiltrations began so perhaps you are safe from the enemy’s gaze.
Tell me do you know anything about an agent named Avidul Gotkis? We are certain that they are working for this mysterious force as well, and that he plans to scour our Ismeri library drop sites for information that we have been gathering on the guild’s anti-infiltration methods. We will replace the drop sites with false information in order to confuse the enemy and slow their advance, and we will keep a close eye on this agent afterwards.
I have to aplogize to you Crator, the information I gave you yesterday was a fabrication. As a secondary measure to ensure you aren’t working for the enemy I gave you false information that an agent who, really does work with the enemy, wants to gather fictitious dead drops. If you had been working with the enemy and truly believed that we plan to deceive your agent you would have sent him to gather the falsified dead drops anyway as it would have protected your cover. Had he arrived to pick up the dead drops that he had no other way of knowing about I would have been sure you were the one who alerted him. Him not arriving, and continuing to behave the same way we observed him to act for the past few days means at the very least you didn’t contact him. Had you been working with the enemy you would have believed that having your agent stay away from the dead drops would make us think that you alerted him so you would have just sent him to pick the drops.
This, combined with the fact that it seems unlikely the Adversary even knows about you makes me trust you, for now. Despite this, I can’t disclose everything we know to you, not by this method of communication. I will tell you what I can however.
Compromised agents
The Izzet caught one of our agents who was under the influence of the outsider stealing information from within their guild. This is already the third compromised agent, at this point we are considering looking inwards before any further investigations. We have to make sure our chain of information isn’t compromised. Back to the point, we are having difficulty gathering information within the Izzet guild as Niv-Mizzet seems to be on high alert for our infiltrators at this point. One piece of knowledge I did manage to uncover was this; Ral Zarek and Niv wish for a guild summit to be organized with the purpose of gaining more power as currently they are constrained by the guildpact. Whether this is just their usual bid for power or related to the recent rumors of invasion is unclear however.
The other guilds are mostly unconcerned or unaware of these happenings. They have thus far resisted Ral’s attempts to band together as they see no clear and present threat. Not all are as blind, and people are slowly waking up to the facts, we just hope it won’t be too late. The three guilds that know the most presently are us, the Izzet and the Orzhov, and mostly because the Izzet and the Orzhov both caught two of our compromised agents. Currently our imperative is to muddle all communication channels and flood them with disinformation to slow the spread of infiltration throughout the guilds. As long as we can keep this situation for escalating we have time to gather information that will allow us to come out on top, once these invasion plans become more apparent.
More info on the mind control and infiltration methods
We have taken a great deal of interest in this topic. The methods the Adversary uses are not entirely different from the ones employed by the Dimir guild, especially Moroii agents, but they are markedly different in the sense that they were designed to bypass even our anti-infiltration protocols. Of the three currently caught agents two of them had their brains magically or surgically altered. During the autopsy we found their brains resembled deep sea sponges in appearance. They were pried, twisted and full of unnatural crevices and they leaked a dark green/yellow liquid similar to epoxy. This lead us to believe that they weren’t magically controlled but rather that some type of parasitic creature changed the very biology of their brains, or that these brains were in fact the parasitic creatures themselves that had taken residence within the agents skulls. Whatever the case, the best description for the state of their brains would be to call it an ailment (virus, parasite or externally modified) rather than a magical enchantment.
The last agent was perfectly normal in regards to bodily functions and brain activity. It would appear that he was goaded into work for the Adversary based either on threats or promises of power and riches. This type of motivation is easy to understand, and gives us insight into the fact that the Adversary will use any means available to them to achieve their goal, including appealing to the basic nature of opportunistic and greedy individuals.
More info on the Adversary
Unfortunately, despite the fact that we now understand their methods and have adapted to protect ourselves from them we are still not any closer to understanding who they are and what their goal is. It would appear that we have heavily reduced their influence within the guild by rigorous appliance of advanced anti-infiltration methods that we have developed over the years, as well as newly created ones adapted to the enemy’s specific style of subterfuge. Through deception and misinformation we believe we have flushed most of their agents from the guild. We have postulated that, in order to forcefully take control of our agent’s minds, they would need to kidnap them and modify their minds in a place where they have the tools and time to do so. They probably achieve this by temporarily controlling them with short term mind control magic to lead them to places where they may alter their minds to become the Adversary’s thralls. (As a side note, the process appears to leave the individual with access to all of their memories and knowledge, yet serving their new master with complete devotion). By applying more secure practices and anti-enchantment safeguards we have achieved a greater level of security for our agents and integrity within the guilds chain of communication.
Assisting Ral Zarek’s efforts to call the Guild Summit in session
I agree, Crator, a guild summit is probably the best way to unite the guilds against this external threat, if only they believed it existed. Before attempting to influence the guilds it may be prudent to gather evidence of the Adversary’s activities first, as it may make the task easier to achieve.
Sharing information about the adversary
So, we wondered, is there any way to use this information to our advantage? It isn’t much, but the answer as it turns out, is yes. It is not the Dimir way to freely share information with the other guilds but in this case we have agreed that it is in our best interest to inform and educate the other guilds on the dangers of the Adversary as well as on their methods and how to safeguard themselves from them. We agreed that the benefits of potentially reducing the outsider’s influence were worth the risks and took to the task of discreetly revealing the information to individuals within the other guilds that we have vetted and confirmed to be uncorrupted. (We took a great deal of effort to ensure we would not inadvertently reveal any information to agents of the Adversary.)
This task however is a long and arduous one, because we have to educate people individually and extremely carefully. However, by slowly proving to low ranking members of the guilds, and later higher ranking ones as well that the threat existed and that it was real we have created a real sense of tension and fear within the guilds to the point that many are beginning to consider the real importance of a guild summit and the actual possibility of working together.
One tool that was truly useful in convincing the other guilds was the fact that using our knowledge we could locate, expose and deal with the Adversary’s agents within their guilds, further proving that they weren’t as incorruptible as they believed. We have to remain cautious however. We have adapted to the Adversary’s methods and seem to have the upper hand at the moment, but there is no doubt that they will adapt to our new methods as well and before long our new methodology will become ineffective. We may yet lose all the advantage and momentum we have built up because this enemy is nothing if not adaptable.
Regarding the summit the guilds standing is as follows:
Strongly agreed: Izzet League House Dimir Orzhov Syndicate Azorious Senate
Agreed: Boros Legion Selesnya Conclave Simic Combine
Opposed: Golgari Swarm Cult of Rakdos
Strongly Opposed: Gruul Clans
It would appear that through our efforts the majority of the guilds are at least willing to attend the summit. Whether any sort of cooperation can be achieved there is an entirely different matter. Getting any of the guilds to agree to work for a unified goal will likely prove to be a much greater challenge.
Additionally, I found out that Niv Mizzet knows a lot more than he lets on about the Adversary but has intentionally kept it to himself. Seeing as we have so far been entirely unable to learn anything about them outside of their methods the Izzet guildmaster is our only current lead.
Influencing the guilds
I have spent some time, along with a lot of other Dimir operatives, attempting to influence the remaining guilds to agree to the Guild Summit. We have had mixed success. The Golgari Swarm and the Cult of Rakdos have agreed to participate because it is clear that the summit is going to occur, and they do not wish to be left out of the decision making process while others make important decisions which might impact them.
The Gruul Clans are not willing to participate, and they can’t be influenced. They are far too disorganized and chaotic for that to occur, and the summit represents everything they stand against. Borborygmos however, might. According to verified sources, Niv Mizzet has visited Borborygmos personally to convince him to attend the summit as a representative of the Gruul Clans. It is not clear whether he will accept, however, as attending the summit would cost him a considerable amount of respect and honor from his clanmates to whom all cooperation is anathema.
Niv-Mizzet’s information
Niv-MizzetIzzetProjectLightningBug
Niv Mizzet is not someone we can coerce, persuade, intimidate or bribe. He guards his secrets carefully, and hides all of them in his mind for he is not foolish enough to relay important information onto his fallible servants or store them in written form when he has a mind that can forget nothing. We can’t get close to him either, and even if we could, attempting to scour his mind for these secrets would surely be fatal for whichever agent attempted that, and our guild would face Mizzet’s wrath.
So, I tried the only thing that I could. I attempted to gather circumstantial information from his instructions for the guild and the guild’s behavior. This, also, yielded almost no useful information.
The dragon’s schemes are multilayered and appear to be intentionally complicated and confusing so that someone, such as us, would struggle to uncover their true meaning. Of all the numerous experiments and distractions there are only two that appear to be relevant to the current situation on Ravnica, due to their strange nature and suspicious timing.
The first is Project Firefly, which I have been researching heavily since I found out about it. It appears to be some kind of beacon capable of sending information through the Blind Eternities in the form of magical waves. For what purpose, I do not know yet.
The second is the revival of the Niv Mizzet cloning project which was shelved for decades. New clones are apparently being made and frequently disposed of. The bodies are quickly incinerated to prevent the propagation of Niv Mizzet’s blood through other guilds but I managed to have a look at a few of them before they were destroyed. They were killed in a variety of ways, poisons, magical means as well as more common physical methods. It is unclear what purpose this might serve.
Linking Nicol Bolas to the Adversary
There isn’t any clear evidence to prove without a shadow of a doubt that this Adversary truly is Nicol Bolas, and believe me I looked everywhere. The agents which we caught were not susceptible to interrogation due to the fact that they only knew as much as they needed to accomplish their tasks and trying to find out what Niv Mizzet knows about this enemy is a risky and hard endeavour to undertake. However, if Nicol Bolas truly is this mysterious enemy it would explain Niv Mizzet’s recent experiments in killing his own kind.