Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Azorius Senate Story Hooks

In a city of presumably billions if not trillions of people (if Ravnica's as large as Earth and the city is truly at urban density levels, it'd be the latter at least,) maintaining order is a high priority. Laws and the enforcement thereof are necessary for the city to function, and it's the Azorius Senate that writes and enforces those laws.

I think a lot of players automatically assume that chaotic characters are going to be more fun to play, but there is something to be said for playing someone who absolutely plays by the book, crosses all their "t's" and dots all their "i's." Indeed, much as I mentioned that humor was a good play when it came to the Rakdos, you can get a lot of comedy out of the rules-sticklers of the Azorius Senate (examples of good and hilarious Azorius-type characters in D&D would be Omin Dran and Walnut Dankgrass from the Acquisitions Incorporated streams.)

That being said, you don't necessarily have to heighten everything to such an extreme level. Fundamentally, the Azorius are the bureaucracy and one of the two law enforcement guilds. The guild is divided into three branches that mirror the American three branches of government, with separate legislative, judicial, and executive branches.

The Azorius are not exactly the government of the city - really all ten guilds play a part in governing the city through the Guildpact - but the Azorius more than any other guild look and feel like a government.

This of course comes in both good and bad aspects, but let's start with the good.

The Azorius are still around because their efforts to maintain order have, indeed, allowed the city of Ravnica to survive for the last ten thousand years. Azorius investigators look into crimes and bring criminals to justice, keeping the citizenry safe and allowing for the business of the city to continue to function.

As such, they are natural quest givers - while they might prefer to use their own members, the Azorius might offer contracts (likely very complex and indecipherable contracts) to parties in order to capture particularly dangerous criminals or those that are in territory hostile to the Azorius. Uncovering some grand criminal plan or threat to the order of the city would be a way for a party to get into the Azorius' good graces. Likewise, if you want some element of a legal drama in your story, it would most likely take place within an Azorius court.

Really any threat to Ravnica's status quo would be something the Azorius would try to hinder, and such problems often kick off grand fantasy epics. Anything from corruption on the streets to some extraplanar threat are things that the Azroius would consider under their jurisdiction.

But while the Azorius are lawful, they are emphatically neutral when it comes to morality. In a sense, compliance with the rules is the way that the Azorius understand morality to be judged. What this means is that people who break the laws for justifiable reasons will often find themselves punished just as strongly as if they had done some real public harm.

The Azorius as villains can work as an overbearing bureaucracy - not malevolent, but so devoted to following the letter of the law that they might do some great harm to the people. A good low level hook with Azorius villains might see Arresters showing up to the house of some guy who merely made an error in his paperwork or perhaps stole bread to feed his family.

On a higher level, though, I think that the Azorius' desire to keep everything under control could lead to an attempt to take over the city. Perhaps they'd find some loophole in the laws that gave them authority to change the laws of the city. Alternatively, you could have some truly selfish and malevolent villain who manages to climb the ranks of the Senate and the party is in a desperate rush to incriminate him, because until they do, most of the Senate follows his orders.

An unflinching devotion to the law is the sort of thing that can spiral into chaos, and if anyone on Ravnica is going to lead to that, it's the Azorius.

Environments:

As a White and Blue guild, the Azorius have Plains and Islands. I think these can combine together quite well as broad public squares that might be connected by bridge over large canals and public pools. Buildings with fountains built into them, probably made of white marble in classical geometries would probably be very pleasing for the Azorius. Their courts are likely grand halls with marble floors, but their offices are probably labyrinthine in design - if you're Azorius, you know the logic behind it all, but anyone else is going to be confounded.

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