KIRSTYN EMILY

DESIGNING MILLIE

A good friend of mine pointed out to me after I shared this piece on Reddit, “Bard is your comfort class.” I think that’s fair— I spent my childhood singing to the radio and dabbling with instruments. And although making music was something I never really had a knack or passion for, I tend to gravitate towards musical spaces, people, and characters. So here we are with another bard character for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, but with a little bit of a twist this time.

The Izzet League is one of 10 guilds in the Magic the Gathering world of Ravnica and is famous (infamous?) for inventing the magical infrastructure (such as roadways, water supply, electricity, and heating) that serves the city’s inhabitants. Their patron is the dragon Niv-Mizzet and they draw their magic from red and blue mana. It is this balance of opposites (water and fire) that make the Izzet a brilliant yet impulsive group prone to diving into magical experiments that often end in explosive conclusions. In essence, the Izzet are a guild of mad scientist characters and, for that reason, one might think a bard in this mix would be the odd one out. However, I’d argue musicians are also very clever, experimental, and full of an energy that has been described as electric, so that was the beginning of Millie and her Niv-Mizzet violin.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Millie comes from a long line of Izzet tinkerers, so there was never any question of her joining any other Ravnican guild. However, tinkering's just her day job and it's not a secret that she kind of (really) hates it. What she wants to do is marry her two passions -- magic and music-- and show all of Ravnica that the Izzet League are artists.