Description

[Flession]

"Sigil's the Crossroads, the great, shudderin' home to all the Planewalkers of the Great Ring. Under the Lady's watchful and serene gaze, Sigil stays out of the politics and bloodshed of the conflicts raging throughout the planes, especially the lower ones where the Blood War never stops. No matter what a cutter hears, most of the planes ain't that friendly to strangers, whether they're planar or prime or something else. Whether they're living in wealth or squalor, smart cutters set up their cases in Sigil. The Lady creates portals that lead everywhere, and when she wills she closes them. Most of the simple portals look like doorways; they only take cutters elsewhere when they carry the right key, and a key could be anything - a silver blade, a secret word, or an elaborately illuminated deck of cards. Because the city's doors lead everywhere, everyone comes to Sigil sooner or later, even if they're just passing through. That's when a sharp tout latches onto them, whirls them through the sewers and the jink-shops, and takes his fee. Sure, it's not polite, but every-one's a cynic in Sigil, and the Clueless pay the price for their ignorance. Oh, no, I'm not calling you ignorant, sir prime! You, I respect!" — Etain the Quick, Tout

[Flession]

"Sigil's a city overwhelmed, barnacled, and encrusted with buildings. With a 5-mile diameter and 20-mile circumference (as officially measured by the Harmonium; in actuality, the Lady can enlarge or shrink the city as she wills, at any time), Sigil's huge, but it ain't infinite. Sure, it's big enough to hold new things for the oldest bloods, but the bizarre soon becomes mundane if a cutter sees it often enough. Even the view ain't the usual; almost anyplace a cutter stands, if he looks up, he sees buildings. 'Course, smoke and distance obscure the view across the hollow center, creating a gray arc with a few lights.

Despite the city's size, somehow it still always seems crowded. Tiny spaces that might become servants' rooms or pantries in another city are shops and homes in Sigil, where every square inch must house some of the infinite multitudes. Even the buildings crowd each other overhead, and some streets are cut off from the sky entirely, its dim light pinched out by the towering walls.

Although Sigil is ancient and every available surface is already occupied, new streets, boulevards, and courtyards are constantly created by the dabus masons, and new buildings set on top of old ones create crypts and catacombs aplenty. Since it's impossible to know every street and keep up with every change, cutters need to learn the patterns of Sigil's buildings, especially for those bashers who live on the dark side of the law. Even a footpad who's been in and out of the Court and the Prison can make a mistake. One dead-end alley is all it takes to get a cross-trading knight scragged by the Harmonium — or worse, scragged and then killed by those he's double-crossed.

The traditional blades and spiked fences of Sigil define its architecture for planars everywhere on the Great Ring. The blades of Sigil are added for looks as much as for protection against intruders, as they are part of the city's rich tradition of ornamental iron and stone. Primes notice the faces and gargoyles built over doors and into other structural features like pillars and rainspouts, the most common locations for such decoration. Iron and stone are more common building materials than imported wood; after all, iron and stone can be created by magic. The iron and stone of the high-ups' cases, though, are certainly not conjured but imported through one of the gates. Blackstone from Gehenna, limestone from Mount Celestia, and marble from Arborea are all popular.

Walls vary, but the strongest are up to 9 feet thick. Spiral stairs are the most popular form; the spiral winds up clockwise, to give the advantage to a right-handed defender and hamper the swordplay of anyone going up (-2 to attack rolls of any right-handed attacker). The roofs are generally made of dark gray slate tiles.

Most of the ironwork in Sigil isn't just ornamental; it protects the houses it decorates. Doors and windows are tightly sealed and protected with iron bands and locks, and fanciful iron grillwork covers most windows (at least among the houses of the high-ups). Spikes on the flat surfaces of windowsills and the like prevent Sigil's great gray-and-black executioner's ravens from roosting.

Below the streets themselves lies a web of catacombs and crypts (mostly of important Dabus, though the Dustmen also maintain a few large necropoli throughout the city), but no sewers. The oldest crypts have been there a thousand years, though bubbers often claim that there're many deeper levels, which the dabus have sealed off. In the better portions of town, public fountains bubble and burble, their carved stone and molded iron spouts working day and night. The water is always pure, though sometimes very metallic tasting; most Cagers prefer ale, wine, or anything else purified by fermentation. The fountains take many shapes, from drab pillars whose single spigots are decorated with the seal of the carver or foundry, to the justly famous Singing Fountain whose pure tones come from the splash of water from higher metal basins into lower ones.

In addition to the public fountains, the city's got a number of public wells. Where do the well waters come from? The chant is, most anywhere, from the Elemental Plane of Water to the Styx and Oceanus, to Ysgard's Gates of the Moon, to Limbo. The best waters are said to be those drawn from wells sunk into the seas of Arborea and Mount Celestia.

Streets're all cobblestones in the richer districts and mud in the poorer. In both rich and poor districts, houses surround open interior courtyards hidden from the streets and accessible only through narrow alleys or covered passages through the surrounding buildings. Often these buildings are protected against theft by large doors or portcullises that're shut each night, making them into tiny strongholds in the midst of the city. In times of danger or riots the courtyard gates are often magically warded as well. For high-ups of The Lady's Ward, the interior courtyard might serve as a garden, a family graveyard, or an open-air ballroom. In other places like the Farrier's Court, guildmembers and craftsmen conduct their business in the courtyards. For tanners and dyers, this gets messy quickly. Those who like their privacy keep Aoskian hounds and grow razor vine in the courtyards; not everyone's open space is meant to be a refuge from the streets." — Etain the Quick, Tout

[Flession]

"Sigil's six wards are the Lower Ward where things're made; the Market Ward where they're sold; the Clerk's Ward where ownership is noted; the Guildhall Ward where the craftsmen gather and train apprentices; the Hive where the poor, the bubbers, and the barmies're kept out of everyone else's sight; and The Lady's Ward, the richest and most powerful of them all, where the city's rulers and criminals dwell. The quick Cager's summary of them is "smog, shoddy goods, accountants, apprentices, barmies, and politics."

The ward system's the easiest way to keep track of where things are, since houses and even streets disappear and reappear under the working hands of the Dabus. The size of the city makes it impossible to describe all its wonders, but a sampling of the possibilities is enough to convince most cutters they'll never be done exploring the City of Doors. Though their boundaries're shifting and unclear, the wards are defined by their inhabitants at least as much as by simple geography. If an area stops operating smithies and manufactories because barmies have moved in, then the area's said to have moved from the Lower Ward to the Hive.

The other reason the boundaries between the wards seem to shift over time, of course, is that the Lady of Pain creates mazes, sections of the city that're somehow spun off into the deep Ethereal to rid the city of those who refuse to keep the Lady's peace. The city shifts and groans from the weight and stress of its portals and the contradictory directions that keep it always carefully balanced. Likewise, the dabus're constantly shifting buildings and streets by remaking them, painting them, and forcibly occupying some of the homes trying to shift from one ward to another.

What defines a ward? Mostly, the cutters living in it, the jobs they hold, the houses they live in, and the streets they walk on - and the Lady's whims." — Etain the Quick, Tout

[Flession]

"The City of Doors is lousy with portals to the planes; in fact, the portals make life on the planes possible, or at least much more interesting. They're shortcuts from one infinite space to another — traveling infinite planes would be futile without them, so mastering the types of portals and the keys that open them is important for any Cager. Like all important things, portals follow the Rule of Threes. The three forms are permanent portals, temporary portals, and shifting portals. Each form's got its own rules and habits, but all're under the Lady's power.

Portals too disruptive to life in Sigil inevitably disappear. (There's a fourth type, in keeping with the "rules are made to be broken" rule: It appears only in the Hive, and it's a one-way portal from the Hive to the Paraelemental Plane of Ooze. Permanent portals tend to cluster or concentrate around the faction headquarters. In fact, many headquarters are actually built around portals to the faction's plane of major influence; for instance, the Mortuary's a nexus of dozens of portals connecting the realms of the powers of death, the inner planes, and other major sites.

Known permanent portals include several portals in the Hall of Records in the taxation filing area, in the butcher shops and taverns (leading to the food stores of Arborea), public baths (leading to the River Oceanus), and in foundries (to the Dwarven Mountain in the Outlands). Other permanent portals lead to less pleasant places, to the nether planes. Those portals and their gate keys are well-hidden from berks who are better off not knowing about them, but though they are hidden they are not permanently closed. The only way to keep a portal from opening is through strong magic: planar wards or surelock spells.

Where do portals come from? The sages and graybeards argue endlessly about the nature of astral conduits, mature portals, and the flux and nexus-points that underlie the creation of a permanent, shifting, or temporary portal. Some say that powers can, others say only powers of travel can open gates for themselves and their followers (and they are barred from Sigil). Only the Lady herself opens new portals in Sigil. The hard fact of it is, only priests with their gate spells can open portals anywhere else in the planes.

Temporary portals don't follow any pattern at all; they appear and disappear at whim. Often they seem created to serve some design or purpose. For instance, a portal might appear for a faction to use against the Lady's enemies, or a portal that's being misused to bring tainted food into the city might suddenly close temporarily. A few barmies in the Hive claim to be able to predict the appearance of temporary portals by powerful divinations and the sacrifice of valuables; most of these are frauds, and the few who're apparently successful always quickly disappear.

Whether they're silenced by the dabus or stolen away by a faction to serve in captivity is a mystery that a body'd best avoid trying to solve. Shifting portals follow a few known configurations. Both ends of the portal shift location in a pattern. The Sigil end might cling to an arched, razorvine-covered trellis deep in The Lady's Ward for days, then shift to a sewer grate in the Lower Ward for a few hours before moving to the entrance of a storehouse in the Clerk's Ward for a month. The other end of the portal shifts as well, and the two sequences don't always match. (That is, while the Sigil end of the portal stays in the Lady's Ward, the other end of the portal may switch rapidly from Mount Celestia to the swamps of Durao in the Abyss to the Viper Wastes in the midst of the Blood War.)

The Guvners are said to keep a secret log of the shifting portals' secrets, and many's the forger who's lived fat and happy after he's sold a false Shifter's Log-book. None but the factotums of the Fraternity of Order are allowed to see the Shifter's Log, and even then, they say, many of the shifting portals have such long or complicated patterns that no one has ever seen them repeat. Many others keep logs as well, especially priests of the powers that protect travelers, namers paid by their factions to watch for portals, and, of course, the most successful Planewalkers. Some say that Modrons are the best, because of their patience and consistency.

But any fool who enters a portal he learned of from a bought logbook should mind he carries naked steel the first time through; not all the portals are investigated before they are recorded!

The forms portals take vary, and the Lady's twisted humor is apparent in the location and keys of some of them. For instance, a shifting portal to the Abyss has been known to appear in the Golden Bariaur, and the Ditch is said to lead to the dry wastes of Amun-Thys in the third layer of Arborea. The gate to orderly Mechanus shifts between a junkyard and the scrapheaps of the Lower Ward near the Great Foundry. Only a few portals are truly well known; they are shown on the two-page map in this section. At the center of the map is the Inner Ring, containing the Elemental Planes. Surrounding it is the torus of Sigil, showing locations present on the streets of the Cage. Outside this are the Outer Planar locations. The whole is divided into the six wards of the Cage, labeled accordingly." — Etain the Quick, Tout

[Flession]

"Foul rain, gloom, cold, and smoke — these are the reasons for the long, dark cloaks so many Cagers wear. The Lower Ward's smoke and steam keep it marginally warmer and fouler than the other wards, at the price of burns from airborne ashes and embers. Leather is popular in the Lower Ward because it won't burn; even sedan chair owners often keep a special set of curtains for trips through the Lower Ward, both to prevent burns and to keep the smell out of the regular drapes.

'Course, those dark cloaks help the knights fade into the shad- ows as well, and they don't show a stain from Sigil's brownish rainwater. Most Cagers don't complain, 'cause the weather in most of the Great Ring is worse. Besides, the air's too foul for a body to waste words crabbin' about it. Cagers who work outside often develop a constant hacking cough, and many die in the streets from consumption. Horses die young from the strain of breathing Sigil's smog — a beast of burden spitting its lungs onto one of Sigil's streets is a common sight.

It's a mystery why anyone bothers to smoke pipeweed or black tarweed cigars when they can just go down to the Great Foundry and inhale. A few barmies and primes claim that the weather reflects the mood of the Lady of Pain, that her dismay is rain, her joy is sun (rare indeed), and her fury is snow or sleet. For a copper, they'll scry the heavens and predict a cutter's omens for the day. While this forecasting is an amusing conceit with which to nick a few coppers from the Clueless, most Cagers just snort at the thought that the Lady would be this maudlin." — Etain the Quick, Tout

DMs Note: The thin air of Sigil would make things incredibly uncomfortable for those who have only recently arrived to the City of Doors from a plane with an natural atmosphere. While there will be no mechanical penalty applied to dealing with this, Primer PCs should keep this in mind, especially if they've only just entered into the city, although after about 2 weeks of living here, you would become more adapted to it.

[Flession]

There are a TON of canonical locations in Sigil, some which will get used in this story, many of which may I think you'll use as players to hang out in, so I've made locations for. So, while the majority of them are neat, I don't have the time/energy/sanity to make its own individual location forum for all 300+ potential locations.

That's what this map is for!

You see a place you want to go to and it doesn't have its own forum thread, you can still go to it. All you need to do is make a thread in the correct ward forum, add in the location name to the thread title in brackets, (e.g. Fitting Song Title For Thread Name, [Happy Candies Sweet Shop, EA]) and you should be good to go!*

*Area locations are still subject to common sense and whether or not your character would be allowed in, know of this location, or any other reason deemed fit. If you are in doubt whether or not you can have a thread in a area, save us all some time and just ask a DM.