more titles IN the PLANGSCAPE LING!

The Eternal Boundary Adventure

PLANESCAPE MONSTROUS
C O M P E N D IGame
U ~ Accessory
Planes of Chaos Boxed Set
Well of Worlds Accessory
In the Abyss Adventure
The Deua Spark Adventure

credits
+ +
Designer: David "Zeb" Cook Editor: David Wise Project Coordinator: Don Jean Hein
+ +
Box Cover Artist: Robh Ruppel Conceptual Artist: Dana Knutson Interior Artist: Tony DiTerlizzi
+
Graphics Coordinator: Sarah Feggestad Art Coordinator: Peggy Cooper
+
Electronic Prepress Coordinator: Tim Coumbe Typography: Angelika Lokotz
Cartography: Rob Lazzaretti + Border Art: Robert Repp + Graphic Design: Dee Barnett, Dawn Murin
Proofreading: James M. Ward, Skip Willams, Michele Carter, Bill Slavicsek
Design Review: Brian Kowal

TSR, Inc. TSR Ltd.

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Lake Geneva Cherry Hinton
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U.S.A. United Kingdom

2600

ADVANCED DUNGEONS H DRAGONS,ADHD, FORGOTTEN REALMS, GREYHAWK, and MONSTROUS COMPENDIUM are registered
trademarks owned by TSR, Inc. PLANESCAPE, DM, and the TSR logo are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc. All TSR
characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks owned by TSR, Inc.
a 1994 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Random House and its affiliate companies have worldwide distribution rights in the hook trade for English-
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laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material contained herein is
prohibited without the express written consent of TSR, Inc.
HOME ON THE PLANES .......................... Portal Types.............................................. 55
What's the Point? ............................ Gate Keys ................................................. 56
Gold and Glory ........................................... 6 The Realities of Impossibility ......................... 58
Sense of Wonder ......................................... 6 Describing Sigil ............................................ 58
Long-term Objectives .................................. 6 Up and Down............................................ 58
Theme........................................................ 7 Day and Night .......................................... 59
Philosophers With Clubs.................................. 8 Weather.................................................... 59
Building on the Faction Theme..................... 8 Razorvine and Street Vermin ...................... 59
Structuring the Campaign................................ 9 Building Materials ..................................... 61
Getting Started .......................................... 10 Keeping the Peace ......................................... 61
1st- to 3rd-level Adventures ....................... 10 The Lady of Pain ....................................... 62
4th- to 7th-level Adventures ....................... 11 The Mazes ................................................ 63
8th- to 10th-level Adventures ..................... 11 The Dabus ................................................ 63
11th-level Adventures and Beyond .............. 12 The Code of Conduct ................................. 63
Dealing With Problems .................................. 12 The Roles of the Factions in Sigil ...................64
The Size of the Multiverse .......................... 12 The Athar ................................................. 65
The 'Feel' of the Campaign Setting .............. 12 Believers of the Source .............................. 65
Mega-monster Bashing .............................. 13 The Bleak Cabal ........................................ 65
The Doomguard ........................................ 65
THELAY OF 'THE LAND' .... The Dustmen ............................................ 65
The Outlands: An Ove The Fated ................................................. 65
Tir na Og .................................................. 16 The Fraternity of Order .............................. 66
The Noms .................................... 16 The Free League ........................................ 66
Sheela Peryroyl's Realm ............................. 16 The Harmonium ........................................ 66
The Dwarven Mountain ............................. 16 The Mercykillers........................................ 66
Semuanya's Bog........................................ 16 The Revolutionary League.......................... 66
Gzemnid and Ilsensine's Realm($ ................ 17 The Sign of One ........................................ 66
The Palace of Judgment ............................. 17 The Society of Sensation ............................ 67
Tvashtri's Laboratory ................................. 17 The Transcendent Order ............................. 67
Thoths Estate ........................................... 18 The Xaositects .......................................... 67
The Hidden Realm ..................................... 18 Making and Spending Money ........................ 69
The Mausoleum of Chronepsis .................... 18 The Two Most Important People in Sigil ..........70
The Court of Light ..................................... 18 Erin Darkflame Montgomely ...................... 70
Petitioners of the Outlands ............................. 19 Duke Rowan Darkwood.............................. 72
Role-playing Petitioners ............................. 20
Magic on the Outlands .................................. 20 WITHOUT
SIGIL A GUIDE.................................... 74
Rings Within the Ring ............................... 20 A Few Services of Sigil.................................. 76
Outlander Spell Keys ................................. 22 Touts........................................................ 76
Outlander Power Keys ................................ 23 Factotums ................................................ 76
Sedan Chairs............................................. 76
FEATURES OF THE OUTLANDS ......24 Harmonium Patrols ................................... 76
Realms.......................................................... 26 ....................................... 76
Towns.......................................................... 26 Light Boys ................................................ 76
Unidentified Terrain ...................................... 27 Business Specifics......................................... 77
Nonplayer Character Abbreviations ................ 28 Taverns .................................................... 77
Automata ..................................................... 28 Inns ......................................................... 77
Bedlam ........................................................ 30 Stables ..................................................... 77
The Caverns of Thought ................................ 32 Marketplaces............................................. 77
The Court of Light ........................................ 34 The Wards .................................................... 78
curst ........................................................... 3 5 The Lady's Ward ....................................... 79
The Dwarven Mountain ................................. 36 The Lower Ward ........................................ 81
Glorium ....................................................... 40 The Hive Ward .......................................... 82
The Palace of Judgment................................. 42 The Clerk's Ward ....................................... 84
Plague-Mort ................................................. 45 The Guildhall and Market Wards................. 88
Ribcage........................................................ 46 Campaign Quick-starts .................................. 89
Xaos ............................................................ 50 For the Price of a Rose............................... 89
Misplaced Spirit ........................................ 91
DOORWAYTO SIGIL ........................... New Spells ................................................... 93
Sigil's Portal's ............................................... 54 Knowing the Cant ......................................... 95
 Smoking pits of f i r e , mountains of pure
glory, tunnels of screaming wind - no sod
can stand these for long and not get skewered,
roasted, blasted, or just overwhelmed. Just how’s a berk supposed to
set up his kip in places like these? He can’t do it and stay living, or
sane at the least. No, a body - even
the toughest planar - needs a quiet
and safe place to call home. Baator
and even M o u n t Celestia are

S d @ % ! i X O L c k o s tfolks - at
least those that aren’t petition-
ers - make their homes in Sigil

-- I or somewhere o n the Outlands, also

called the Near Lands or j u s t
“the Land” by
most folks.
(To a planar’s
way of think-
P ing, a fellow’s
either in Sigil or he’s
not. On the Outlands he’s near
Sigil, hence “Near Lands.” Bodies that hit the Great Ring are “out of
town, ” while them that’s crossed the Astral to the Prime Material or
beyond are j u s t plain “out of touch” - it’s all j u s t a way to keep
track of folks.)
There’s a simple reason why Sigil and the Near Lands are so
I‘ popular with planars. Compared to the rest of the multiverse, the
Outlands (Sigil included) are “normal,” the most mortal-oriented of
all the Outer Planes, and maybe even the safest. That’s because the
plane’s held by powers that limit the might of most other deities. Not
only that, but the deities of the Outlands j u s t
tend to leave folks alone, too, probably because
WE C A N E x c u s e the f a c t that of their generally neutral natures. ’Course, if
you SLAUGHtERED two y u g o l o t h s some addle-coved berk goes and tries to bob one
b e f o r e you R E A L I Z E D of them, it don’t mean they‘ll ignore him.
W H E R E you W E R E . o u t s i d e r but L i k e a s n o t , thegods’llsquash h i m f l a t f o r
you p r o n o u n c e d the N A m E his cheating ways. Still, a cutter on the Out-
of CBUR F A I R C I + Y ‘ S I I I L , ’ N @ + ‘ S I G I L , ’
lands has got a better chance of giving them the
laugh than anywhere else on the Outer Planes.
AND + H E R E CAN BE So, hey berk - welcome to home!
NCB E X C U S f f@R +HA+!
- H E R H QNQR RA S
QF +HE
I N A T L j, I N
GUVNERS
Before going any further with this book, the DM should first
read A Player’s Guide to the Planes and A DM” Guide to the
Planes. This particular text provides a campaign base and
some quick-start adventures for a PLANESCAPE^^ campaign. Al-
though the material barely touches upon most of the planes, this
base makes a workable beginning for the DM to build upon, and all
the places a cutter could ever hope to explore will be well covered in
the boxed sets and adventure modules to come.
Sigil and Beyond is divided into three sections. The first part,
called “The Lay of ‘the Land,’” describes just what a PLANESCAPE cam-
Daign can be and how to get one set up and running. The second part,

+4+
 what’s the point? as adventurer bait cheapens its value to the cam-
paign and the players, who come to think of it as
A DM Guide to the Planes talked about the tone of mere “inventory.” Meanwhile, adventuring just to
the planes, the feel that gives a unique character to advance - with absolutely no other goal - robs the
the PLANESCAPE setting. Tone is important and goes a PLANESCAPE setting of the sense of
long way toward making the campaign mem- wonder that fills the bizarre uni-
orable, but it’s not enough. All style and no verse of the planes. So while
substance leaves the campaign world advancement provides reward,
hollow - rich with quick flavor, but it doesn’t make an adventure
without the full satisfaction of real memorable. A cutter needs another reason to step
content. The first step through the portal.
toward a memorable
campaign is to know
the goals and pur-

adventuring in the Okay, so what about the wonder and majesty of the
PLANESCAPE setting. planes? Is that enough of a reason for adventuring?
-- ”?
-
Huh? What’s that
-
Certainly the planes have got more than their share
L got to do with running of strange landscapes, fanciful towns, and bizarre
a good campaign? personalities. Certainly colorful descriptions by the
Well, whether a DM knows it or not, every ex- DM, along with an unfettered imagination, are going
citing campaign world has built-in goals for the to create many memorable scenes for the players.
player characters. Ask this question before doing But that’s all it is: just scenes, and scenes ain’t
anything else: “What are the player characters bying an adventure. Player characters don’t normally get
to accomplish?” The answer affects the whole way worked up about going to see some strange land-
the campaign is run. Take a look at some of the pos- scape or visiting a town just because it’s different.
sible answers, along with their pros and cons, for a They still need another goal to tie the whole thing to-
PLANESCAPE campaign. gether.
So where’s it stand so far? Money and levels
provide the reward, and a sense of wonder makes the
gold A N D glory scenery stand out, but what’s needed is a long-term
objective to tie it all together.
This is about the most basic of campaign motiva-
tions: The characters want to get rich in treasure and
levels, and adventures are ways of getting both. At
this approach’s most basic level, characters go into
dungeons where, large amounts of treasure are So give an adventure a broad goal and the problem’s
guarded by various monsters and take the former solved, right? Doubtless, every adventure or cam-
away from the latter. paign should have some kind of goal, if only to let
Now, there’s nothing wrong with this basic idea, the player characters know when they’re done. Get-
but in a PLANESCAPE campaign (like many other cam- ting treasure and levels is a goal, though not a strong
paigns) there are certain logic problems. Simply plot- foundation for a decent plot. A proper goal should
ting to explore (loot, rob, clean out, etc.) Shekines- set up the plot. “Plant this rose on the 435th layer of
ter’s Court of Light ruins the tone of the game, which the Abyss” is a clear goal, and a plot can grow
the DM should carefully be fostering. Most quickly around it: How will the characters
treasures are owned by things that A get there? Who wants to stop them? What
have a better right to them than happens if they succeed or fail? What
the characters, and i will happen along the way?
using wondrous
magic simply t
L

+6+
 The DM answers these questions and builds an So, the auestion is. “What are
adventure while the players have a clear objective for ters trying to accomplish?” and the possible answers
their characters to accomplish. Asking once again, are “gold and glory, sense of wonder, long-term ob-
the problem’s solved, right? jectives,” and “theme.” But it’s a bob question, berk
Maybe, maybe not. A goal may answer the - the real chant is “all of the above.” Good thing,
question of what characters are doing for an adven- then, that the planes - Outer, Inner, and everything
ture, but does it answer why? Why plant a rose on between - are loaded with all of those things and
the Abyss in the first place? What does that do? Why more. To make things really interesting, serious DMs
should the characters care? Yes, the characters may can think up secondary treasure hunts, wonders,
gain experience and money. Yes, they may have a quests, and themes to filter into the ongoing cam-
memorable time crossing the horrid landscape of the paign, so players’ll have more choices, more involved
Abyss. And yes, they may return alive and be able to stones to role-play, a d more fun. ,
’%

say, “We did this,” but they still need a reason to

care, a theme that explains their adventures and
gives their efforts meaning.
 philosophers whole new set of teeth to the old phrase, “a clash of
with C L U B S ideas.” Good, evil, neutrality, law, and chaos are all
trying to gain new lands and new adherents at the
The average prime is likely to be a bit taken back by expense of all the others while trying to hang on to
the enthusiasm of the factions on the Outer Planes. what they’ve got. When two factols get to debating
On the Prime in Sigil, one may j u s t decide
Material
6 the other’s too dangerous and
hit him, arrest him, publicly
A humiliate him, frame him, kill him,
or hire adventurers to get the goods
Plane, philos- on him. It’s not because the factols
“Icc ophv’s
_ ” just one person’s
I
personally don’t like each other, it’s because this is a
way of seeing things. Here’s the real campaign where ideas have real power. That’s a clash
chant, and pay attention, berk: All this attention to of ideas, planar-style. Like the headline says, factols
ideology is important because it can actually cause are “philosophers with clubs.”
the borders of the planes to change! If enough folks
in a town hold a belief contrary to the rest of their
plane, that town’s going to drift away to another BUILDING b N +Hf
plane, slipping from the grasp of one reality to join faction theme
another. To put it another way, if enough folks out-
side a power’s realm start subscribing to that power’s So, a PLANESCAPE campaign
beliefs, then its realm’s going to expand to include theme’s a real battle of ideas,
them. one where points of argu-
That means anywhere on the Outer Planes could ment can be won or lost 4
conceivably become part of somewhere else. with tangible results. Fine,
What a sod believes in, then - law, chaos, good, but what’s that mean for the
and evil - has a direct influence on the multiverse. player characters and their
Philosophy is more than just talk, philosophy is ac- adventures? Well, most
tion. Hence, the Outer Planes are the site of an end- players’ll find that they
less struggle for the hearts and minds of everyone on enjoy the perspectives
them. and attitudes of one or
Think about it, berk. The Blood War is more several factions. Even if
than a mindless battle of extermination between their characters are leaf-
fiends. It’s a war to establish a single, united Lower green primes fresh off the
Plane. To a fiend’s way of thinking, those that can’t Prime Material Plane, they 3
be persuaded to its point of view must be eliminated, can still join any faction
put in the dead-book, and so the War rages on. In the after they learn a bit
same vein, the facbons in Sigil aren’t there just be- about the choices and
cause it’s convenient; they’re each trying to sway the meet a few recruiters, as
city to their point of view. If they do, the whole long as the rest of the party 3
Cage’ll vanish off to some other plane. (That’s why can tolerate the choices. This
the Lady of Pain isn’t just a figure - she’s Sigil’s an- leads to more enthusiastic role- U
chor against the rest of the multiverse.) playing - there’s a faction for every-
All of this means something to the player char- body, and the results of their convictions can have
acters, too. It means their actions can sometimes “real” effects on the very planes themselves. With
change the face of the planes. By getting involved that said, an ideal theme on which to build a cam-
with the philosophical politics - for instance, by paign is the notion that “Player characters’ beliefs
either thwarting or supporting a faction’s coup in a can make a real difference - their actions based on
border town - they might keep that burg from the those ideas can halt or ease the advance of evil or
brink or give it the final push over the edge, sending chaos (or good or law).” Being of a particular align-
it to another plane. When they choose, they make a ment and belonging to a faction have a purpose:
difference a person can see and know. They let characters do something. They give the char-
So how’s this work in play? Well, first it gives a acters something concrete to fight for or against.
 any place where the
characters fit in could m
change, there’s a lot to defend.
With all those factions. fiends,
and powers out there, there’s a lot
of enemies to guard against. The threat’s not always
constant; sometimes the characters might have to
stand against an outright assault by fiends, yet at
other times they might have to somehow combat the going to
subtle persuasions of a hostile power. The enemy’s yearn for a
not always the same, either - it’s pretty clear what break. Vari-
needs to be done when the fiends attack, but what‘s a ety truly is the
basher to do when a good power begins poaching on spice of role-playing.
another’s terrain? ’Course, the enemies are vulnera- DMs take note: The rest of this book
ble, too. If evil can poach on good territory, good can is full of adventure hooks that hinge upon the inter-
return the favor. play of the factions. The gazetteer of the Outlands
One nice thing about this theme is there’s often and the section on Sigil are both full of adventures
a way for the player characters to go on the offensive and ideas for more exploits. If a DM gets stuck for
and hurt the enemy without drawing a ideas, he can always flip through those pages and see
drop of blood. For instance, the what sparks his interest. See page 64 for information
characters may be just on the roles of the factions in Sigil.
influential enough to tip the
balance and pull some village
on Carceri across the border structuring N G
to the Outlands. Their beliefs the campaign
set into action may be
enough to weaken a Knowing the theme and tone of the PLANESCAPE set-
tanar’ri lord’s grip on a ting still doesn’t guarantee a wonderful campaign.
town in the Abyss. There’s still a lot of nuts and bolts to work out. The
This battle of theme is like a blueprint to a house: It’s nice to look
beliefs will never end, but at, but it won’t keep the rain off. A blueprint’s only
it’s not futile. It’s like life, as good as the house it builds, and a theme’s only as
and most folks don’t good as the campaign that’s run. To that end, here
consider making it are some practical pointers to help make game play
through another day smoother and more exciting.
futile. Best of all, it
doesn’t have to end.
There’s not going to be
one big last battle that
makes the whole campaign
finite, not to mention pointless.
Theme can be a matter of background a n d day-
to-day circumstances, too. This thought’s important.
Not every adventure has to be about the struggle of
ideas. Sometimes player characters are just going to
go adventuring for money, experience, wonder, or the
short-term goal. Good! Variety is important. If a per-
son eats nothing but boiled potatoes and roast beef
every day, sooner or later he’s going to get tired of
boiled potatoes and roast beef. If every adventure is
about shaping the planes, sooner or later the player’s

+9+
 They’ll spend more time quibbling with each other
than adventuring - if they don’t, they’re not playing
E---. their roles. A certain amount of party friction is
good, since it keeps everyone awake and creative, but
too much ruins the fun for everyone. When players
choose factions, remind them to look at the allies and
enemies that go with them. If the group’s split be-
tween friends and foes, there’s going to be a problem.
getting started Encourage players to change factions until about 75
percent or more of the party belongs to groups that
Although players (on both sides of the DM’s screen) are either allied or neutral to each other.
don’t give it much thought, a good group of player Once they’ve chosen their factions, it helps to
characters is the essential key to any campaign. To be create a reason for the characters to work as a group.
honest, players shouldn’t be allowed to pick things A first adventure might create a situation where
like class, alignment, race, and faction willy-nilly. everyone meets and discovers a common purpose. If
Rather, they should be guided into choices that both the DM doesn’t have that planned, he might give the
keep them happy and serve the overall needs of the job to the players. Let them come up with the back-
party. This is especially true in picking factions and ground of their party. The result is usually more in-
alignments in the PLANESCAPE campaign. teresting, and it makes the players feel more in-
Face it, berk. Not every one of these factions is volved.
going to get along. Mixing Xaositect and Harmo- Finally, the DM’s got to assume that characters
nium player characters is a sure recipe for trouble. who grew up on the planes know the dark ofthings.
That’s what A Player’s Guide to
the Planes is for. Encourage
the players, particularly
those with planar char-
acters, to read it.
That’ll save a lot of
time having to ex-
plain things later on.

IS+- +e 3RD-
L E V E L adventures
Early on, characters don’t have many hit points or
much magic, so it may seem that adventuring on
the planes is impossible. It’s easy to assume
that only the powerful bashers stand a chance
out there - until now, most players have seen
the planes only through the eyes of the
mightiest primes. Well, that just ain’t the case,
berk. There’s a lot that low-level characters can do.
Sure, the player characters can’t face off against
tanar’ri and their like in battle and hope to live,
no different from fighting dragons
in a prime-material campaign -
green adventurers who wish to live a
little steer clear of the bone-strewn lair
where the mightiest basher in town got lost
last week. At these levels it’s a good idea to
keep the characters close to home.

+ 10+
 Fortunately, there’s plenty of adventure in Sigil. actively encourage the group to role-play. The player
Back alleys, the underground, the slums, and even characters’ solutions, based on their philosophies,
the Mazes (see page 6 3 ) are all good places for the will build more interesting personalities and provide
inexperienced to explore. Short and simple adven- the DM with rich material for later adventures.
tures to the other planes, heavy on role-playing and
light on combat, can give fledgling player characters
a nice taste of the variety the multiverse offers. Be- 8 + H - +Q IB+H-L€V€L
sides, players need time to learn the different fac-
tions, who’s in charge, and who’s a threat. Mean-
+
ADVE N U RE S
while, the DM can use visitors to Sigil to give the By now, the characters are ready to decide their own
characters a feel for the other planes. Perhaps they fates and really explore the other planes. At this
might even deal with a yugoloth mercenary of the point the DM’s job is less required to create specific
Lower Planes or an einheriar of the Upper Planes, if adventures - ones with absolute beginnings, mid-
only to get a sense of future challenges. dles, and ends - than to set up a problem and intro-
duce the actors in the game. The choices of t h e
player characters will more actively determine the
4 + H - +Q 7 + H W L E V € L course of the plot, and perhaps they’ll even change
ADVE N + U RE S the shape of some small part of the planes.
The player characters may want to become more
By now the characters have enough levels, spells, hit involved with faction politics and assume more re-
points, and wherewithal to venture out of the nest sponsibility for events. They understand more of
and explore the Outlands. There’s plenty to do out what’s going on around them,
there, keeping gate towns from slipping off to other and the$vehad
planes, dealing with baatezu and tanar’ri
proxies, and (of course) searching

+11+
their personalities well tested by now, so it’s natural T H E SIZE e F + H E
for them to gain the attention of the powers. It’s not IIIUL+IV@RSE
like the powers are going to pluck them up and give
them great abilities, though, or squash them like It bears repeating: The multiverse is a big place! Jug-
bugs either. Instead, the player characters start get- gling literally several dozen universes can easily be-
ting temporary “jobs” as henchmen of proxies of this come more work than a DM can handle. There’s lots
power or that, along with temptations and offers of planes and lots of choices, so the quick solution is
from competing powers. . . . to arbitrarily limit them, which is what the gates,
conduits, and portals are for. The DM controls all

-
I I +H LEVE L A D V E N + U R E S
AND BEYeND
those things, so he or she can open and close areas of
the planes as needed. If the characters aren’t strong
enough to handle an adventure on the Abyss, don’t
give them a doorway to the Abyss! If the DM hasn’t
Having survived all else, the player characters should prepared any details about Mount Celestia, then there
be ready to take real charge of their own lives. What needn’t be any paths leading to it. When the DM and
happens now is more a matter of player desires and the player characters are ready, pathways can sud-
previous history in the campaign. Characters may denly be found.
become full-fledged proxies or attempt to found a Even within a single plane, distances can be vast
barony of their own. One of them might try to be- and appear unworkable. Getting from Glorium to
come a facto1 and change the shape of the multi- Curst on foot looks like it would take forever (see the
verse. Wizards might try to create their very own map of the Outlands), but it doesn’t have to. First, days
demiplanes in the Ethereal. It’s even possible that of travel can be compressed down to a single sen-
some player characters might aspire to become lesser tence: “You ride in a mystifying blur with the strange
powers. In that case, they still have a long way to go planar caravan for three weeks before reaching Curst.”
and many adventures to accomplish, but the sheer Second, the DM can always open more doors in Sigil,
opportunities before them should be very exciting. to conveniently zip the characters from one point to
another. Remember, these transplanar shortcuts are
meant to cut out the boring parts of any adventure, not
D E A L I N G WILEH to give the player characters an easy out!
PR@ B LE III S
Campaigns are like true love - the course of neither T H E ‘FEEh’ eF + H E
never did run smooth. Problems are going to occur CAIIIPAIGN S E + + I N G
because problem always occur, no matter how well
managed the campaign. Most are the same things In the PLANESCAPE setting, attitude is tangible! Atti-
that plague every campaign: character feuds, lack of tude requires more role-playing by both players and
new ideas, too much magic, too much treasure, and DMs. Sadly, some players either struggle miserably
so on. However, there are a few troubles that are par- with or don’t even bother to get into their roles. If
ticularly unique to a PLANESCAPE campaign. they don’t play the part, then a lot of what makes a
PLANESCAPE game fun and interesting disappears.
First, don’t fault the players when this happens.
Role-playing starts with the DM. Make sure the tone -
arrogance, cynicism, even the slang - is getting
across. Role-play nonplayer characters with gusto and
style. By seeing attitude in action, players will pick up
on how the parts are supposed to be played. If a player
c still isn’t getting it, though, encourage him to look at
his choices of faction, class, race, and alignment.
Sometimes a player picks these without fully
understanding how to play the part. Most
often the player grows into the
role, but sometimes
th.e elements just
don’t click. If there’s a better
choice, t h e DM should down
probably let t h e player to it, there’s no
switch. Sure it breaks the rules, way to win against one of 1
but the D M s always got the right to do that, and gam- these beings if the being really
ing’s a learning experience. wants to win.
Sometimes players (and DMs) just don’t under- If the player characters are just a bit battle-
stand role-playing. They’ve grasped the mechanics happy, the best solution is to put them in situations
of dice rolling, char-acter classes, spells, and all where fighting and killing don’t work. Their assign-
that, but not the leap of creating a part like an actor ment might be to forge peace between the denizens
in a play or movie. A good DM can help these play- of two good planes or to negotiate for the release of
ers along, and they’ll get the hang of it sooner or prisoners held by the baatezu. The DM should keep at
later. Put the party in situations where they decide this until they become accustomed to actually role-
things based on their alignments and factions, situa- playing and not just rolling dice.
tions where spells and weapons don’t cut it. Remind If the characters are really bloodthirsty and just
them to think like Bleakers, Godsmen, Signers, Law- won’t change, there’s yet another strategy: Perhaps
ful Goods, or whatever. Get them to describe things the only thing more cruel than killing player charac-
their character might like and dislike. Gradually ters is ignoring them. Put them in positions where
their choices will build into a part they can under- their intended victims are either too powerful or too
stand and play. inaccessible to hurt. As the player characters fruit-
lessly strike out at their declared enemy, it merely
yawns and leaves the area, in search of more inter-
IIIE G A - III@N S + E R B A S H I N G esting company. When they find they can’t kill their
enemy, can’t even bother it with their best shots, the
“Hey, the planes are the homes of the gods, really player characters will eventually have to look for
powerful fiends, and monsters like we can’t imagine, other ways to get results. That just might push them
so let’s go out and kill them!” into role-playing. It’s a roundabout method, but
This is a problem, berk. A PLANESCAPE campaign players need to learn that their characters can’t just
is not about beating up Thor and taking his job, or kill everything in sight.
about eliminating every baatezu there is. It’s not a
power trip, where characters are supposed to fight
the toughest, baddest, and biggest beings around. If T H E Y ’ R E g o n n a G I V E him
t h e DM is running the campaign t h a t way, he’s the r o p e If H E
missed the point. Go back and read the sections PAY + H E music - W E L L ,
about tone and feel again.
‘Course, the DM may be running a great cam-
a c t UAL LY -I- H E Y
paign and still have players who are in the kill- WCBN’-I- G I V E H I m + H E RCBPf;
everything-in-sight mode. It’s hard to deal with - + H E Y ’ L L P U S . I-I- A R C B U N D H I S N E C K
these types typically attack everyone they’re sup- - E X C E P - I - HE’S GCB-I- NCB N E C K ,
posed to talk with before a role-playing situation can S @ + H E Y m1GH-I- HAVE +e ] U S +
develop. That’s when it’s time to use the ariogance
and power of the planes, to put these leather-headed
G I V € H I m + H E RCBPE I N S - k E A D -
WHA-I- K I N D e~ l T I U S l C
berks in their place. Bullying sods quickly draw the WAS HE
attention of hostile bashers all around them - when L I S - I - E N I N G +e, A N Y W A Y ?
a body walks and talks too loud in a place where at-
titudes shape the universe, there’s always challengers
eager to put a body down. And no matter how big
- N@HUL+I, A %A@SIL+IECL+I,
trial 8~ A F R I E N D
A+ +HE
and bad the troublemakers are, there’s going to be
someone or something tougher around the next bend
- especially in the planes, where the powers them-
selves are closer at hand than a herk might think.
Remember, a greater power in its home territory can
do anything the DM wants it to. When it comes right
 The Outlands are what the Clueless
refer to as the Plane of Concordant c-
Opposition - a mouthful, to say the least. Whatever a sod
m
calls it, it isn’t the wildest, weirdest, or most hostile plane in
-
the multiverse, which is ureciselv the reason it makes a good
campaign base. Think o f i t as &e almost-pacified border fief
found in many prime-material campaigns. Here’s a place where char-

i
1

_--
??at
IF” t
taken its toll. When a town - 1
crosses all the way into another plane, the
process’ll continue until the gate shows up at
the next town on the Land, eventually making its
way toward Sigil.
That makes Sigil more than a quiet little burg
where nothing happens. In fact, with all its door-
ways to other planes, it just might be the biggest prize of all the prizes
of the multiverse. Control Sigil and a body can get anywhere. All a power’s
got to do is get enough “right-thinking” people on its side.
’Course, with places like Tvashtri’s, Thoth’s, or Ilsensine’s realms (see below),
the Near Lands aren’t exactly dull either. Leave the relative s
orchards and a cutter might get caught up in Yen-Wang-Yeh’s endless halls of judgment or
Gzemnid’s vile lair.
Even when a berk knows his way around the local petitioners, there’s still plenty of
outsiders to make his life hell. The Outlands are a meeting ground for almost everything
else on the planes, and a lot of them seem to think it’s just an extension of their own tem-
tory. Automata (page 28). Bedlam (page 30), Curst (page 35), Glorium (page 40), Plague-
Mort (page 45), Ribcage (see page 46), Xaos (page 50), and the other towns just inside the
Great Ring all take on the character of their adjacent planes, which makes for exciting liv-
ing indeed.

THE outlands AN overview

The Clueless figure that, being a plane of perfect neutrality, the Outlands
have got to be the most boring place around. It’s obvious they haven’t
spent time there, and they certainly haven’t had to cool their heels in the I know it’s the gate
Astral for too long - now that’s boring! Sure, the Outlands don’t the mechanus but
have the burning pits of Baator, the howling madness of Pande- do 1 INHALE @ R EXHALE
monium, or even the glowing mountain of Celestia. The Land’s a B E f ore S -I- I C K I N G my HA N D S
little short on big, spectacular landscapes, but it ain’t boring, berk. into the GEARS?
It’s because the plane’s neutral that the place is so popular. Anyone
with the means can come here - that’s one of the properties of the plane. - A N outsider
L E A R N I NG
On most of the Great Ring, a power can’t enter a plane that’s not its home,
but on the Outlands any power can come and go as it wants. That doesn’t +HE D A R K
mean it can do anything it wants, though. Visiting powers respect the realms of e F A po rtal
those deities native to the Outlands, and they usually can’t enter them without per-
mission. Even petitioners from other planes can come here, though most of them are
from the Upper Planes (the guards of the Lower Planes don’t like their prizes getting
loose).
Sigil stands at the very heart of the plane, balanced on a spire that disappears
into nothingness above. This is important: There’s no way to walk from the Out-
lands, or anywhere else for that matter, into Sigil. The Cage can be reached ONLY
through the many doors that open onto its streets.
The realms of the Outlands lie mostly along the outer edges of the plane, close
to portals that lead to the Great Ring. There are 13 known realms and there’s ru-
mors of more, though no blood’s ever found them. Most of these realms are the do-
mains of single powers, but a few are home to several related powers. Each
e-
realm adopts the character of its ruling power or powers. The most sig-
nificant or best-known ones are described below. See the map of the
, Outlands to pinpoint their positions.
 T I R NA Q G THE DWARVEN mountain
“The Land of Youth is the largest of the realms in the So named for the breed of its petitioners and its pow-
Land, and home to most powers of the Celtic pan- ers, this realm lies under the influence of Dugmaren
theon: Daghdha, Diancecht, Goibhniu, Lugh, Manan- Brightmantle, Dumathoin, and Vergadain. The whole
nan rnac Lir, Morrigan, and Oghma. The realm is di- realm takes the form of a gigantic rocky mountain.
vided into lesser areas, where particular powers are The powers take no interest in the mountain’s sur-
dominant. For instance, Mag mell (Field of Happiness) face, so there are random petitioner and planar set-
is the domain of Daghdha. Here the woods are lush tlements on its slope that have little to do with the
and well tended, intermixed with fields of oats, wheat, realm. Inside, the mountain is honeycombed with
and barley. Orchards of apples and sloes seem to grow caverns. Those nearest the peak are the domain of
with haphazard neatness. There are no cities in Tir na Vergadain, which is notorious for its gaming halls
Og, only villages and lone homesteads. The petitioners and rumored treasure houses, as befits a god of luck
there live in rural contentment, supporting themselves and wealth. Further down is the domain of Dug-
mainly through hunting, farming, and weaving. maren. There, the caverns are a wild disarray of fur-
In another part of the realm are the workshops naces, forges, smelters, villages, and libraries filled
of Goibhniu, built at the bases of exposed hills. Far with esoteric tomes on metallurgy and other iron
distant is Tir fo Thuinn, the Land Under the Waves. crafts. The deepest part of the realm is claimed by
This is the domain of Manannan mac Lir. On the sur- Dumathoin. This area is nothing but cold caverns
face there is nothing, but below the waves is an en- and mines coiling around great veins of ore. It is m-
tire kingdom peopled by petitioners who farm, herd, mored that the petitioners of this domain spend their
and labor as if they were on the surface. days and nights secretly singing the chants that
cause the veins to swell and grow. Very little is actu-
ally smelted, for the petitioners here prize metal only
THE NQRNS in its natural state.
The petitioners here are all dwarves, if a sod
This realm can be reached only by crossing a wilder- couldn’t guess, although there’s more than a few
ness more savage than most. It’s a tiny realm, but run-ins with folks from the realms of Gzemnid Ilsen-
one that possesses great power. Here the Norns of sine, and others on the surface. See page 36 for more
Norse lore huddle among the roots of the plane- information on the Dwarven Mountain.
spanning Yggdrasil. The canopy is so thick that the
realm’s like a great cavern. The few petitioners here
are unhappy shades waiting to hear from the Norns. SEIIIUANYA’S B Q G
These powers huddle round the Well of Urd to read
the fates of men and gods. Sometimes a prime or a The far shore of Tir fo Thuinn barely rises above the
planar’ll consult them, but it’s bad business to learn plane’s equivalent of sea level, becoming a nest for
one’s future before it’s time. lizard men and other bog lovers. The petitioners
found here are truly unique: lizard men, all. It’s a
mostly deserted realm, although some independent-
SHEELA peryroyl’s REALm minded planars, including more than one desperate
outlaw, have set their kip here.
This area is small; indeed, everything about it is un-
dersized, as befits a power of the halflings. There are
no cities or towns here, only a single, extensive or-
chard and a large halfling farm, partially above ground,

-
but mostly below. The petitioners here are all half-
lings, tending the great orchard and farm.
-
 GZsIIINID A N D
I L S B N S I N B ’ S Realm(s)
No blood knows if these two powers share one realm
or if they just lack the imagination t o make their
realms different. Both rule over caverns that run
deeper than even the dwarf realm, and all the tunnels
merge together. Things foul and dangerous are sup-
posed t o stalk the halls, and most bashers figure cracy
there’s secret portals to the Lower Planes here. Cer- (the pan-
tainly, the darker fiends of the Lower Planes take res- theon of
idence in these realms when business brings them to high-ups who
the Outlands. call themselves Chi-
Gzemnid’s realm is a dangerous and deadly nese): Acheron, Gehenna, Mechanus,
maze. Illusions, distortions, and subtle charms pre- Mount Celestia, and the Prime Material Plane are just
dominate here to match the beholder god’s nature. a few. These pipes are used to shoot petitioners along
There’s no settlements - a petitioner’s got to go it on to their justly deserved places (so figure the ones to
his own, setting up his own nest somewhere in the the Lower Planes get used a bit more than those to
passages. The petitioners themselves are an unpleas- the Upper Planes). Therefore, the petitioners there
ant lot: a few beholders and a goodly number of aren’t only petitioners of the Outlands. If any newly
thieves. They’re willing to make deals, but they’re al- dead sod falls under the Celestial Bureaucracy’s
ways on the watch for their own rewards. purview, then he’s got to come here first,
Ilsensine’s realm is the more dangerous of the so there’s petitioners des-
two. The illithid god exists here only because it con- tined for every plane
spires against Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos alike. Pla- walking around the
nar adventurers don’t like to go here because the Palace. Those that’re
place pulses with a mind-wracking drone that burns judged and
in a basher’s head. Nor are they welcome, since the assigned to be kept on the Outlands usually wind up
ruling power prefers those whom it can control. Still, as clerks and petty bureaucrats for the whole opera-
it’s said that here a cutter can learn nearly anything tion. The Palace is big, too. The chant is there’s 9,001
that transpires on another plane - f h e can stay sane rooms behind its walls. Probably the only being who
long enough to find Ilsensine and ask the question. knows for sure is Yen-Wang-Yeh himself.
It’s quite possible that Ilsensine maintains realms on See page 42 for more information on the Palace
other planes, or that it’s a god-brain whose neurons of Judgment.
flow to the other planes, much like the roots of Ygg-
drasil. See “The Caverns of Thought,” on page 32, for
more information about Ilsensine’s realm. TVA S H .E RI ’S LAB @ R A .E @ RY
This realm borders the Dwarven Mountain. A cutter
T H E PALACe might even mistake it for part of Dugmaren Bright-
of judgment mantle’s domain. It looks like an endless workshop
filled with columns, pipes, catwalks, brightly pol-
This realm is a single massive palace, along with its ished devices of all types, and near-endless book
appropriate bureaucracies, granaries, stables, and stacks that disappear into darkness. Libraries are
side-palaces. The entire realm is enclosed in a wall of jammed next to armories, forges next to kitchens. It’s
red brick, patrolled by vigilant petitioners. This is the the realm of Tvashtri, god of artifice and science.
realm of Yen-Wang-Yeh, judge of the Ten Law Courts Here, the petitioners spend their days inventing and
and king of the Eighteen Hells. Here, all those peti- building. Most are human, but there’s a good number
tioners under the sway of the Celestial Bureaucracy of gnomes hard at work, too. It’s the place to go f o r . ,
are received, judged, and consigned to their appro- the best gear a cutter could need, although some say
priate planes and realms. the magic’s better in Tir na Og or the Dwarven
The Palace of Judgment’s a unique case. There’s Mountain.
conduits there to every realm of the Celestial Bureau-
 thoth’s estate really a demiplane somehow attached to the Out-
lands. By report, it’s the home of the giant deity,
Thoth’s realm is a big one. It’s a collection of several Annam. Most tale tellers say it’s a completely barren
villages and towns that dot the banks of the Ma’at, mountain with a single crystal tower at the top.
that rises out of Semuanya’s Bog and flows through That’s where Annam sits, surrounded by a thousand-
Thoth’s realm. A basher’s got to watch out for croco- piece orrery of the multiverse that spins in perfect
diles and crocodile-like creatures here. At the center time, all around him. The way they tell it, he’s a
of the realm is Thebestys, the great city of Thoth, and lonely, sad god, but that may just be dressing for the
at its center is the Great Library. A cutter is supposed sake of the story.
to be able to find the answer to anything here, if he
can just find the right scroll. The petitioners are a
normal lot, living ordinary lives along the river. THE mausuleum
of chronepsis
T H E HIDDEN REALm This realm is a compact one, as it’s got no petitioners
and only one inhabitant - Chronepsis, the dragon
It’s a laugh to say this realm’s well known, since no god of fate. His realm is a great cavern in the moun-
sod can ever seem to find it. Most bloqds figure it’s tains near the Dwarven Mountain. Here he rests, sur-
rounded by hourglasses that slowly dribble out the
sands of life for every dragon and dragon-kin of the
. multiverse.

THE court of light

This is the realm of Shekinester, the
naga goddess. It’s relatively close to
the Palace of Judgment. Her Deti-
v

tioners are nagas of all types,

although the worst and best
wind up on other planes.
Only a featherheadcomes
. here, as old Shekinester’s
an unpredictable
power. A cutter never
knows just what as-
pect her realm’s
going to reflect -
Weaver, Empowerer,
or Preserver. It’s also
risky going to her
realm because her pe-
titioners just might de-
cide a berk’s got to be
“initiated” into some mys-
tery, and that can be an un-
pleasant Drocess. On the other
.
. hand, there’s a lure to these
mysteries, because a few of the .
berks that return from here have
insights denied to other bloods.
See page 34 for more information.
There’s more realms than just these on the Outlands,
but most of them are so small that they hardly count,
or they’re so bizarre that a body can’t make any balancing doesn’t b
sense of them. This ain’t to say that the entire land is have to be done
filled with realms; there’s also empty spaces between immediately. Pure fact is,
the lands. ’Course, “empty’s’’ not the right descrip- most of them carry little tallies of their deeds,
tion. These boundaries are filled with the towns and sometimes in their heads and sometimes in little
cities of planars, and there’s quite a few cursed peti- books.
tioners who don’t have a power to call their lord. The What’s this mean for a cutter who’s got to deal
empty lands are mostly dry plains, not lush but not with such folk? Well, most planars try not to ask too
desert - a balance between too little and too much. much of a n Outlander petitioner; a body never
One blood said it reminded her of a place called the knows when he’s going to tip the balance, after all.
Great Plains on some prime-material world. When that cutter asks for something he knows is
good, evil, lawful, or chaotic, he’s a wise one to ex-

P E CE I CE I one RS
pect some kind of backfire. If he hires an Outlander
petitioner-mercenary t o help him raid the Fated’s
of the outlands headquarters in Sigil, he’s a leatherhead to expect the
merc to sneak in quiet. The petitioner’s more likely to
Every plane’s got its quirks, and these show up fairly bellow out their arrival -just to balance things out
obviously in its petitioners. The miserable wretches between the two groups. ’Course, the petitioner might
of Gehenna don’t know charity, while the fervent of not do anything now and balance accounts out at
Arcadia are fanatic in their pursuit of evil. Mean- some other time, with some other person. Or, he
while, the petitioners of Ysgard madly battle each might be balancing the scales now - a body never
other for glory every day. Though there are far fewer knows for sure. How they decide when to fix the bal-
petitioners of the Outlands (it’s not in most mortals’ ance is something no blood’s ever figured out. Ask a
nature to be truly neutral), they reflect their home petitioner and he can’t or won’t tell, either. Folks in
plane, too. Their lives are the balance, the fulcrum Sigil figure the Outlanders just like to torment others,
between good and evil, law and chaos. keeping them on hooks - will they act this time or
Some folks think Outlander petitioners would won’t they? It might be true, as more than enough
naturally refuse t o take sides in any dispute, but berks get burned up with the suspense.
that’s not the case. The petitioners of the Outlands This business leads to other surprises from the
don’t mind getting involved at all - in fact, the Outlanders. Sometimes they do things that seem like
problem is keeping them from getting too involved. downright meanness, like lying or hurting a body for
Here’s the chant: Ask a petitioner of the Out- no visible reason. Ask them about it and they’re just
lands to do one thing and he does two. If he gives “paying back the balance.” ’Course, other times
you advice, he’s just as likely to advise your enemy. they’ll do things that, if a body didn’t know better,
See, the petitioners there have this feeling that every would just be barmy generosity. An Outlander might
action they take affecting the balance of good and suddenly offer advice, give information, or cut his
evil (or law and chaos) must be offset by an equal ac- prices without explanation. Fact is, it’s all done from
tion to the opposite side. Being dutiful petitioners, the balance book they make, and folks who make the
that’s just what they try to do. Outlands their home just get used to it.
So, a basher’s got to wonder j u s t what this
means. Suppose a petitioner gives directions t o
Plague-Mort. Does that mean he’s got to find some- p e t i t i o n e r s d o n ’ t CARE
body and give them directions to Glorium, just to w h e t h e r t h e y ’ r e KILLED
balance things out? No, there’s no law, chaos, good,
I N the n a m e of + H E b l o o d W A R
or evil inherent in giving directions. However, if an
Outlander petitioner smuggles a body away from the or I N the N A m E of j u s t i c e
t h e y ’ r e just d e a d e r s
hunting fiends of Plague-Mort - a good act by most
standards - then he’s going to feel compelled to fix
the balance. That same petitioner might raise the
- THE declaration
of the RiNG-GIVeRS
alarm as soon as the sod’s out of town, or he might
betray the next berk that’s hunted by the fiends. A

+ 19+
 R I N G S WIL)IHIN + H E R I N G
DMs need be careful how they use Outlander peti- That ain’t the case on the Outlands. Here, where a cut-
tioners. Too much or too little is not a good thing. A ter stands makes all the difference. That’s because the
queer comment from a petitioner can add spice to an plane’s divided into 10 layers, like the skins of an
encounter, set the player characters back on track, or onion. See, as a body moves through each layer toward
send them overconfidently into a trap. The same the center of the Outlands, more and more magical
comment could also derail an adventure, confuse the power is - well, neutralized - until at the very center
issue, and frustrate the players. there’s none lefi. (’Course, that’s where Sigil is, and it
DMs want players guessing, “Is this berk‘s price promptly breaks all those rules.) None of the layers are
worth the risk?” Sometimes the price’ll work out of equal thickness, and there’s no defined borders, so
well, and sometimes it’ll be more trouble than it’s the only way a cutter knows what layer she’s standing
worth. A good DM gives some hint or warning of the in is by casting a spell and seeing it fly or fail. (In
consequences so his players aren’t completely blind- other words, the DM may have to make a judgment
sided, unless they deserve it. With their apparently call and the player’ll have to live with it.)
random acts of kindness and cruelty, Outlander peti- The outermost layer of the onion is also the
tioners can be used to get adventures started, supply thickest. This is where most of the realms are found.
useful information, and generally keep player char- Most of the gates, portals, and conduits to the Great
acters pointed in the right direction. The DM has to Ring spill into this layer. Out here, there’s generally
watch it, though. Using them too much is going to no special restrictions on spells beyond the stan-
either make players dependent on petitioners for help dards. The exception to this set of rules is the gate-
or rile the group into slaughtering every one they towns, the settlements that form around each portal
see. “Run, here comes a petitioner!” is bad. “We’re to the Great Ring. In some of these, a little of the
stuck, let’s go ask some petitioners until one helps magical effect from the nearby plane leaks over and
us,” is worse. Use petitioners sparingly and in unex- creates special conditions, either enhancing or di-
pected ways. Remember that the things a petitioner minishing a certain school of magic. Not every gate-
provides - information, aid, and hindrances - don’t town is affected, though, so a cutter’s wise to ask
have to have one whit to do with the adventure. around before he gets in trouble. (’Course, DMs can
learn the dark of such things by studying the entries
on those burgs in this book and in others to come.)
magic on the In the second layer from the outside, the power
o utL A N D S of magic is diminished so that 9th-level spells don’t
function, including spell-like abilities of creatures.
As far as the standard restrictions go, most planars Note that this does not apply to any of the powers.
call Sigil or the Outlands their home. This makes all ‘Course, while this is bad news for wizards, it don’t
those abjure, holy word, and protection f r o m evil mean a thing to priests. A side effect of this notion is
spells useless against the majority of planars found that the layer is home to several powers who are ap-
on the Outlands. It’s a good thing too; otherwise, ad- athetic to wizards, like those in the Dwarven Moun-
venturing would be a pretty tough bet. Spells that tain. Now, a wizard on the second layer doesn’t for-
use an ethereal pathway need keys before they’ll get his 9th-level spells, they just don’t work when he
work. Luckily for spellcasters, conjuration/summon- tries to cast them. As mentioned, there’s no warning
ing spells can call upon creatures from any Outer or signal when this happens, no borderline on the
Plane or the Astral Plane, which is the biggest range ground or signs to mark the ring, so a cutter’s got to
of choices for any of the Outer Planes. keep track of just where he is or there might be a
It’s true that all planes affect magic, but no nasty surprise.
p l a n e works o n i t like t h e Outlands. Go t o In the third layer, 8th-level spells (and spell-like
Mechanus and no matter where a cutter is, abilities) are shut down. This and all the following
his spells might work differently, but they al- effects are cumulative, so on this ring both 8th- and
ways work differently in the same way. On 9th-level spells are affected, and so on. The abilities .
Mechanus, a n illusion of powers aren’t harmed in this circle, either. Because
won’t work, no matter
L what cog wheel a berk’s
all this still doesn’t mean a thing to priests, this
layer’s also got realms of powers that are either hos-
tile or indifferent to wizards.

+ 20+
out L A N D E R E FFE C + S At the fourth layer from the outside, 7th-level
8N magic BY R I N G spells (and spell-like abilities) cease to function. Now
so there’s very few realms

e their homes

are some-

At the ninth layer, 2

At the center of the Outlands, around the base

of the spire that supports Sigil, is the ultimate nega-
tion of power. No magic or godly faculties of any
type work here. This is t h e ultimate in meeting
grounds, for here everyone, no matter how powerful,
is rendered equal. It’s rarely visited, for only the most .

and spell-like abilities

pressing business can force the greater gods to parley .
* here. Reaching the center requires a tedious overland
journey from the edge of the seventh ring, since all
Astral connections are severed inside. this radius.
 SIGIL’S A C A G E each time the affected spell is cast. For those spells
that have casting times, a key adds 1 to the spell’s

--
till WE F I N I S H the last
s o - c a l l e d RULER.
arise A N D
C A S + off your CHAINS!!
- .,The list below describes
total rating.
the key needed for a spell or par-
titular group of spells.

- minety-first
proclamation
+ Dismissal and ensnare-
ment. If the creature’s from the Ethereal or Inner
e f the ANARCHS Planes, the caster’s got to give it something made on
the Outlands. A leaf of razorvine (see page 59) picked
in Sigil is an example.

+ Distance distortion. To tap the power of the plane

of Earth, the caster’s got to memorize a gust of wind
J
- And then there’s Sigil.
or similar spell. When distance distortion is cast, the
gust of wind instantly vanishes from memory as if
cast.
Sitting at the tip of the spire, it’s a dif-
ferent world. Spells in the Cage work as if a cutter + DIVINATIONS TO THE INNER PLANES (Augury, commune,
was on the outermost ring of the plane. Some bloods contact other plane, divine inspiration, reflecting
argue it’s because Sigil’s in a separate little demi- pool, vision). If the power to be contacted lives on the
plane that is linked only geographically to the Out- Inner Planes, the caster must reveal a secret of his
lands. Others say it sits at the confluence of energies own to a native of this plane (petitioner or planar). It
from the plane. Most folks don’t care. All they know doesn’t have to be a big secret, but it must be some-
is that magic works in the City of Doors. thing that has been intentionally kept dark from all
others, like “I cheated Arzol the fruit merchant this
morning.”

+ Draw upon holy might and sanctib. These spells

Only a few spells are jumbled by the neutral nature are affected only if the power resides on the Inner
of the Outlands, yet every cutter who can cast a spell Planes. To cast them under these circumstances, the
gets all put out if his one favorite is among them. priest must sacrifice a n enchanted item of a n y
That’s why there’s spell keys, ways to work around type.
those obstacles. Recovering that special spell’s just a
matter of learning the right key. + Drawmij’s instant summons. This spell is affected
’Course, keys aren’t something every wizard only if the summoned thing is on the Inner Planes.
just rattles his bone-box about. It don’t pay to shed To cast the spell, the wizard must offer a n equal
too much light on the dark. After all, a berk j u s t amount of inorganic matter from the Outlands,
might be giving aid to his enemy. No, a blood’s got which is swapped for the summoned thing. The ma-
to discover the keys he needs by himself. A factol terial chosen must be held by the caster. Should the
might share a few with his brothers or sisters, but a summoned t h i n g be returned t o its plane, t h e
cutter’s got to figure there’s a price for such help. A swapped material is returned, although its condition
little garnish in the right places might buy a few may suffer from exposure to the Inner Planes - i.e.,
keys, but the cost could get high. A canny fellow it might be burned to a crisp, etc.
might bob another wizard into revealing a few, but
that’s hard - most wizards hoard their knowledge + ELEMENTAL CONJURATIONS (Aerial servant, chariot of
like precious gems. Sustarre, conjure elemental, elemental swarm, invis-
There’s only a few keys t o learn, a s whole ible stalker). To summon these creatures and effects,
groups of spells use the same key. All the Outlander the wizard must cast a handful of the opposing ele-
keys work on the principle of balance: Something ment toward the target. For example, to summon a
must be done, offered, or exchanged, at least sym- water elemental, a handful of coals must be thrown.
bolically, for a spell to work. The key is invoked or (Take note of the special rules for outer-planar ele-
used at the time of casting, and it has to be employed mentals - see A DM Guide to the Planes.)

+ 22 +
+ ETHEREAL-BASEDSPELLS(Estate transference, ether- spell that’s most appropriate. In general, power keys
walk, Hornung’s random dispatcher, Leomund’s on the Outlands are likely to enhance the casting of
secret chest). In addition to the spell’s material com- spells that reveal, maintain, or at least don’t harm the
ponents, a gem of a t least 100-gp value must be balance of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos in the multi-
used. This vanishes when the spell is cast, a toll to verse. Consequently, there’s not a whole lot of power
the powers of the Astral Plane. keys given out on this plane.

+ ENERGYPLANE SPELLS (Energy drain, negative plane

protection, restoration). Spells reaching the Negative
Energy Plane require a live insect or worm, which
vanishes upon casting. Those reaching the Positive
Energy Plane require a dead insect or worm.

+ SHADOW
MAGIC (Demishadow monsters, demishadow
magic, Lorloueim’s creeping shadow, Lorloueim’s
shadowy transformation, major creation, minor cre-
ation, shades, shadow monsters, shadow walk,
shadow magic, shadow engines, shadowcat, summon
shadow, vanish). To access the plane of Shadow, the
caster must include among his material components
a stone enchanted with a continual light or a contin-
ual darkness spell. This item vanishes when the spell
is cast. Furthermore, the caster has to alternate the
item offered with each casting. If a continual light is
used to cast demishadow monsters, the next time a
shadow spell is cast, a stone cloaked in continual
darkness must be offered.

e U .E L A N D E R
power KEYS
It’s likely that power keys for various priest spells
exist on the Outlands. Just the same, power
keys aren’t something a berk can just
drop a little jink on and learn. He
can’t get the dark of them
from factols, and most
other priests won’t
share the one or two &
power keys they
might know, either.
Power keys have got
to be earned and even
then there’s no promise a
cutter’s going to get one.
Because power keys
are under the absolute
control of the DM, none
are made ua or listed
here. The DM can cre-
ate them when they’re
needed and choose the @ I

+234
ity means there’s a balance of everything. For every go
there’s an evil, and for every land of order there’s a swirling morass
of chaos, but that’can make for a lot more action than a body’ll find in the most chaotic
planes. That’s the dark of the Outlands.
This section describes some of those lands: the red-brick Palace of Judgment, the
maddening caverns of the mind flayer god, rhe gate-towns of Ribcage, Plague-Mort, Glo-
rium, and a host of other wonders that make up the Outlands. While this is the gazetteer of
the land, it doesn’t even try to describe every place the characters could go, only a few of
the more interesting possibilities for adventure. Some of these are gate-towns on the verge
of slipping off to adjacent planes, while others are the more dangerous or even useful
realms on the plane. With this section the DM gets a start on creating his own PLANESCAPE
campaign.
By the way, this information’s for the DM’s use only, so i f a player’s looking at this,
knock i t off, berk!
The sites described in the following pages are arranged alphabetically and match the
named locations on the map of the Outlands provided in this campaign setting box. Each
area is described with an eye toward planar adventurers - adventure settings, nonplayer
characters, and bases of operation are all featured. Use the provided campaign quick-starts
 DESCRIPTION.Now that a
cutter knows what’s dangerous, he
needs to know what else is found
(see page 89) here.
or create a different
one suitable to the existing cam- PRINCIPAL NONPLAYER CHARACTERS.Since player
paign, and then let the player characters explore characters don’t deal with the power of a realm, the
some of the spots that are covered below. nonplayer characters they’re likely to meet, and those
To make finding things simple, entries in this who would be useful to know, are named under this
section are categorized as realms and towns. Each heading, along with their position, title, or role.
site has particular information presented about it in
the same way, as outlined below. SERVICES.Inns, craftsmen, goods, and other ser-
vices that make a basher’s life easier are described in
brief, including the name, race,
REALmS
CHARACTER. A realm’s the creation of a power, so a
berk can bet it’s got a definite feel and attitude to it.
This part only hints at the flavor of the place, but it’ll
note if the area’s dangerous, open to travelers, heav-
ily populated, or whatever else the character of the
place might be. This is stuff any planar native to the
Outlands is likely t o know, so the DM can freely
share it with players.

POWER. The name of the ruling power, or the most

dominant one. Powers described in Legends and Lore
(2108) are marked with (LL). Those found in DMGR4,
Monstrous Mythology (2128) are noted by (MM).

PRINCIPAL TOWNS. Any cities or large towns in or

near the realm show up here. Most settlements are
part of a realm, but a few sit just over the border,
trading with the petitioners of the realm, yet not
counting themselves a part of it. Such burgs are
where most planars live because they generally don’t
care for the stiff-necked views of the powers that be.

SPECIAL CONDITIONS.A power’ll sometimes create

special quirks in its realm that a cutter had better
know about. It could be that physical conditions are
different, like in Sheela Peryroyl’s realm, where it’s
always spring, summer, or fall, but never winter. It’s TQWNS
also important for a basher in Ilsensine’s realm to
know that painful thought waves are going to scorch Just because it’s not living, that doesn’t
her brain. On the other hand, it could be the petition- iiicaii atuwn’s got no personality. Character’s part
ers who are different. In the halls of Yen-Wang-Yeh, the general alignment of the place, and part the na-
the petitioners constantly spout their supposed ture of what happens there.
virtues to every passing sod. Then again, it might be
the laws of the place that are a bit different. A cross- RULER.This tells a sod who’s officially in charge
trading knight might want to know that cheats in - name, race, class, and level - and what that sup-
Vergadain’s gambling halls are routinely drawn and posed chief is like to deal with. Be sure to check the
quartered without trial. next entry to find out who’s really in charge.
 BEHINDTHE THRONE. Just because a berk rules a Unnamed territory generally resembles the
town, it doesn’t mean he’s the only boss. Most times realm or plane it’s closest to. The land near Glorium
there’s one or more other groups trying to pull the is green meadows, rolling hills, and open forests.
strings. A wise cutter takes time to find out who’s re- , Nearer to Mechanus, the woods become more rigid,

ally the high-up man in the local operation. with the trees arranged in neat rows and the fields
squarely-patterned. At the opposite extreme, near
DESCRIPTION. Here, the layout of the town’s pre- Limbo, the plane assumes the look of an untamed
sented so that things said later’ll make sense. wilderness, thrown together without plan or organi-
zation.
Mmrm. Player characters seem to get messed up Throughout the plane the weather’s always tem-
with the local authorities a lot. This entry tells who’s perate, without the bitter gnaw of winter or the sear-
in charge, what they’ve got to command, and just ing gaze of high summer. Toward the Lower Planes,
what kind of attitude they’re likely to have in the variations are a bit more extreme - chilly and
response to the mischief player characters damp fens surround Semuanya’s Bog, dusty plains
I‘ are likely to cause. encompass Ribcage, and the sad climate of late au-
I: tumn hovers near Plague-Mort. Yet even in these
,. This is the same areas the extremes are not so great as to change the
LILcentry for realms: season from the perpetual mildness that predomi-
a listing of places to go nates across the Outlands.
and things to buy that Because the plane tends to look like whatever
could be useful to a realm or plane it’s closest to (though without the ex-
band of danger- tremes that’ll tip the balance of things], bloods tend
loving toughs. to argue as to what the Outlands’ “true appearance”
is like. The best guess is that the Land looks like
LOCALNEWS. those areas found near the center of the plane, far-
Gossip’s always thest from influencing realms and planes. There, the
useful, and a wise land’s a perfect mix of plains and forests, canyons
cutter keeps his ear and mountains, even rivers and deserts. No one sin-
to the ground. This gle thing dominates over all the others. It’s a wilder-
entry gives some of ness that’s not impossibly forbidding - it’s
the chant the locals traversable with some difficulty.
are likely to know. Some of the Clueless claim the Outlands
are pretty close in appearance to their own
prime-material worlds; other Outsiders
claim it’s nothing like their homes. Who
knows? Most bodies figure the Clue-
UNIDgN+IFIED less are all barmy anyway, and
* TERRAIN those that ain’t make it
through the day by cling-
’Course, n o t every place on t h e plane can be ing to the belief that
mapped and named. Addle-coves that try to chart the the planes are just like
whole mess wind up with maps filled with named home. ’Course, that’s
things like Duena’s Crossroads, Big Pile of Rocks, and why they’re called
Forest-darker-than-the-last-one-we-were-in. Things “Clueless.”
like that’ll confuse more than help in no time at all.
That doesn’t mean these unnamed places are
blank, white expanses, though. They’ve got features,
but none of special or particular note to war-
rant a special entry. That doesn’t mean the un-
named lands are all the same either. There’s
clear differences in the plane as a cutter travels from
Glorium to Ribcage - enough differences that a cut-
ter can notice.
 N o N PLAY E R C HARAC t E R AB BREVIAt I Q N S
Nonplayer characters - rulers, merchants, and the like - will always have important information listed in
parentheses after their names. This always goes like so: (originlsex and racelclass and level/faction/alignment).
Origin tells whether the character’s a petitioner, planar, prime, or proxy. Powers, should they appear, are never
reduced to a set of abbreviations - something important that deserves special attention. For all the others, ab-
breviations used are as follows.

ORIGIN CLASS FACTION

P1 Planar B Bard At Athar
Pe Petitioner D Druid Be Believers/Source
Pr Prime F Fighter BC Bleak Cabal
Px Proxy P Priest Dg Doomguard
P(sp) Specialty priest Du Dustmen
SEX AND RACE Pa Paladin Fa Fated
0 Female Ps Psionicist FO Fraternity/Order
6 Male R Ranger FL Free League
0 Genderless T Thief Ha Harmonium
b Bariaur W Wizard Mk Mercykillers
d Dwarf W(A) Abjurer Os Outsiders
e Elf W(C) Conjurer RL Revolutionary League
fd Fiend W(D) Diviner SO S i g n o f o n e
g Gnome W(E) Enchanter S2 Society/Sensation
gy Githyanki W(E1) Elementalist TO Transcendent Order
gz Githzerai W(I) Illusionist Xa Xaositects
h Human W(In) Invoker Var Various
ha Halfling W(N) Necromancer
he Half-elf W(T) Transmuter
tf Tiefling W(W)Wild mage
var Various 0 Unclassed
Var Various

AU+QmA+A BEHINDTHE THRONE. There’s no force that would

(Town) dare interfere with or presume upon the proper work-
ings of the Council. By night, however, the Council
of Order is replaced by the Council of Anarchy, a per-
CHARACTER. As a tiny reflection of nearby Mechanus, fect mirror of its counterpart. Leggis Scrog (Pl/dgz/
there’s a rule for everything here, and gods help the TIO/RL/NE) represents the criminals, Ravis Cor-
berk who ain’t learned them all! cuncewl (Pel 0 h/O/N) represents the vagrants, and
Aurach the Fair, a baatezu erinyes, represents the
RULER.The Council of Order is clearly in charge fiends who want to subvert the city.
here, at least during daylight hours. The Council has
three seats, currently filled by the humorless Captain DESCRIPTION.Nobody ever gets lost in Automata
Arstimis (Pl/ d gz/F 14/Ha/LN), representing the town - it just ain’t possible because everything’s so or-
guard; Pelnis the Clockmaker (Pel6h/O/N), represent- derly. The streets are a perfect grid, and even the
ing the craftsmen; and Serafil (Pl/0 tf/P(sp)lO/FO/LN) houses are set at perfect intervals. A cross-trading
(Spell Spheres - major: All, Elemental, Weather; knight could set a clock by the timing of the watch
minor: Combat, Sun), a priestess of Lei Kung (LL). patrols. Everyone rises with the sun and retires when
She represents the temples of the town. Any other it sets, which splits the day into two equal halves of
group’s got no voice on the Council. The Council de- light and dark.
cides all things in strictly regulated sessions that fol- Automata’s got about a thousand bodies packed
low absolute rules of order. behind its rectangular walls. There are six gates into

+28 +
 town - two on each of the long walls and one on MIIITIA.There’s two - one for the surface and
each of the ends. Inside, every block’s got a definite one for the underground. The surface militia’s com-
purpose. Some are nothing but houses while others manded b y Captain Arstimis, and it patrols the
are workshops, and a few are devoted to the govern- streets with vigorous regularity. A typical militia pa-
ment - more than’re really needed in a burg this trol’s made up of 10 petitioners, led by a sergeant
size, but then Automata’s got a lot of laws. who’s also a petitioner. Planars and primes are never
The one thing that doesn’t fit into this perfect part of the rank and file, always assuming command
order is the blocks themselves. A cutter’d figure that positions instead. All officers are members of the
blocks of the same type’d be set together, hut it ain’t Harmonium.
so. Everything’s scattered all over Automata; work- The underground militia is a semiorganized
shop blocks are next to mansions, which are next to gang under the control of Leggis Scrog. This militia
stables, which are next to the armory, and so on. Ask doesn’t patrol or give a tinker’s damn about the laws.
a body here about it and they’ll just shrug, saying It’s only concerned with collecting protection money
you don’t see the grand pattern of things. “Such are from the businesses above and below ground. Col-
the mysteries of order.” lecting from the underground’s not much problem
Remember that Automata is order and that unless there’s a power struggle going on - bribes are
means there’s laws for everything. A sod’s got to a regular part of business. But every once in a while
watch where he steps, what he says, what he drinks, some berk on the surface’ll refuse to pay, and that’s
and even when he drinks. A cutter can’t buy ale after when the thugs go out. A thug gang’s got 2d6 mem-
the third hour and shops can’t open before the first. bers, all primes and planars, either 1st-level thieves
No merchant holds a sale unless it’s approved by the or fighters.
Council, which means nobody holds a sale unless
everyone does. There’s no haggling on prices, no SERVICES. Automata’s got it all, if a cutter knows
credit, and no bartering. A berk’d better have funds where to find it. On the surface, a berk’s not going to
when he comes into town, because there’s no place find any great deals. All the prices in this burg are
for beggars here, either. carefully regulated. Still, the inns are clean and or-
Automata ain’t perfect order, though. It’s got an derly. The best of the lot’s The Divine Machine, run
underside that isn’t seen by the common traveler, as by Tourlac the Halfling (Pel8 ha/O/N). The furnish-
it’s literally underground. Beneath Automata there’s ings are a little small, but he runs a fine establish-
a network of passages, chambers, apartments, and ment. Dinners are hot and ample.
even streets that house the hidden life of the burg. Underground’s where the interesting life is. A
Here, the petitioners of the Outlands even the bal- berk’s got t o know the dark of the town, a n d he
ance between law and chaos. Crime, violence, disor- probably has to garnish a local or two with some jink
der, and revelry echo through the tunnels. There’s ru- before he gets shown around. Of particular interest
mors of a hidden gladiator arena where games are beneath the streets is the little shop of Hokee Thridun
fought to the death, festhalls where every vice can be (Pl/8tf/W6/Du/LE). Hokee specializes in buying and
found, even conclyes of conspirators led by fiends. selling the rare and exotic for a select clientele.
This is where the bodies of Automata go at night, Where it comes from he doesn’t care, and who buys
after the laws have sent them to bed. it and what it’s used for ain’t his business; he just
Although the agents of Mechanus have a firm supplies the need. Now, player character types ain’t
grip on the surface town, the wild undercity keeps among Hokee’s clientele - he deals with beings
Automata firmly planted on the Outlands. ’Course, much more powerful - but he always needs one job
the proxies of Primus the modron-lord would love to or another done. There’s sure work, but dangerous,
shut down the criminal side of Automata because, from his hands.
once it falls, the burg’s shift into Mechanus would be
assured. LOCALNEWS.Loctus, a local explorer, has come

* - back with reports of a strange hill outside of town.

What’s strange is that it wasn’t there a week ago. Not
only that, but Loctus swears it’s growing - “kinda
like a hive,” he says. ’Course, Loctus’s a notorious
bubber who’s been telling the tale to anyone who’ll
buy him a drink.
 BEDLAm
(Town)

CHARACTER.Not really a town, but an asylum let loose

- that’s what this place is. The chant is the town’s
mad, that the barmies have seized the keys, but 4
what’s a soul to expect from a place that’s hard on
the gates of Pandemonium? Those who live here
can’t help but be addle-coved in one way or another.

RULER.Tharick Bleakshadow (Pl/ 6h/W 12/Xa/

CN), Keeper of Bedlam. A gouty old wizard, he’s
prone to senile rambling and savage outbursts of
magical fury. More than a few buildings in town
have been scorched by his fireballs. Tharick
became Keeper after leading a rebellion
against the sane petitioners in the town.
Tharick‘s title is observed more in name than
deed, however.

BEHIND THE throne. Who can rule an as-

sembly of madmen? The social contract bare1
exists, so it’s every barmy for himself.
Tharick only rules the people he 4
can get to agree with him, while
everybody else more or less goes
about doing what they want.
Still, a few bashers have
managed to gain the attention
of Bedlam’s citizens. The most in-
fluential of these is Hrava, a
shadow fiend. This
monster’s insin-
uated itself into
the waking
dreams of many of ,
Bedlam’s addle-coved ~

citizens, becoming the a

little voice in their
leads that
gives thc
advice. The
monster sel-
dom shows it-
elf directly,
waiting in shadow
nd night to give its advice.
Irava works for its own
nds, to attain power and
domination over the
L town,
although stronger fiends can force it to serve their against assaults from Pandemonium and serve as the
dreams of Sigil’s conquest. city watch, more or less. A typical Windlancer patrol
has 2d6 fighters of 3rd-5th level, accompanied by a
HRAVA, ADOW FIEND:THACO 13; #AT 3; Dmg ld6x2 wizard of 5th-7th level. Windlancers are most active
(claw/cldw), l i 0 jbite); AC 9, 5, or 1”; HD 7+3; hp 38; in the Citadel section of town, rarely venturing down
MV 12 and leap (30’ to rake with four claws - ld6x4 to the chaotic end by the gate.
dmg); SA +2 attack bonus in complete darkness, 90% The other two groups serve more as bodyguards,
surprise in shadows, rake, darkness, fear, magic jar; either for money or just because. The first is called
SD immune to fire, cold, electricity; SZ M; INT very; the Sarex, which was formed at the urging of Hrava.
AL CE; ML 15; XP 2,000 Its members are planars from Pandemonium and
* Armor Class depends upon the amount of existing light. In those Bedlamites most touched b y t h a t plane’s
sunlight and continual light, the AC is 9; in torch, lantern, or screaming winds. The Sarex operates in gangs of
light spell intensity, the AC is 5 ; in complete darkness, the AC three to four, usually with a mix of classes that range
is 1. from 7th-9th level in ability. Under Hrava’s control,
the Sarex keeps to the gloomy edges of activities,
DESCRIPTION. Bedlam’s one of those burgs that striking at the shadow fiend’s enemies when there’s
defies description. Imagine a town where 5,000 no witnesses. A sign is always left behind, though,
strangers each decided t o build their own places making it clear to a berk just who’s really in charge
without talking to one another - the result’s the of the town. The last group, called the Misguided, is a
sprawl of Bedlam. The town’s usually described as a hapless bunch of leatherheaded Outlander petition-
fan set on the side of a hill (called Maurash by the lo- ers, led by Thoa (Pel 0 h/O/N). These sods are pretty
cals). The base of the fan rests at the bottom of much out of their depth and can only be doing this
Maurash, converging at the entrance to Pandemo- to right their little cosmic balance scales. As befits
nium. The gate, a twisted arch of iron and stone, rises their cause, the Misguided are busiest in the dives
above the shacks clustered nearby. Eight dusty roads near Pandemonium Gate.
intersect in a tangle before the arch and then spread
like the ribs of the fan, up Maurash‘s slopes. SERVICES. There’s not much to be found in Bed-
Here’s a subtle detail: The farther up the hill a lam, a t least not much that can be relied upon.
cutter goes, the saner-looking the buildings become. Craftsmen don’t prosper here, since there’s too many
Halfway up the slope, the ramshackle shacks assume barmies to build up a dependable business. Still, the
a semblance of order and become walled compounds, town does attract a few artists, seeking inspiration in
each still isolated but at least protected. Ultimately, madness, and there’s always at least one bard to be
at the top of the hill, in the center of the fan, is a found.
Citadel - a small section of town surrounded by a The best place to track down artistic types is at
curtain wall and lined with defensive towers. Here’s Weylund’s Inn, near the center of town. It’s run by
where a cutter’s going to find the least addled and Pockmarked Weylund (Pel 8d/O/N). The dwarf draws
best organized citizens in the burg. a mean mug of strong beer and is overly generous
As a blood might guess, Bedlam’s just about with those who seem down on their luck, especially
turned stag on the Outlands. Hrava’s only got to those that he calls “artistes.” His rooms are clean and
spread his madness a little farther and the whole run about 1 sp per night. Better still for most travel-
place’ll slide through the gate and merge with Pande- ers is that Weylund runs a quiet house compared to
monium. some of the other taverns in town, which are overrun
by noisome barmies.
MILKIA.The government of Bedlam is too addled Folks from the Lower Planes favor the Eye and
to organize a militia, but the town’s not completely Dagger near Pandemonium Gate, run by Grist (P1/
without law. Three groups serve as bodyguards and 6tf/F5/T4/RL/NE), a cutthroat of respectable stand-
protectors of the petitioners in Bedlam. The most reli- ing. Service here’s not too quick, clean, or friendly,
able, least corrupt, and sanest of the lot are the Wind- but Grist doesn’t ask questions so long as he’s well
lancers, commanded by Erigyl Verrith (Pl/&b/F13/ paid. A fair number of intriguers, fiends, and tief- ,
TO/N). By Bedlam’s standards, Erigyl is quite sane. His lings hang out here.
only obsession is keeping the madness of the town in The last place where folks gather is The Sanato-
balance. Madness creates chaos, so the Windlancers rium, in the Citadel section of town. It’s run by Althax
are dedicated to the principles of order. They guard Darkfleece (Pl/ 0 b/P(sp)lZ/SO/CG) (Spell Spheres -
any). Darkfleece is a priestess of Shekinester (MM - bubber rattling his bone-box. 'Course it sounds true
also see page 3 4 , and she's taken it upon herself to - t h e fiends o n the o t h e r side h a v e tried often
minister to the barmies of Bedlam. The kip she runs is enough. This time, though, it is true. A band of
a mixture of asylum, spa, and boarding house. In addi- fiends - 12 gehreleths led by a minor tanar'ri captain
tion to room and board (with special guards) at 5 gp a - are planning a flanking attack on the baatezu. The
sod can also get cures for mental imbalances. scheme is to seize Bedlam and then march across the
Outlands to Baator. It's not a verv * -good ulan.
. . but the
LOCALNFWS. No matter what's really tanar'ri never were the best at plotting strategy.
happening, rherc's always rumors
in Bedlam of another inva-
sion from Pandemo- THE CAVERNS
nium. Most of the O F THOUGH+
time this is (Realm)

C'HAKAC1.1 K. Too much energy, too much thought,

the constant burn of brain-waves sizzles i n
the mind's ear. No secrets stay dark; no
thoughts, no sickness that every berk
won't know. The cursed illithid god's
realm'll rip it all right out of a
cutter, and if she's real lucky
she'll leave with an intact
mind. Hut only if she's
red lucky.

POWER. Ilscn-
sinc (MM), god of
the mind flayers,
is the sole niastcr
of this realm. The
great green brain
that is llsensine rests

' at the very heart of the

realm, with its tentacular
nerves running through the
earth, along cavern walls, and
even into distant planes. There's
no dark in this realm that Ilsen-
sine doesn't know, no movement iis
nerves don't sense. It's Ilsensine's
loathsome thought waves rhar batter
a cutter's brain while she's wander-
ing through the tunnels. It's Ilsen-
sinc who learns a berk's every secret
and stores them away.

PRINCIPAL towns
There's no towns here because .
Ilsensine's petitioners don't have minds
anymore, and those leatherheaded planars
who wander here don't keep theirs long
enough to build more than a wall. Out on the

+32+
 edge of the realm living thing. It could be that these are the god-brain’s
there’s bits of walls and some- nerves. The chant is that sods who poke at them too
times a little bed - the only hard get their brains fried in an instant. If a berk’s
remains of some poor sod’s got to go here, he’ll have to be very, very careful.
attempt to make a home here The caverns twist through each other, crossing
(probably a petitioner from the and recrossing, but all paths lead to one place. Like
Dwarven Mountain, trying to spread its glory a little the inescapable Mazes of Sigil (see page 63), no mat-
further). Whoever the little sod is that built it, he ter where a cutter goes, he always seems to end up in
might turn up sooner or later, wandering the tunnels Ilsensine’s court. Those that get that far mostly never
with his brain burnt out. come back, or if they do, a blood’d be wise to ques-
tion their wits. No being can stand before the god-
SPECIAL CONDITIONS.There’s only one condition brain for long without changing even a little.
here that matters: the brain burn. Ilsensine’s about
power, raw psychic power. Psionic waves flow with PRINCIPALNONPLAYER CHARACTERS. The only berks
such force from the god-brain that only the brainless in this realm are mindless zombies, so a cutter’s not
can ignore its power. And it don’t matter if a cutter’s going to get much from them. As zombies go, this
psychic, psionic, or whatnot; everyone can sense the group’s tough, though. They’re absolute slaves to
energy. Ilsensine’s thoughts are relentless waves Ilsensine’s will, so clerics can’t turn them and their
after waves of hatred, dark lies, perversions beyond morale’ll never break. If a cutter could find a way to
imagining, and megalomania. The thoughts insist cut off the god-brain’s psionic link, then all that’d be
that illithids are meant to rule the multiverse, to en- left would be a collection of lifeless husks.
slave the “cattle” that overrun the lands, to use them,
and to enjoy their conquest. That litany of hatred, ILSENSINE’S ZOMBIES(ALL):THACO 19; #AT 2; Dmg ld8/
barmy by any standard save an illithid’s, hammers ld8; AC 7; HD 2; hp varies; M V 6 ; SA psionics”; MR
mercilessly at a sod’s mind. At first it’s only a whis- loo/,; SZ M; INT non; AL N; ML n/a; XP 175
per, when a basher’s near the edge of the realm, but * The god-brain Ilsensine can channel all psionic abilities
farther in the whisper grows to a gnawing buzz and, through any of its zombie servants. Doing so instantly de
finally, screaming obscenities. There’s no blocking it stroys the servant as soon as the power is used.
from the mind; a blood’s just got to be strong and
endure. SERVICES. So why would a berk ever go to Ilsen-
Those that venture no more than a mile into sine’s realm? Knowledge - knowledge is power. If a
Ilsensine’s realm must save vs. petrification once per cutter can make it to the god-brain and prevail upon
day. Fail the check and the character permanently Ilsensine’s favor, he can gain the answer to a ques-
loses a point of Intelligence. Venture in more than a tion. There’s almost no place on the planes that
mile but less than five and the same check is made Ilsensine’s neurons don’t reach, and every one of
twice a day. Five to ten miles in the buzz requires a these neurons is feeding on everything it senses.
check every hour, and psionics become useless. Prob- Ilsensine remembers it all and knows more of the
ing more than ten miles into the realm calls for a dark of things - especially the things a berk never
saving throw every turn. Finally, those leatherheads wants anyone else to know - than probably a n y
barmy enough to step into Ilsensine’s court need to being out there. Need a way to get at a blood, find
make saving throws every round. When a cutter’s her weakness? The god-brain probably knows one.
lost all his Intelligence, he becomes like one of Ilsen- ’Course, how a sod prevails upon the favor of a
sine’s zombie petitioners, all will and consciousness giant brain is a question. Most likely, the seeker must
sucked dry by the god-brain. ’Course, a little brain- agree to give up part of his mind as payment, result-
shielding magic might protect a cutter, but he won’t ing in memory loss (loss of proficiencies) and/or in-
want to be caught deep in the realm when the spell sanity. It’s a steep price, but there’s always a Sensate
wears out. or a Bleaker
who T H E R E A R E two A N S W E R.S
DESCRIPTION. The Caverns of Thought are a cold thinks he +e E V E R Y question:
and heartless realm. The tunnels are black and slimy, can try it @URS,
not warm enough to be comfortable, but not so cold
as to be chilly, either. The stone’s slick with fungus
a n d give
Ilsensine
A N D the wrong one
except in those spots where it pulses warmly like a the laugh.

+33 +
 THE court of light got a fiend as an enemy, Shekinester might call it to
(Realm) her realm and let it try to even up the score. At a
branch path, she may offer a choice between un-
heroic safety and valiant peril. In another place,
CHARACTER.This realm, with its gloomy and mysteri- there may be a book promising power - for a price.
ous divisions, is the embodiment of the Rule of Another sod could be faced by two old loves, unable
Threes. There’s the Loom of the Weaver with its to progress without making a choice between them.
threads and paths, the Hall of Tests, and at the very Whatever form they take, there’s always more to
heart of it all there’s the Arching Flame. As realms the goddess’s tests than meets the eye. First, a berk’s
go, this one’s quiet, almost deadly still. got to figure out what she’s testing, then he’s got to
succeed. The price of failure’s high - oblivion more
POWER. Shekinester (MM). Sometimes known as often than not. The rewards for success are equally
the Three-Faced Queen of the Nagas, Shekinester lavish. No berk just walks to the heart of her realm,
broods within her realm, testing and guiding the at least not without earning it.
fates of her children. The goddess doesn’t go courting
strangers, planar or not. Any cutter going here had DESCRIPTION. The Court of Light’s got three clear
better have good reason, because Shekinester’ll put areas, one for each face of the Naga Queen, and
every visitor through one of her tests (see “Special they’re all nested inside of each other like a child’s
Conditions,” below). stacking dolls. The outermost layer is the Loom, a
forest of thorns and paths where dark gloom can
PRINCIPAL TOWNS. The Court of Light’s a small suddenly give way to an open clearing. Nothing
realm, not very populated by either planars or peti- goes in a straight line here, and trail markers left
tioners. It’s not that the Naga Queen doesn’t have behind mysteriously vanish or multiply. Paths inter-
worshipers, it’s just that her beliefs encourage either twine, merge, and end without meaning, so a sod
reincarnation or testing. Petitioners that don’t get can see places he’ll never be able to reach. There
reincarnated and sent back to their Prime worlds are aren’t a n y secret r o u t e s t h r o u g h i t b e c a u s e i t
given near-impossible tasks and sent to wander the changes every time. Within these woods is where a
Outlands until they complete them. This is Shekines- cutter finds most of the naga petitioners of the
ter’s way of testing a cutter’s resolve and character. realm. Some are guards and agents of Shekinester’s
Those that succeed transcend and merge with the will, while others rove, still seeking their way to the
plane, and those that fail simply aren’t worthy. heart of the forest. It’s said the only way to find a
The closest thing to a town in the realm is a way through the Loom is t o forget where you’ve
scattering of nests where some of Shekinester’s prox- been and where you hope to go. In plain words, a
ies live. Most of these are snake-folk or nagas, and DM can lead a party through the Loom, introducing
most aren’t to be trusted. It’s not that they’re particu- as many adventure elements as desired before re-
larly evil, it’s just that a cutter never knows when vealing the exit or the Hall of Tests. Mapping is
one of them’s going, to be part of a test of the Naga strictly extemporaneous.
Queen. Inside the Loom is the Hall of Tests, Shekines-
ter’s palace. It’s not a large palace, but the rooms
SPECIAL
CONDITIONS. The Naga Queen’s tests are mystically become the expectations and fears of
the special hazards of this realm. High-up as she is, those who go there. Poor sods! Imagine opening
Shekinester’s always trying the character of any some door and finding all those buried regrets re-
stranger in her land. She’s got a fascination with try- turned as dinner guests. Some rooms offer tempta-
ing to purge and improve those who come to visit tions, others visions of what a berk could be if things
her, intentionally or otherwise. The tests range from were just a little different. It gets to the
heavy-handed to subtle. The Naga Queen’s not inter- point where a body can’t tell friends from
ested in a blood’s skill with his sword or the book- visions or petitioners from planars.
learning he’s absorbed; she’s after the moral qualities
t h a t make a sod tick. She’ll give a pack of hell
hounds free reign with a berk on an open
1
field, not t o see how good he is with his
sword, but to see if he’s got the courage to
face them down - or the sense to run. If a berk’s

+ 34+
 The innermost chamber of the hall is the actual and for all make the philosophy of the Athar ab-
Court of Light, which the whole realm is named after. solute truth for everyone, and they threw him out of
Here’s the last aspect of Shekinester: the Arching the Cage. But they can’t lock the doors against him.
Flame. According to belief it’s the flame of preserva- He’ll be back . . . someday. Until then, he’ll just have
tion, the thing that keeps the multiverse going (but to bide time in this birdcage, building up power for
that tale belongs to a score of other “eternal flames,” his grand return.
all guarded by other powers on other planes). The
Flame is supposed to be the light of the dead, too, BEHINDTHE THRONE. Bitter revenge: It’s the true
and the hall’s filled with undead who feed off the en- power of Curst, the thing that makes the wheels go.
ergy of that illumination. At any rate, it doesn’t Every sod in this gate town is here because of one
cause them harm, and it seems to pacify the danger- reason: They’ve got nowhere else to go. They’ve been
ous types. The Flame’s the final test because it burns driven from power, cut off from those they once
the spirit clean. For a character who’s exposed to the thought loved them, and stripped of all their vanities
light, this means rolling a saving throw vs. death save ego. Now, the thing that makes the town work’s
with a - 1 penalty applied for each time the character the collective desire to crush those unbanished.
strayed from his chosen alignment (which the DM The saddest thing is, it’s a vain dream for them
must adjudicate). Those that pass are healed and re- all, because if they could’ve had vengeance, they
freshed, and those that fail are completely disinte- would’ve gotten it long ago. Instead, they just stay
grated. That’s the way it is with Shekinester. here, trapped by their bitterness and fear. No basher
wants to be in Curst, but many have nowhere else
PRINCIPAL NONPLAYER CHARACTERS.Shekinester’s to go.
realm is lonely and isolated. The goddess doesn’t sur-
round herself with servants and advisers, and no cut- DESCRIPTION.Curst is centered around the symbol
ter ever comes here for the conversation. Folks found of its rejection, the four-pillared arch to Carceri.
here tend to be nagas, imperious and disinterested in Made of living razorvine, the black-petaled gate
the concerns of other planars. Petitioners perform the stands at the center of the town square. The five
few household tasks needed in the realm. main streets of the city form concentric circles
around the square, and the entire town is enclosed by
SERVICES. Except for self-revelation and purging a well-maintained wall that forms the boundary of
of the spirit, a cutter’s not going to find anything of the sixth ring. Razorvine covers the inside of this
value here. Those that survive the pure light of the wall, as if to keep the inhabitants from climbing out.
Arching Flame are cleansed though - all damage is Four gates, aligned with the four posts of the arch to
healed, madness and disease cured, charms broken, Carceri, allow entrance into the city.
even crimes atoned for. And all a berk’s got to do is Each ring of Curst houses structures that serve a
survive it. separate function. The outermost ring, within the
razorvine-covered wall, holds houses, taverns, sta-
bles, and inns. The next ring in contains nothing but
CURS+ the workshops of craftsmen. In the third ring are the
(Town) houses of merchants, along with their warehouses
and stores. The fourth ring in accommodates the
homes of those with such wealth and title that they
CHARACTER. Bleak and dusty, Curst’s little more than a no longer work. Finally, around the square are clus-
collection of shanties perched on the edge of Carceri, tered the few buildings of Curst’s administration: the
where those exiled from elsewhere on the Outlands burgher’s house, the treasury, the watch barracks,
dream out their bitter lives. and the town jail.
The buildings of Curst are black and colorless,
RULER.Burgher Tovus Giljaf (Pl/~?gz/W(N)13/At/ devoid of humor or warmth. Razorvine - a minor ir-
LE) is the absolute master of Curst. Once facto1 of the ritant in Sigil - is predominant here, covering walls,
Athar, Tovus was cast out by his own followers when trees, and even creeping into streets. It’s not the most
he attempted too much. He strove for the glory of his notable feature, though. Fact is, travelers never fail
faction, but his followers were shallow and could to comment on the guard policies at the gates. Unlike
only see doom in his edicts. The ungrateful berks other towns, little effort is made to screen those who
turned stag against his bold vision, his plans to once come in. Those leaving Curst, on the other hand, are

+35+
required to state reasons for wanting to go elsewhere little presents that can be sent to enemies. Brasicol
and show proof they can make it. (Pr/&g/O/NE) has a whole list of enemies, those who
Unlike many other gates to the Lower Planes, stole his inventions and made fortunes from them.
the four-sided arch at Curst is seldom used by folks He’ll make poison-prick jewelry cases, wind-up spell
leaving Carceri. Perhaps it’s the nature of those in bombs, and other devices, all starting
the dark plane to feel trapped and unable to at j u s t 1,000 gp. Also, he’ll do
leave, and perhaps the gate is too hard to free jobs for any wizard who’ll
find. Whatever the cause, Blood War - open a gate to his old prime-
incursions here are rare and never material world long enough
expand beyond the town. rasicol to send a “gift” through.
Curst’s still fairly Although it’s a bitter cage, Curst makes good
solidly planted on the wines, probably so a bubber can flush out his sor-
Outlands, although it’s rows. The best of these is heartwine, a slightly sour
showing more and and heady drink made from razorvine. It sells for 100
more of Carceri’s gp a bottle and is prized by gourmands in Sigil. The
grim character. production process is a secret known only t o the
There’s still enough Cilenei Brothers (Pr/ d e/W8/S2/CN/, both), two elves
bodies in town who from the Prime Material Plane. Both are wizards, so
haven’t given up hope for figure the process is magical in nature. Heartwine’s
atonement and forgiveness. So long as the only useful thing ever made from the cursed
they hold out, Curst’ll remain on the Outlands. weed, short of barricades.

MILITIA. Curst is vigorously patrolled by the LOCAL NEWS. The biggest chant in the district is
Wall Watch. In addition to guarding the town walls that Baron Zarnthasker’s hit upon a new scheme for
(as the name implies), the Wall Watch mans the his return to the Prime Material, where he’ll finally
gates and keeps relative peace within the town. As avenge himself. He’s been gathering a band of mer-
noted earlier, the Wall Watch is mostly concerned cenaries and could still use a few more. He’s also
with people leaving, but it maintains careful records looking for a wizard or priest willing to open a pas-
of all comings and goings through the gates. A typ- sage back to the Prime Material - one large enough
ical Wall Watch patrol has 3d4 petitioner fighters, for himself and his band. ’Course, he’ll want the
led by a 5th-7th-level planar fighter/wizard. The spellcaster to stay on and help with the dirty work
overall commander of the watch is Baron Yurel that follows, and it’s very dirty work indeed. . . .
Zarnthaskar (Pr/ & h/F lO/Fa/LN), a deposed lord who
dreams of the day he can hang the ungrateful berks
who drove him from his prime-material fief from a T H E DWARVEN
leafless tree. mountian
(Realm)
SERVICES. With’s0 many cutters plotting their
glorious returns, Curst has always been a good mar-
ket for bashers ready to sell their swords. Most mer- CHARACTER. This is an underground world of roister-
cenaries gather at the Quartered Man, a smoky ale- ous merrymaking, belching smoke, and sweaty labor
house in the outermost ring. The owner, Abascis the - all the things that make a crusty dwarfs life com-
Sweaty (Pr/&h/T5/Du/CE), ran a fine shop in Sigil plete, carried to the excess of joy.
until he short-changed the facto1 of the Mercykillers.
Quick packing got the leatherhead out of the city be- POWER. Three dwarf powers share the Moun-
fore the guard arrived, but the Mercykillers have a tain: Vergadain, Dugmaren Brightmantle, and Du-
standing warrant for his punishment. Abascis likes to mathoin (MM, all). Vergadain’s a lord of wealth and
keep a few bravos around, just in case the hlercykill- luck, Dugmaren Brightmantle parcels out the re-
ers come to collect their warrant, so he gives swords- wards of invention and discovery, while deepest in ..
men and wizards a good price on drinks. Everyone the realm is Dumathoin, master of mines and explo-
else pays a coin or two higher than normal prices. ration. The three’ve divided the tunneled realm into
Brasicol’s, a dingy shop in the second ring from thirds, each reflecting the interests of that particular
the wall, specializes in traps and infernal devices - power.
face of the plane). Soot Hall’s best products are finely oneness with the realm. Even touching a gem with-
crafted hammers and breastplates - many magical in out permission ruins its usefulness to the petitioners,
nature - that often end up on the gaming tables of and that upsets them greatly.
Vergadain’s halls.
Deepshaft Hall plunges into the cold, dark DESCRIPTION. The dwarf realm is nothing but end-
deDths of the earth. less tunnels that weave through”
The air here halls and caverns, intersect,
A cross chasms, climb, sink, turn
into coiled staircases, and end in
” 1 plunging shafts. It’s all stone and
I

is icy and stale L brace work, every inch magnificently

with the smell of the carved, and it’s always under construction. Although
dwarves who toil here - no treat the only petitioners here are dwarves, the little sods
for the average berk. It’s “miner’s air” and it’s just the have built the cage on an immense scale, so any berk
w a y t h e dwarves like it. Aside from i t s odor, short of a hill giant could wander through most
Deepshaft’s best known for the ores and gems that places with ease. [Not that anyone other
the petitioners coax from its rock. Most of the kip than dwarves is particularly welcome,
goes straight to Soot Hall, but some of it does make though.)
the trip to Ironridge, where it’s traded for luxuries The halls nearest the surface,
from the surface world. A basher’d better have good in Vergadain’s domain, tend to
reason to come down here, because the tunnels of be brightly lit and noisy. Daz-
Deepshaft are almost as twisted as the Lady of Pain’s zling and occasionally rude
Mazes (see page 63). Strangers coming here had bet- frescoes line the walls.
ter spend some j i n k on a good guide if they ever The passages are filled
want to see the surface again. Otherwise, they just with bubbed-up dwarves
might get lost in t h e tunnels a n d end up i n the who will cheerfully
screaming caverns of Ilsensine’s realm. challenge any passing
basher to a drinking con-
SPECIAL CONDITIONS. What makes the Dwarven test. It’s not a good idea
Mountain unique is more its attitude than anything to take them up on it,
else. Every petitioner here’s a dwarf, and they don’t though, because the pe-
care much for anyone or anything. Any human, titioners here can swill
bariaur, tiefling, githzerai, or other’s going to find it a prodigious amount of
hard going. The locals see strangers as generally strong ale. Gambling of
leatherheaded sods who ain’t worth the time or trou- every type can be found
ble, and it’ll take some strong persuading to get them here: dice, cards, even Dea-
to see things differently. and-shell games are played a
Each division of the realm’s got some important without trickery. No wager’s too
laws a berk‘s got to know, too. Up in Vergadain’s layer, small or too large, as Vcrgadain’s
cross-trading at cards and dice ain’t viewed too kind- treasuries are well stocked. and the
ly. In fact, any knight caught at it is lost for sure; his proxies of the dwarf power, who run the games, can
name’ll be in the dead-book and there’s no appeal. In use these to cover any bet.
Brightmantle’s domain, a berk’d better have a trade. The second layer, Brightmantle’s domain, is
A body’s expected t o have a skill, and those that sober and earnest. The bright paintings of women,
can’t prove themselves useful get quickly booted into drinking, and amusement are gone, replaced by end-
other realms - like Ilsensine’s. Down in Dumathoin’s less bas-reliefs of work and industry. The light here is
home, a cutter’s likely to be tempted by the glory of the ruddy haze of smoky glass. Bells clang and whis-
the raw gems that can be just pulled from the earth, tles screech out the hours. The dwarves here are al-
but he keeps his hands and feelings to himself if he’s ways in motion, hurrying to their tasks, hurrying to
smart. The stones are part and parcel of the petition- their homes, hammering and singing furiously. They
ers who toil there. They’re more than just rock - work at a pace that’d make the hardiest smith heave
they’re the entire goal of existence. Each stone found and curse. Brightmantle gives his petitioners unlim-
and treasured brings a petitioner a little closer to ited endurance to labor at the forge and2melter.

+ 38
 In t h e v e r y d e p t h s of t h e realm, dressed In Vergadain’s domain, Lzuli Clearfacet is the
stonework gives way to rough-hewn mine shafts proxy that the player characters are most likely to
with runes and markers crudely chiseled into the meet. Lzuli’s an einheriar, a wispy figure of a scarred
walls. The shafts echo with a mystical monotonous dwarf warrior. He’s always accompanied by a trans-
drone - the chanting of the petitioners - punctuated lator, and it’s his duty to see that the gaming tables
by the harsh chimes of steel on stone. A cutter’s are honest and all bets are paid.
breath hangs in the air, and frost glazes the deepest
shafts. Lanterns and torches are far between, creating LZULICLEARFACET, EIN,.,.,.AR: THACO 6 ; Dmg 1d4+7
pools of light where dwarfish workers cluster. Shat- (Strength bonus, warhammer +3);AC 2; HD 15; hp
tered wall sections open onto dank passages that lead 120; MV 6 ; MR 5%; SZ M; INT high; AL N ; ML 17;
to Ilsensine’s realm; a berk can sense the humming XP 8,000
brain waves near these.
TRANSLATOR: THACO special (misses only on a 1); Dmg
PRINCIPAL NONPLAYER stun (ld12-3 mds); AC 8; HD 5 ; hp 18; MV F1 63(A);
CHARACTERS.Guides are es- SA successful hit erases all memorized spells; SD
sential to navigating the deific intervention*; SZ S; INT high; AL N; ML 19;
dwarf realm, and Iron- XP 3,000
dge’s full of them. * If the translator is attacked while serving a power, roll
The best of the ld100. On a roll of 99 or less, the power sends one aasimon
lot’s Sedus servant to aid the translator. If the roll is 00, roll again. If the
Backbreaker second roll is 99 or less, the power sends ld6 aasimons, but if
(Pl/ d d/F lo/ the roll is 00 again, the power itself comes.
Mk/LG), a
bald- In Brightmantle’s workshops and libraries, characters
beaded may need to consult the domain’s curator, Pyrus
k dwarf Chertchip (Pel 8 d/O/N). Pyrus, an easily winded old
who’ll dwarf, is a blood when it comes to locating old tomes
and answering questions on dwarf lore, but he’s not
friendly to those who follow nondwarf gods. Du-
mathion’s temtory isn’t noted for its hospitality, and
the mostly likely things characters will find here are
maruts. Ilsensine has brain-wiped a hapless peti-
tioner, Steelblade (Pel d d/O/N), and returned him to
Lady of the mines as a spy. Through Steelblade, Ilsensine can
Pain’s see and hear what happens in the mines, and the
Mazes if the power can even talk through the possessed petitioner.
pay is good Does Dumathion know what’s happened to his peti-
enough. He’s got tioner? Maybe not, or maybe the power just doesn’t
the entire under- care; Steelblade could be just another petitioner who
ground realm failed to ascend.
mapped out in his
head, a k l anything he SERVICES. A body goes to Ironridge for one rea-
doesn’t know he’ll learn from the petitioners inside. son: to get weapons and armor. The material’s got
Being the best, the blood’s expensive, and cutter’s the best dwarf magic a cutter’s going to find, and
shouldn’t figure on getting his services for less than since it’s made on the Outlands, it’s the least affected
50 gp per day. by the magic-stifling elements of the Outer Planes.
Also in Ironridge is Melias Fairherd (Pl/? b/W7/ ’Course, the dwarves don’t just set up shop and sell
S2/CG), a trader with the dwarves. She’s the best the stuff; a body’s got to earn his gear. This works
source of dwarf-smelted ores and dwarf-forged out fine for the dwarf powers because it commands a
weapons. The bariaur’s not interested in money; her steady stream of bashers, willing to do the powers’
price is always some service, like bringing back a bidding in exchange for a good hammer, axe, or
fiend’s skull to decorate a friend’s wall. breastplate.

4 39 4
 glo RI um leads out of town, near the mouth of the fjord. There,
(Town) a berk’ll find a big swirling maelstrom, an arch of
sorts. To get to Ysgard, all a cutter’s got to do is sail
his ship right down its maw. Twice a day the Water-
CHARACTER.Life’s all blood and thunder here, glory or gate (as the locals call it) reverses itself and a cutter
death. What else is a berk supposed to try for in the can then come through from the other side. Glorium’s
shadow of Ysgard, after all? Here’s a burg where a other gate is one of Yggdrasil’s roots. This path’s
cutter’s word’s his honor, and folks don’t take insults found in the mountains behind the town. There, a
lightly. cutter’ll find the arching gap of a cave mouth, and
somewhere inside the cavern is one of Yggdrasil’s
RULER.Flatnose Grim (Pl/&h/R15/FL/CG) is the plane-spanning roots. The problem is there’s lots of
chieftain of Glorium. Nicknamed for his spreading side passages, some of which lead to unpleasant
nose that’s been broken in far too many fights, places like Ilsensine’s realm or Gzemnid’s Maze.
Grim’s a short, bear-chested warrior of fiery moods. Most sods in Glorium spend their lives fishing
His strength is legendary, and he takes great sport in and hunting. Some farming gets thrown in, but it’s
showing it off by bending horseshoes, staging throw- not enough to stake a living on. They conduct only a
ing contests (with a 50-pound boulder as the ball), little business with the dwarf realm, mostly because
and wrestling with guests. His capriciousness is leg- the track leading to the mountains is too difficult to
endary, too. He might take a liking to one cutter, just traverse and carry much in the way of trade. In gen-
based on his duds, or mark another one down for a eral, the local petitioners are a proud lot, touchy
careless word. For those who are his friends, Flatnose about things like courtesy and respect. While they’re
is a staunch ally, but his enemies find it wise to leave not as battle-crazed as the bashers on Ysgard (their
town quickly. resurrection’s not a possibility), they’ll not eagerly
turn the other cheek either. Most of the time in Glo-
BEHINDTHE THRONE. Only a addle-cove’d dare hint rium, a sod gets challenged to duel until first blood is
that Flatnose Grim ain’t running things here; he drawn or unconsciousness occurs - it does make for
doesn’t care for that sort of insulting. On the other lively visits.
hand, he’ll listen to good advice, and he’s got a few Folks in Glorium know their town’s drifting
folks round who are willing to give it. First off, toward Ysgard as they pick up more and more of the
there’s his wife Kostbera (Pl/ 0 he/W7/FL/CG), though habits of that plane. Still, knowing that doesn’t seem
some bashers figure she’s a bit of a nag. Another pair to matter to them. In fact, Ysgard looks appealing to
of importance is Thoric Foolsgold (Pr/ 8g/TS/Os/NG) most of the Glorium petitioners.
and Harry Fanvalker (Pr/d ha/FG/Os/N). This unlikely
little pair showed up in Glorium one day, and they MILITIA. Every petitioner in Glorium’s part of the
won Grim’s confidence with a quick jest and a good local k i d , a militia of freemen. Flatnose Grim is the
tale. It seems they took a liking to the town and have leader, of course. When a war-horn is sounded, the
stayed ever since. hird assembles as quickly a s possible, while one
member of the hird stands in the town’s sole fortifi-
DESCRIPTION. Glorium’s nestled on the shore of a cation, a wooden tower, and watches for incoming
great fjord, with its back to the craggy peaks that lead ships on the fjord. Other than this, every man’s ex-
to the Dwarven Mountain. All told, the burg’s pretty pected to fend for himself, with the help of his neigh-
small -just a collection of longhouses, smokehouses, bors if needed. About the only times the hird is sum-
workshops, and shipsheds of the 300 or so folks that moned in full are those rare occasions when Ilsen-
live here. Glorium doesn’t bother with walls or stock- sine’s or Gzemnid’s petitioners decide to stage a raid.
ades, as nature forms a natural defense in the walls of
the fjord. There’s only one road out, a rough track SERVICES.Planars from Glorium are pretty eager
that leads into the mountains. That trail crosses gla- to go out and make a name for themselves, so a cut-
ciers and skirts cliffs to get to a back door of the ter can usually pick up a willing hireling or hench-
dwarf realm, and it doesn’t see much traffic. The only man here. Most of the lot are fighters, though it’s
other way into Glorium is by sailing a ship up a little- possible to persuade some youthful cleric of the
known tributary of the River Oceanus. Norse gods to come along. There’s a small temple to
Glorium’s gate situation is a bit more unusual Odin and the Noms on the edge of town, and a blood
than most. First off, it’s got two. The best known one might get the local godi (priest) to give aid in the
d

c
 THE P A L A C E But the Palace isn’ta town, which is something a
of judgement basher shouldn’t forget. A cutter can’t wander the
(Realm) streets at will or go down t o the market and buy
something. Anybody coming here’s going to get a
factotum,an official guide and guard. Factotum’s are
CHARACTER.Surrounded by foreign barbarians, the usually matched to the importance and power of the
Palace of Judgment is the first stop of the truly civi- visitor. A go-zu oni’s a typical factotum. More impor-
lized. There is no hate here, no sympathy, only judg- tant visitors get assigned go-zu-oni or men-shen
ment. guides. Other guardians found at other places in the
palace include foo creatures, spirit centipedes, pan
POWER. Yen-Wang-Yeh (LL), Illustrious Magis- lung, shen lung, t’ien lung, and stone spirits. [All these
trate of the Dead, is the sole ruling power here. Those creatures are described in the Kara-Tur MONSTROUS
hoping t o see him are almost invariably disap- COMPENDIUM^ Appendix. If this appendix is not avail-
pointed, because he’s protected by ranks of lesser bu- able, the following substitutes are suggested: go-zu
reaucrats under his command. oni - rakshasa; men-shen - ogre mage; foo creatures
- ki-rin; spirit centipede - intelligent megalo-cen-
PRINCIPAL TOWNS. The Palace of Judgment’s a tipede; pan lung, shen lung, t’ien lung - naga; stone
burg pretty much in itself. The realm’s not big, but spirit - stone guardian.) A factotum’s job is to keep
within its walls is everything a cutter’d expect to find visitors out of danger and out of places they’re not
in a good-sized town. ’Course, the Palace isn’t open supposed to see.
to everybody, so there’s a little colony just outside Most folks coming to the Palace of Judgment
the main gate. Not really a town - not really named are newly arrived petitioners. There’s a steady stream
- it’s most often called the “Place of Waiting.” How- of them appearing on the road just outside the gate.
ever, it does have a few inns of differing quality, a Flanked by Yen-Wang-Yeh’s bashers, the dazed ar-
pair of restaurants in competition with each other, rivals get herded through the Iron Gate and sent off
and both day (goods and produce) and night [food to one of the Thousand Greeting Halls. There, some
stalls and entertainment) markets. low-ranked proxy passes judgment on the petitioner.
Then both petitioner and judgment get passed on to a
SPECIAL CONDITIONS.What makes the Palace dif- clerk, who enters it all in the scrolls. In another
ferent from, say, Sigil is the way it’s run. Nothing chamber, another scribe makes a placard that gets
happens on a whim here. The Palace is a huge bu- hung round the petitioner’s neck, listing the sod’s
reaucracy, so every request, audience, hearing, or pe- virtues and vices along with his assigned plane. From
tition must be cleared through ranks of sodding offi- there, the palace guards sort everybody out and head
cials before anything happens. Worse still, these them off to the proper waiting hall. Each of these
petty bureaucrats are sticklers for courtesy and eti- halls contains a conduit to a different realm of the
quette. Problem is, their definition of proper behavior Celestial Bureaucracy, and a representative or two
doesn’t match that of most cutters on the planes. from that plane. Thus, the Palace’s also got a few
There’s a lot of bowing, reverential respect, and not fiends, einheriar, aasimons, and even modrons wan-
doing much of anything else. Impatient berks usually dering about. While they’re in the Palace, they won’t
manage to do something rude and get themselves break the peace that holds everything in place - at
snubbed by the officials of the court. least not overtly.
There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes action to all
DESCRIPTION.The Palace of Judgment’s a small this. If there’s 1,000 greeting halls, there’s probably
name for a place as big as this. It ain’t really a palace 5,000 clerks who need rooms to work and sleep in.
proper; it’s more like a small, fortified city. Sure Then there’s quarters for visiting proxies from other
there’s a palace, but there’s also walls, gates, prome- powers, infinite libraries to hold the scrolls recording
nades, courtyards, gardens, granaries, libraries, tow- each petitioner’s fate, and much more. The Palace is
ers, kitchens, stables, residences, storehouses, and constantly in a bustle, with proxies and planars es-
workshops - all the features of a proper burg. The corting petitioners to and fro and occasional proces-
whole thing is built of red brick, carved stone, and sions arriving or leaving. Music, chatter, moans, and
wood. The roofs are covered with half-moon glazed screams mingle in the air.
tiles. Everything here’s refined and artistically done, Once a year, there’s a slight change in the rou-
even the smallest and meanest of buildings. tine. That’s when Yen-Wang-Yeh leaves to appear
 BEAt I + , BERK! Even the general is beyond the reach of most
T H E R E ’ S A B R A C E of H A R D H E A D S characters. It’s more likely they’ll deal with a lesser
c o m i n g sthis WAY, A N D official, perhaps someone like the Secretary of the
A N Y BUBBERS b o b b i n g f o r Third Rank, Pao (Px/&h/P(sp)/Be/N)(Spell Spheres -
IlNK’LL BE SCRAGGED. major: All, Necromantic, Protection; minor: Divina-

- SLIG ‘+HE CHEAPS+ER’

BtNHIS D A I L Y R U N
before
the Celestial
tion, Summoning), a priest of Yen-Wang-Yeh (LL).
Pao spends his days entering the judgments of the
lesser magistrates into the Scrolls of Destiny, noting
through the H I V E Emperor and who goes to what plane and who is reincarnated. Pao
report on the accepts his work a s part of t h e great scheme of
previous year. Without him around, his proxies get things, hoping to become a high-up man through
careless, lazy, confused, and overwhelmed. Mistakes diligent effort. He’ll industriously apply himself to
are invariably made, some as simple as a petitioner any task assigned by his superiors, which could be
wandering around unprocessed or a body getting as- useful to a band of adventurers.
signed to the completely wrong plane.
There’s no ambition to expand the Palace realm SLeVICES. Second only to Sigil, the Palace of
currently. That decision’s up to the Celestial Emperor, Judgment’s got more gates concentrated in one place
and he’s content with keeping things the way they than any other burg. Better still, the gates here are
are. one of the few places that are officially “neutral” ter-
ritory. Because any disruption of the Judge of the
PRINCIPAL NONPLAYER CHARACTERS. The Palace is Dead’s work would bring down most all the powers
full of cutters to talk to and deal with, from lowly of the Chinese pantheon (good, evil, lawful, neutral,
clerks to high-up proxies. Short of Yen-Wang-Yeh, and chaotic), fiends and aasimons are forced to coex-
himself, the most important berk here’s the Chamber- ist here without fighting. Nobody tries t o sneak
lain of the Interior Palace, General Pien, a men-shen. armies through the gates to seize the Palace. It’s not
He’s an honest being, although he seldom says di- uncommon for negotiators of the powers to meet
rectly what he thinks. That’s more a matter of proper here, particularly for exchanges between tanar’ri and
behavior than deceit, though - it’s impolite to criti- baatezu in the Blood War.
cize or directly refuse another being, after all. Gen- A cutter could use these gates to hop around
eral Pien is utterly loyal, vigilant, and unwavering in from plane to plane quickly and safely - ifpermis-
his duties. sion was granted. Yen-Wang-Yeh’s not likely to be so
generous, though. Any blood hoping to use them
GENERAT. PIEN,MEN-SHEN: THACO 11 (+4 with sword); better have a real compelling reason.
#AT 2 ; Dmg ld8+4 (x2); AC -2; HD 10; hp 60; MV Another “service” of the Palace comes from all
12, F1 12(A); SA continual 30’-radius ESP (negates the petitioners passing through. Sometimes a sod’s
possibility of surprise within that area), invisibility past life isn’t completely forgotten. There’s a chance
(per improved invisibility), astral at will, polymorph that a cutter, needing some information, can find
self twice/day, fierce countenance*; SD immune to w h a t he needs a m o n g t h e t h o u s a n d s w h o pass
fear, charm, and hold, half damage from all spells; through the gates. It’s a chance, but only a slim one
SZ L; INT very; AL N; ML 15; XP 4,000 at best.
* The men-shen’s fierce countenance acts as an apparition
spell (+1bonus to surprise, and creatures of 1 HD or less must
successfully save vs. spells or flee for Id3 rounds).
 blood may be shed by unspoken agreement between
the town’s power players.
The gate to the Abyss is the leftmost of three
arches leading into the Arch-Lector’s residence at the
CHARACTER.Plague-Mort’s a festering boil always center of town. It leads to the Plain of Infinite Por-
threatening to burst, a place overripe with treachery. tals. Enough of the Abyssal stench of death and be-
In fact, the town has been pulled bodily into the trayal bleeds over to affect magic in Plague-Mort. All
Abyss on numerous occasions, though a new town necromancy spells function at maximum effective-
of the same name always promptly arises on the ness within its walls, and saving throws against their
same site. Nothing lasts, and death lurks behind effects are made with a -3 penalty.
every corner.
. The Plague-Mort militia is simply an ex-
RULER. Plague-Mort is ruled by a cutter called tension or the Arch-Lector’s bodyguards, a group of
the Arch-Lector, currently Byrri Yarmoril (Pl/ 8 tf/ rowdy tieflings, alu-fiends, and cambions who take
PlG/Mk/CE). The Arch-Lector is always a militiaman what they want and damn the fool who tries to stop
who ousted his predecessor through strength or cun- them. The militiamen are called the Hounds, and like
ning, and Byrri is more paranoid than most about a all good hounds they’re fawning, servile, and totally
successor rising from the ranks. His dungeons are full loyal to their master - until they sense weakness, at
of real and imagined traitors and spies. He angrily which time the leader of the Hounds tears down the
questions anyone suspicious, and he routinely at- Arch-Lector and tries to take his place. Some say the
tempts to weed out the strongest members of the phrase “turn stag” (to betray) comes from Plague-
town militia to forestall a coup. Some say he’s slowly Mort, but others claim it’s just used more often there
losing his grip and a bloodbath is sure to follow. than most places. The Hounds sleep either on the
floor of the Lector’s residence or in the tavern where
BEHINDTHE THRONE. In fact, the Arch-Lector an- they spent the night carousing.
swers to the Abyss, and woe to him should he should The Hounds are both judge and jury in Plague-
fail to deliver more land across the shifting borders! Mort. Anyone they catch or dislike is usually dis-
The tanar’ri are not patient, yet the Arch-Lector de- membered on the streets, on the spot. The Hounds
pends on their forbearance. It’s said that the only routinely thrash suspicious characters or anyone
ruler who ever failed to deliver a boundary shift and foolish enough to insult them without even realizing
lived to say so is the Lady of Pain, herself, who is it, and sometimes they’ll just pick out some poor sod
whispered to have once have held the title of Arch- to beat up on general principle. Plague-Mort has no
Lectress. Others say, “Bar that! The story’s just a way jail or courts (no one ever leaves the Arch-L,ector’s
of bringing attention to a desperate town.” ’Course, dungeons). Failed usurpers and the Arch-Lector’s
no one has dared ask the Lady the truth of it. personal foes are always taken before the Arch-Lec-
tor; everyone else is meat for the Hounds.
DESCRIPTION. Plague-Mort is a gray set of ruins,
ill-kept hovels, and open sewers huddled around the SERVICES. Unlike the Abyss, Plague-Mort has a
grand and gilded spires of the Arch-Lector’s resi- very tolerant attitude toward merchants. As long as
dence. Its streets are ridden with grime and disease, they bribe the right berks and are loose with their
and the air is usually filled with late-autumn chill jink in the taverns, everyone loves a trader. ’Course
and the sound of hacking coughs. Little grows here, no one likes a miser, but merchants rarely leave
and what does is feeding on the life’s blood of some- Plague-Mort with much of their profits still in their
thing best kept dark. Weeds, bloodthorns, and viper pockets. Barter is popular in town, and indentured
vines are the most common forms of vegetation. servitude is encouraged. The trade in town also sup-
The best part of town is Merchant’s Row, an old ports other vices, some of them in the streets and al-
street that maintains a set of glittering facades. Street leys, others hidden in the summoning chambers and
stalls and small shops sell dubious goods and suspect smoky thieves’ dens of the tieflings who seem to run
meats. A blood should keep a sharp eye out for mili- the burg. Quite a few of Plague-Mort’s petitioners
tiamen practicing a bit of the cross-trade. The weap- want to leave, but they fear being run down by the
ons sold in the Row are of very high quality, and Hounds unless they have a patron. Plague-Mort’s full
most prices are lower than usual. Merchant’s Row is of rogues and rowdies that make good henchmen, as
always crowded because it’s a safe haven where no long as they’re kept in check with a firm hand.

+ 45+
 The best inn for bloodsuckers, freebooters, mer- RIBCAGE
cenaries, and mad mages is The Eye of the Dragon, a (Town)
smoke-filled chamber of vipers that serves watered
wine, burnt soup, and stale bread. The owner is White
Scar (Pr/&drow/F12/MlO/BC/CE), a silent, brooding CHARACTER.Upward mobility - climb the ladder
elf who collects ears (he’s missing one of his own, through the ranks, but don’t break the rules unless
though he won’t tell why). Scar doesn’t listen to any- you won’t get caught. Or better yet, fix the blame on
one rattling their bone-box without his calculating someone else. That’s the way the world really runs,
gaze shifting to the sides of their heads. The prices at but in this burg just outside Baator there’s no illusion
his place are cheap, and no one complains about the that life is any other way.
food.
Bloods who like their skins should avoid The . Lord Quentill Paracs (P1/&tf/F 13/W 151
Golden Griffon, which the Hounds have claimed as At/LE), Baron of the Great Pass, Guardian of the
their own. They don’t appreciate visitors. Gate, and Lord of Ribcage rules the burg, and every
The best food available on Merchant’s Row is law that’s passed is loudly done in his name. Paracs
Sweet Larissa‘s Sausages, a butcher shop known for makes sure the militia remains loyal to him, holds
sweet, rich meats and a number of secret recipes. the key to the treasury, and sees that rising stars on
Horse and dog meat are often proposed as the secrets the Council owe him for their continued success. He’s
of her success, but Larissa will grin enigmatically at master of the town because he’s master of the politics
the suggestion of other, “secret ingredients” (but as it takes to rule.
every sods knows, those that like sausage shouldn’t
be present a t t h e making of it - especially this BEHINDT H E THRONE. Nobody challenges Lord
sausage). Larissa (PI/ 0 h/T9/Fa/CE) stands behind her Paracs’s right t o rule, although nearly everyone
chopping block with that knowing smile and sells her would like to. Doing so, however, requires money,
wares to anyone with the jink. troops, and the vote of the Council. The Council of
Plague-Mort is also home to a shop called The the City consists of five senators, one for each ward
Poisoner’s Phial, where Laran Susspurus (Pl/ d tf/T12/ of the town. They propose and vote on all ordi-
Dg/NE) dispenses medications, poisons, acids, and nances, approve Lord Paracs’s taxing and spending
venoms. Laran sells antidotes as well, some magical policies, and monitor his dealings with foreign pow-
and others mundane. The cost is twice that of the ers. Theoretically, the council can override the Baron,
toxin they neutralize. but in truth Lord Paracs always makes sure that at
least three senators remain on the council at his say-
LOCALNEWS. Recently, a pack of mercenary so. Given that, even a bariaur basher can tell which
primes calling themselves the Illuminated has shown way the wind will blow: in whatever direction Paracs
up in Plague-Mort, harassing the town’s petitioners points.
and taking The Bell and Whistle Tavern a s their Here’s the chant. Nobody’s elected here. Sure, a
meeting place. Thei! leader is a brash young man senator’s supposedly picked as a free choice, but
named Green Marvent (Pr/&h/Wll/Os/CE), a cruel everyone knows the whole thing’s a peel. Pure fact is
mage who dresses all in green silks and satins. His the powerful families do the actual choosing. Most of
followers have painted a green eye in a pyramid over the time this means Paracs’s choice is approved, but
the shingle of the Bell and Whistle. Marvent de- even he’s got to make concessions sometimes, and he
mands instant obedience from petitioners, tieflings, don’t always win. There’s a lot of hidden deals, gar-
and tanar’ri alike. Those who hesitate are reduced to nishing, and other things less honest going on be-
ashes or magically ensnared to become members of hind the scenes, but it’s all still done “according to
the Illuminated. Everyone in town is bracing for the the law.”
war between the Hounds and the newcomers, though The strongest opposition to Lord Paracs is the
no one knows who will triumph, the Clueless being a Ivlium family. They’re the high-up men among the
bit unpredictable. If the Illuminated prevail and porters and carters of the town, and on their say-so
claim the Arch-Lectorship, Green Marvent will be the everything could grind to a halt - no deliveries, no
first Outsider to take the rulership in generations. food shipments, nothing would happen. For now
they’re cozy with Paracs, b u t only because he’s
bought them off with several offices. It’s a sure bet
they’ll be wanting more power, and pretty soon it’s

+46 +
all going to come to a head. Both sides know it, too, treasury. A gate to Baator’s there, too, though a cut-
and they’re getting things in order for that day. ter wouldn’t call it part of the Citadel. It’s in its own
walled-off section that can be reached only thor-
DESCRIPTION. Ribcage’s a good-sized city with ough the Citadel. In fact, the whole place is walled
over 5,000 bodies in it, all squeezed into the narrow and towered to separate it from the rest of the city.
Vale of the Spine. Mountains tower and curve over it In the
like rib bones, giving the place its name. There’s pre- shado
cious little greenery inside or outside, giving the of
place the color of cold stone. It’s walled, towered,
and citadeled with enough guards and watchmen to
protect any other dust-up twice the size. Offcials’ll
tell a berk it’s to protect the city from attack, but
as a cutter walks down the street and feels
dozens of eyes watching him from ever
shadow, he can pretty well see it’s not the
outside they’re keeping tabs on.
Actually, Ribcage doesn’t look like
such a terrible burg to live in. The
streets are paved with stone and are
fairly clean, the layout’s orderly,
and most of the houses are well
tended, if a little dour. The bod-
ies hung from the gibbets over
the main gate serve as notice
to the criminal element, so a
bubber’s not likely to get
thumped in an alley. In
general, folks speak well
of their neighbors.
It all looks pretty good
until a basher notices the
soldiers lounging at nearly
every comer, and learns
that the transgression of
some of those executed
“criminals” was only that
they protested the living
conditions a little too
loudly. The dark of it is
that folks live in fear and
hatred of their neigh-
bors, because the sod who
expresses himself a bit too
liberally may be asked to ex-
plain his point of view to
Paracs’s guards, even though
he wasn’t talking to them in
the first place.
Ribcage’s divided into the
Citadel and five city wards. The
Citadel’s the home of Lord Paracs.
It’s also the site of the armory, the
bodyguard barracks, and the city
the Citadel‘s walls is the
Senate and the other
city buildings not
claimed by Paracs. That
way, nobody forgets who’s really in charge.
The five wards of the city aren’t divided ac-
cording to a pattern, they’re just the blocks that each
influential family could grab. They’re like fiefs in
some of those medieval prime-material worlds. If it
weren’t for Lord Paracs, they’d have divided the city
with walls long ago. As it is there’s unofficial check-
points where a cutter gets looked over by the bashers
of this family or that.
Most of the houses a _ I ---_
here are made of stone
carved from the Vale
of the Spine. The ma-
jority of them are two d
stories high, with a
single entrance that’
leads to an inner court-
yard. The amount of decora-
tion on the entrance shows the
wealth and power of the owner.
In the outer wards, the homes
are smaller and cheaper, and
sometimes they’re just wooden
shacks.
W i l e the high-ups do
well for themselves, the com-
mon folk of Ribcage suffer. L o d
Paracs’s household guard pa- 3 s
trols the streets, ready to deal
with any “troublemakers.”
are oppressive and there’s
garnish to be paid. The quiet
goes that it’s an “assurance”
accidents - don’t p a i and a sod
sured of an accident. The ci
are designed to keep the five
in power and everybody e
’Course, the rulers have to
too much law and the ci
popular revolt. As it is,
times small riots that ar
brutally crushed.

Most of them are cri

ing free, so a cutter’s got to be careful of
knights who’ll lure him into debt, just to call
it in. “Borrow money, borrow chains,” goes
w-
the old line.
Still, most folks in Ribcage struggle t o live
happy and well, and they do so mostly by getting a
powerful friend. Commoners get ahead by getting a
senatorial ally. Bribes, favors, and flattery all flow
freely here.
Being so close to the Cursed Gate, a cutter’d
think Ribcage was in danger of drifting into Baator.
That might be, but not with Lord Paracs’s help. He FO/LE), a priestess of
hates and fears domination by the baatezu as much Sung Chiang (LL). An ordinary bath
as any good-hearted man would. It’d mean a loss of costs 100 gp, and healing baths can cost 1,000 gp or
his power, and he’s not about to sit for that! There’s more. The healing baths are magical in nature, able
often agents of Baator in town, but they have short to cure any disease of the skin. Those customers an-
lives when Paracs’s guards find them. gering Shandrala are sent to a special spring where
the water’s filled with toxic minerals, causing 3d10
MILITIA.There’s only one militia in Ribcage: the points of damage per round of immersion, but a body
household guard of Baron Paracs. The guards are won’t notice the bum for ld4 rounds because of the
easy to spot, lounging on nearly every street in their soothing temperature.
black and gold livery. Most folks fear them because Ribcage’s also the best place to look for guides
the Blackguard (as they’re called) has pretty much to Baator. A berk who’s barmy enough to want to go
unlimited powers. They can arrest anybody for any there can either try for an official visit or he can slip
cause they care to invent. in unannounced. Ribcage’s got guides who handle
The best way to stay out of Paracs’s dungeons is both. Official visits require a written pass, which is a
to keep the Blackguard happy - with payoffs, favors, warrant of safe passage, from one of the Lords of the
or information. Such deeds are semi-secret, as a Nine. The a d v a n t a g e of t h i s method is t h a t t h e
Blackguardsman’s only concern is being charged baatezu’ll not harm a berk carrying such a warrant -
with corruption by a n enemy. A typical patrol is usually. However, getting that sheet requires: 1) a
made up of two troopers (Pl/var/Fl-3/var/LE), while sound reason for going (by baatezu standards), 2)
a raid’ll have six guards led by an officer (Pl/tf/F/ knowing the right fiends to contact, and 3) lots of
W6-8/var/LE). jink to gamish the right palms. There’s folks in Rib-
While Paracs has the only official army, every cage who’ll help in this (for a good fee, or course).
senatorial family and most of the wealthy merchants The smoothest of the lot is Barius Sharpsplinter (Pl/
hire bodyguards to protect their lives and properties. d tf/B8/SZ/NE),a quick-tongued and satirical poet
These groups are no better than the Blackguards, ex- who somehow has managed to not lose his head yet.
torting and muscling the commoners. There’s also Sneaking into Baator requires a whole different
standing mercenary companies that’ll fight alongside set of skills. The best man for the job in this case is
the Blackguards in times of trouble. ’Course, every Surefoot, a bariaur (Pl/db/Rll/FL/NG). The ranger’s
high-up man’s careful not to let himself get either got no love of the fiends next door, and he’ll take
too weak or too powerful. Either’d attract the atten- any job with good pay and a reasonable chance of
tion of his enemies. hurting them.

SERVICES.Ribcage’s not noted for its cheer, but LOCALNEWS.Although things seem quiet on the
the town does sport a number of excellent hot baths surface, rumors are spreading that Baron Paracs is
just outside of town. These are built over volcanic about to be challenged by Senator Fiquesh’s fac-
springs that bubble up through cracks in the tion. Certainly the Senator’s guards have been
stone slopes. The best run of these is The more active in the last few weeks, while
Gymnasium of I
r“ Baron Paracs has been courting sev-
eral of the lesser
factions in town.
The sword is

49 +
supposed to strike at the Grand Ball of the Masquer- xaos axos sxoa
ade, three weeks from now.
Proxies of the baatezu are gathering in the third
oasx xsoa etc
(Town)
ward and are said to be looking for a small black
statuette. Extraordinary sums are promised for its re-
turn. but it’s hard to trust such agents in these things. CHARACTER.This kip’s like weeds floating on a @
pond. Fire boiling from the earth. Red, green, purple,
black-)-rainbows falling from the sky. It’s day, it’s
night, it’s both, it’s neither, it’s Limbo - not. makes
no !! sense that town is a This.

RULER.Every Tkeorin G l i m -
flicker /Pel& kelOIN1 bodv A s t u c
xantin (P1/? gz/W9/RL/CN) in Mnall
(a slaad proxy) Xaos Oblesk (Pe/0/
bekolder/N) is Harmon Yars (Pe/&k/
O/N) in Andrea Lister (PI/? k/R7/BC/CG)
charge Rantask (a quasit) sooner Drewton the
x Hanged (Pe/&g/O/N) or Tomuas Biuellton

BEHINDTHE THRONE. Anarchy

5 chaos IIS clutter confusion disar-
ray disjunction disorder formlessness
jumble muddle tumult Ei’ Xaos.

DESCRIPTION. Every day, every second,

things could be different. Those with strong
will impose their own order on the town. The
weak-willed eat with frantic speed, before
their soup changes to lead. What’s life like in
a town where a cutter could change in a
glance? Marriage bonds vanish, allies and en-
emies can no longer recognize each other.
Every day, every minute, the bodies of soXa
have to create their world all over again. Who
does one hate? Who does one trust? A stream
of water becomes molten fire, then shifts to a
fish-filled river. Little streams of pure Chaos
leak from the gate. Houses are built where
people want them and damn all others. Streets
cross each other at random. There’s no social con-
tract, no pretending to all fit together. The whole
mass spreads out like a writhing mass of spaghetti
dropped on the floor. Somewhere in the tangles is the
gate to Limbo, but its location is never the same. It
washes over the town, warping distance and mean-
ing, sense and matter. Wherever it sits, the gate radi-
ates out the raw energy of Chaos. Today it’s at the
edge of town, tomorrow jammed like a broken knife
in the heart. It’s a town without order, ready to slip
away any day. Forward, never straight.
 militia Live free and die. The life or death of an- The chance to tap the true power of existence.
other is of no concern. The life or death of the town is The chance to sleep in daylight. Strong drink at any
of no concern. It’s the right of every citizen to reject hour. Freedom from the chains of patterns, release
the iron chains of order. This is a concept that implies from the endless where to be and when to be.
order and organization. Therefore, it’s the right of
every citizen to reject the iron chains of order. LOCALNEWS. They’re 1111 building a wall of chaos
stuff, and when they’re done, 0 nobody’ll be able to
SERVICES.The finest in spontaneous art is at the come or go. -\/aoXs will be theirs. They slip through
sometimes open (often closed) studio of Sylestra after nightfall, carrying a little more chaos stuff with
Quellen (Pl/ 0 tf/B8/Xa/NG). Kurach, a transmuting them. There’s things in your dreams that’ll hurt
metal used in making magical items, is smelted from you. I didn’t sleep well last night. Slaad are building
the chaos stuff that leaks through the ever-changing a 6 wall down near the gate in the dark.
gate to Limbo. Only the most dedicated of smiths can The weather’s (?) nice today
force the stuff to remain stable, so the smelters and
workshom of these craftsmen are usuallv
uncha
to visi

E
Some poets write raptures about the glories of their metropo-
lis, sing praises about the sunset over the rooftops, and grow
lyrical to the gentle clatter of their city’s life - but no one
sings that way about Sigil. The Cage’s a gray, wet,
dirty place, full of noise and brawling, slippery
stone and razorvine. Oh, there’s native poets and
they write about their home, but not about its
glowing sunsets or walks through sweet-scented
parks. They write about the
things that shouldn’t be seen
of dying beasts, or about the decay that cleanses the bones
if the city.
Hey, Sigil’s a long way from being a stinking
lit - don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s not a
grand and majestic place. It’s far better than Mal-
bolge or Khin-Olin on the Lower Planes. It’s got
more life than the patrolled city-states of Arcadia.
Sigil’s filled with the life only a truly neutral haven
can offer.
 And that’s just the point: Everybody comes to S I G I L ’ S portals
Sigil - the good and the evil, those warring and
those at peace, the just and the cruel - everybody. Like it’s been said before, Sigil’s the City ofDoors, the
Nobody forgets their loves or hatreds here, but for a seam through space where a thousand pathways ca-
few moments they barely manage to set them aside. ress and couple before plunging back into the planes.
A deva really might share a drink with a fiend, even The right gate keys and the right doors unlock the
if each is watching the other for signs of treachery. mysteries of her form and reveal to a cutter all the
Nobody trusts their enemies, but all are forced to possibilities Sigil’s got to offer. Pass through a door
trust the laws of the Lady of Pain (see page 62). properly and a basher’s enfolded in the brilliant glory
Maybe it’s a lie, though, that everyone comes to of Mount Celestia, but use her the wrong way and a
Sigil, because there’s one important group that can’t: herk’ll plunge into the icy clutches of Baator, or worse.
the deific powers of the planes. There’s something The only truth is this: Step through a keyed por-
about Sigil that shuts them out, locks the doors, and tal and a cutter’ll end up somewhere. (Whether he
keeps them away. ’Course, the gods aren’t used to hav- likes the destination or not’s another matter - Sigil
ing their powers denied, and that frustrates them to no opens her doors to those with the key, hut she don’t
end. Indeed, the mere fact that Sigil refuses their will promise a warm embrace.)
makes them hunger for it all the more. Any Sensate’ll Pure fact is there’s only one way in or out of
confirm that desire is greatest for that which is denied. Sigil, and that’s through the portals that link it to
That’s why the powers’ proxies and priests come everywhere. Sigil can’t be entered by a gate spell,
to the City of Doors, instructed and eager to subvert and although a berk can reach the Outlands through
Sigil’s resistance from the inside. In the Cage’s back the Astral Plane, Sigil itself is shielded, so tricks like
alleys and shadowed dives, they play out the endless the astral spell don’t work. The Cage can’t be entered
pairings of the kriegstanz, the undeclared war for the or spied upon by astral travelers, either. At the same
soul of Sigil. There’s more players in this game than time, Sigil’s not completely cut off from the Astral
a sod can count, and the sides shift like quicksilver Plane. Spells requiring an astral connection (like
on glass. Today, the priests of Thor may throw in raise dead) still work; it’s only the actual passing or
with the facto1 of the Godsmen to defeat the agents viewing that’s obstructed.
of Primus; tomorrow, those priests might find them- In Sigil, all portals anchor themselves on doors,
selves hunted by the factols of the Godsmen and the arches, or openings of some type. Suitable apertures
Harmonium. The sides flow like slippery beads, one include windows, arches, sewer entrances, even
to another, as the balance changes ever so slightly. wardrobes and chests - pretty much anything a cut-
It’s never a n open war, though, because the ter can step through might be a portal. They’re al-
Lady’d never allow it. Rather, it’s a dance where the ways big enough for a normal being to fit through,
soldiers are in mufti, the battlegrounds are un- even though he might have to duck or worm through
marked, and the victorious never hold up their tri- the opening to do it.
umphs for all to see. So long as the battle is fought Most randomly occurring, non-permanent por-
discreetly, it’s tolerated. Let it get out of hand and the tals to other planes are doors in deserted back alleys
Lady has special punishments, reserved for those in the worst parts of town, or at least it seems like
berks who draw her gaze. they’re always in the worst parts of town. That’s be-
Because there’s a rough peace here, Sigil’s the cause there’s a spell, surelock (see page 93). that can
place to do all types of business. Need to meet with shield areas from portals. High-up folks got the jink
the enemy, but can’t find safe ground? Need to swap to pay for these, keeping their cases and neighbor-
hostages from the Blood War? Got a treasure too sus- hoods free of portals - and safe from intruders -
picious to sell on the open market? Need some infor- while poor folks don’t. (The biggest concentration of
mation about the enemy? Come to Sigil! Just remem- portals has got to be in the Hive, probably the worst
ber to always keep your back to the wall. of the worst parts of town.) If a cutter’s looking for a
So that’s it: Sigil the Wondrous, Sigil the Dan- permanent portal to a specific plane, he might check
gerous, Sigil the Impossible. It’s a city where a cutter out the area near the faction headquarters whose pri-
can be anything he wants, where he can find the an- mary plane of influence is the one he wants - most .
swer to every need. All it takes is asking the right factions maintain or guard a fixed door to their fa-
questions. ’Course, a berks better off not asking if he vorite universe.
can’t deal with the answers, because sometimes what Every blood knows a true seeing spell’s a means
a sod wants to know ain’t what he learns. . . . to look at a thing and know it’s a portal - the only
time a detect magic spell can reveal one is when it’s portal TYPES
actually working. Short of wandering the streets with
a true seeing spell in operation, though, the special There’s three kinds of portals - permanent, tempo-
spell warp sense (see page 94) is the best means of rary, and shifting - but whatever the type, a cutter’s
finding a portal. Warp sense’s got an advantage over got to have a gate key before the portal’ll do any-
true seeing, too, since it gives some idea of where the thing. Without the key, a portal’s nothing more than
other end’s going to be. Most of the factions can a doorway into a tavern, an arch over a street, or a
teach a wizard the way of this spell, provided he’s in manhole to the sewers. Given that the DM’s got com-
good standing with his factol. plete control over the portals, it’s up to him to use
Portals are two-way deals. Step through one way them right, but the three different kinds provide the
and a cutter can step back the other, ifhe’s still got DM with the tools to tackle nearly all the situations
the gate key to open the door. This means that folks that can occur in a PLANESCAPE campaign.
can get into the Cage as easy as they can leave, so
there’s no guarantee that running for the safety of PERMANENT portals are the most straightforward.
Sigil’s going to keep a sod safe from his enemies. Both ends - the opening in Sigil and the receiving
’Course, the Lady of Pain can always shut doors to end on another plane - don’t change. Every time a
folks as she pleases, but most often this means that
portals don’t work for any of the powers. Some- .

a cutter can always wish him-

self to another plane. (This isn’t
advised, since wishes have a bad
habit of dumping a sod at just the
place he don’t want to be on that
plane.) Also, nobody can choose
where a portal leads to, either to which
plane or to where in that plane. A
body can map portals, keeping track of
what leads to where, and that infor-
mation’s valuable, but he’s got to re-
spect the whims of the multiverse
when it comes to using them. Portals an
things created and used by the DM alone.
*
S U R E I’Vf got tern of their own. A shifting
A KEY tothis gate portal might cling to the arched
If’s RIGHt there I N your HAND entrance of the Hive for three days, then
- mickee
*
move to a grated outflow of the sewers for
shafghammer
a week, before settling on the gate t o a
of the fated petty merchant’s house for a day. After this it
would repeat the cycle all over again. Outside the
Cage, a portal might appear outside Malbolge on
Baator for three days, then jump to Arcadia for an-
other week, and then return to Baator, to run the se-
cutter steps quence all over again. There are as few or as many
through, he knows just points in the sequence, each lasting as long or as lit-
where he’s going to end up. DMs should be careful tle as the DM chooses.
about making permanent portals until he’s sure he In Sigil, bloods with an ear for the chant’ll keep
wants that accessway to always be there. Permanent elaborate logs of every appearance, every shift. For
portals are best used to short-cut unnecessary travel- some portals the pattern’s easy, a few changes over a
ing to relatively safe or mundane locations. A per- few days. For others the pattern’s like a code that’s
manent portal might pop the characters to Ribcage never broken. A sod can see it’s there, but he can’t
every time, or land them in a field on Elysium, not read the message.
far from a small keep they’ve built. It’s not a good Shifting portals are useful for particular types of
idea to make a permanent portal to the seventh layer adventures. First, they’re grand for placing time pres-
of Baator or right to the heart of Lolth’s palace on sure on the player characters: Knowing they’ve got
the Abyss, berk. to complete their adventure before the doorway to
home vanishes has a way of making cutters tense.
TEMPORARY portals appear, get used once or Shifting portals can also be used for adventures that
twice, and then disappear. That means the DM can span several planes. A blood can step through to the
create a quick way to get to any place where he or Gray Waste, pop back to Sigil for a moment, wait for
she wants the player characters to adventure and the portal to shift, then step through to the new des-
then close it down when they’re done and back in tination, and so forth. Finally, a shifting portal can
Sigil. A temporary portal’s handy for that one-shot make for a nasty surprise if a berk uses one to go to
adventure the DM’s got planned. There’s little cam- Carceri and then discovers there’s no easy way home
paign time wasted just getting the characters to the because his gateway’s gone. A DM should only use
starting point of the action, and once everything’s all the last trick very rarely, as he or she doesn’t want to
done, the DM can make going back an easy or a dif- make the players skittish of using portals at all.
ficult thing.
This type of portal is the one to use when the
DM wants to send the player characters to the seventh GALEE KEYS
layer of Baator or to the courtyard of Lolth’s palace.
Once the characters have completed the job, the por- Getting a portal to work needs a gate key, which is
tal vanishes. It’s a good portal to use for forays to rich always a thing that’s carried through the opening.
treasure houses and castles of powerful fiends - The business of picking gate keys is left to the DM,
places the DM wants to use as an adventure setting, although a few words of advice can’t be escaped. The
but doesn’t want the characters coming back to. best keys are things that are neither common nor
rare, but j u s t uncommon. If the key’s a common
SHIFTING portals are the most wicked of the lot, thing, then the portal’ll be opening all sorts of times
because just when a berk gets to thinking he can de- when the DM doesn’t want it to. If the key’s a sword,
pend on them, they change. Sometimes it’s the Sigil for instance, every fighter who steps through is going
end that shifts, moving from doorway to doorway in to take an unexpected trip. On the other hand, if the
the city, and sometimes it’s the other end, out on the key’s too rare, the portal might become impossible to
planes, that moves. There’s only one thing constant use. The DM doesn’t want to leave the characters
about them: The portals don’t shift randomly - hopelessly trapped on some distant plane just be-
that’d make them no different from a temporary por- cause they had the bad luck to lose their irreplace-
tal. Instead, they move from point to point in a pat- able gate key.
 A good key should also have some connection
the destination. Remember, this game is about
mood. Suppose the DM decides a plant’s the gate
key - getting to the gloomy Gray Waste may
require a purple-black flower, and opening a
passage to Baator may beg a sprig of razor-
vine, while reaching Elysium could call for a
pure white lily. Each one echoes the atmo-
sphere of the destination.
The easiest way for player characters to learn
the gate key needed for a particular portal is
often the same way they find the location of the
portal: by asking their faction. ’Course, some-
mes the DM won’t want it to be so easy, so the
ion won’t always have the knowing of it. The
required can also be another entry in the intri-
cate charts of those who map the portals. A warp
sense spell gives a clue toward what key’s needed,
as does a contact higher plane or legend lore spell.
Furthermore, there’s shops in Sigil, like Tivvurn’s
Antiquities, that do nothing but sell items needed
for gate keys. Need a pearl to get to the Elemental
ne of Water? They’ve got one for a price. (Like
good businesses, they’re in it to make a profit.)
once a cutter gets a key, things are pretty well
, because the key for a portal never seems to

Armed with the right gate key, a body can

ake any portal work. He j u s t carries the item
s the threshold and the portal automatically
s to life. It only stays open for a few seconds,
t long enough for up to six folks to step through,
rovided they’re ready. The archway flashes with
olden dazzles, and whatever’s at the other end
be seen as a ghostly image. Those stepping
ough vanish from Sigil as they cross the thresh-
old, appearing at their destination in the same in-
stant. Missiles, spells, and spell-like effects can’t
pass through the portal. Things that’re partway
through a portal when it closes are pushed out to
ne side or the other, usually to the side they’re
ostly in. If the DM can’t decide, the chance is

While anyone can leave Sigil with a portal,

re’s no promise that just anyone can enter. As
ntioned, powers of all types are blocked. Fur-
thermore, the city sometimes seals itself to ultra-
powerful creatures. This means the DM can keep
out any creature that’s just going to cause havoc-,
ith the player character base in Sigil. ’Course, the
M shouldn’t have to use this blocking power
ore than a few times. He certainly doesn’t want
s player characters getting the idea they can run
for cover in Sigil every time they tell some fiend If a DM’s got to describe the place with words,
where to pike it! the closest prime-material analogy is an auto tire.
Aside from the portals, Sigil’s physically cut off Imagine a tire - no hubcap or wheel rim - lying on
from the rest of the multiverse. Astral and other its side. Sigil would be built on the inside of the tire.
plane-hopping spells just don’t open into the place. All the streets and buildings would fill the curved in-
The Guvners guess that being at the heart of the Out- terior. Meanwhile, on the outside there’s nothing, see?
lands creates some kind of astral barrier around the One thing this means for describing the place is
Cage. Seeing as there’s no other answer, that sounds that, no matter where a cutter stands, if he looks up
pretty reasonable to most folks who care about such he’s going to see buildings overhead. Most of the time
things. The important thing to remember is that por- a basher’s looking across the center of the ring, so
tals and portals alone are the only way to enter and he’ll see a broad panorama of the city in the distance
exit SigiZ. (unless, of course, it’s obscured by smoke, smog, fog,
or rain). Locals get used to having the gray arc con-
stantly hovering overhead; in fact, the open sky of a
normal world sometimes unnerves them.
Another important thing to remember when de-
scribing Sigil is that the city’s curved in the opposite
Get it right out front: Sigil’s an impossible place, es- direction from most prime-material worlds. On those
pecially to primes who go barmy when 2 + 2 don’t worlds, there’s a horizon because the surface has a
make 4. A city built on the inside of a tire that hovers convex curve, and a cutter can only see what lies
over the top of a gods-know-how-tall spike, which along a straight line of sight. In Sigil, things curve
rises from a universe shaped like a giant pancake. . . up, not down. Looking down a long avenue, it’ll
it happens all the time, right? ’Course not, but who seem like the street’s rising in front of a body, kind of
cares? Being impossible is part of what makes it fun! like looking up a long hill. Just to make it more con-
For those logical-minded players, impossibility fusing, Sigil curves both in front of and behind that
creates all sorts of questions. There’s all sorts of sod on the street, so he might feel like he’s standing
things they could ask, like, “Does Sigil have a night at the bottom of a big hollow nearly all the time. The
and day?,” “Can a berk walk on the outside of the Cage’s a flaming big city, though, and it’s crowded
place?,” “Where’s it get its water from?,” and even, tall with people, buildings, and smog. The average
“What happens if a cutter jumps off the edge?” Most line of sight is rarely more than a few hundred feet
DMs never, ever, worry about such things because unless a body’s looking straight up, so it’s not like a
they know it just ain’t that important, but some of berk’s constantly looking at the curve of a bowl all
the Clueless are so touchy about the dark of it all that around him. It might be a few hours before the aver-
they’ll go barmy just looking around, so here’s the age prime, new in town, realizes that the world ain’t
chant. flat.

D E S C R I B I N G SIGII, UP A N D down
Looking at the map of Sigil, a cutter can see the “Down” is always the ground beneath a cutter’s feet,
place isn’t shaped like any other, and that can make no matter where he’s standing on the ring. Up is the
it hard to describe in play. (Fact is, it wasn’t easy other direction. It doesn’t take much to realize that
drawing the place, either.) The easiest thing to do for two hashers on opposite sides of the ring could both
the player characters is to display pictures of the look “up” at each other. Flying across the ring’s per-
__
Cage. The map’s not supposed to be a secret thing- fectly possible, and so is falling. A berk
I _

- &en one of the Clueless can quickly always falls toward the section of
learn the lay of Sigil’s major
streets. - Sigil closest to him, even if he
was headed in another

F
direction to start with. Although the shapes are dif- chimneys. When it rains - which it does a lot - the
ferent, the whole business is really no different than rainwater’s got a brownish tinge from all the crud
falling on any Prime world: A sod falls, he gets hurt. that’s scrubbed from the sky. When it’s not raining,
Along with “up and down” is the question of there’s an equally good chance that a thick, foglike
“inside and outside.” It’s quite a question, too. No- smog bas settled over the city. Visibility can be as
body’s ever seen the outside of Sigil because there bad as only 5 feet in the worst of these, but most
may not even be an “outside.” The edges of the ring times a cutter can see about 10 yards through the
are all solidly lined by buildings with no windows or haze.
doors on their backs. ’Course, a cutter could get him- When it isn’t drizzling brown water or swaddled
self up on the roof to take a look. Those that’ve tried in fog, Sigil can be a pretty pleasant place. The tem-
it’ll tell a body, “There’s nothing to see,” and they re- perature tends to be cool (chilly when it’s raining),
ally do mean “nothing” - not emptiness, not a vac- and light breezes blow away the stagnant odor that
uum, just nothing. That matches what flyers say lies normally hangs in the air. Still, no cutter ever comes
beyond the ring: nothingness. to Sigil for the climate.
Humans being a particularly curious type, it’s
natural that some of the barmies have tried stepping
off into the nothingness. Everybody who does so just RAZoRVINE A N D
vanishes. It’s said that a few are seen again, too. Ap- SLEREELE VERIIIIN
parently, crossing that border hurls a sod into a ran-
dom plane. Considering the conditions of some of Sigil’s a far cry from a lush wilderness, but it does
these destinations, it’s no surprise that only a few have its share of wildlife, all brought in from else-
make it back. ’Course, when the horde of Dark Eight where. Plant life’s pretty slim, though. There used to
assassins is about to make a Sigilian lost, the choice be a city park, but it’s mostly overrun by squatters.
between sure death and a wild gamble don’t look so Besides, the landscaping for both devas and fiends
bad.. . . just wasn’t harmonizing at all. The only lasting con-
tribution to the flora of Sigil is razorvine - not most
berks’ idea of a blessing. Razorvine’s a hazard and a
D A Y A N D NIGHLE pretty nasty one at that, but since it can’t get up and
chase a sod around, it’s easy for most t o avoid.
There’s day and night in Sigil, but it’s not caused by (That’s why there’s no monster description for it.)
a sun. Instead, the sky gradually fills with lumines- Razorvine’s got no special powers or intelligence, it
cence until it reaches a peak and then immediately doesn’t harbor evil thoughts, and it couldn’t lure
begins to fade. There’s both bright daylight and deep even the dimmest leatherhead into its leaves. About
darkness, but most of Sigil’s day is a half-light, the the only thing it does is grow, but it does that very
gloom of twilight, rich with shadows and haze. well. Plain said, razorvine’s the kudzu of the Outer
Things sensitive to sunlight can get around without Planes. It used to just grow on the Lower Planes,
problem for all but the brightest six hours of every where it fit in, but over time it’s spread into all sorts
day (the three before and after peak). of places, like Sigil.
Sigil doesn’t have a moon or stars, so things de- Razorvine got its name because that’s what it is:
pendent on the moon, like some types of shapechang- a twining climber whose lush, glossy black leaves
ing, don’t happen in Sigil. The Cage’s without stars, conceal blade-sharp stems. A cutter can’t touch it
of course, but there’s still lights in the sky. Remem- with his bare hands without getting slashed. Once
ber, the city’s always overhead, so even in the dark- more, the razor edges are so fine, they’ll slice through
est hours there’ll be the sharp lights of far distant cloth and cheap leather, too. Properly cured
lanterns. leather or something like a chain mail
mitt’s the only safe way to pick the
cursed weed. Anybody
really
weather I rl
Rain and smog - that pretty much says
everything about Sigil’s weather. The city’s
sky is mostly a greasy-looking haze from the
smoke and fumes that belch from a thousand

+ 59 +
 wanting~-to grow the nature, but another quirk of the vine is that it goes
stuffs going to suffer for dull and brittle when it’s cut. Dead razorvine’s good
their folly at the least. for nothing but kindling. A sod can’t carve it, weave
In practical terms, razorvine’s harm- it, or build with it. ’Course, the Cilenei Brothers make
less unless a berk’s daft enough to step into it. Most heartwine from the weed in Curst, but that’s a recipe
folks aren’t, so most of the time a sod gets cut be- no one else knows the dark of (see page 36).
cause he falls or gets pushed into the weed. Just The vine’s not the only wild creature t o be
reaching in with an unprotected hand or arm causes found in Sigil, but the rest of the lot are much more
2d3 points of damage. Falling into it full-body can unpleasant. Rats thrive in the dark alleys, garbage
inflict up to 3d6 points of damage. Quilted armor re- heaps, and the sewers of Sigil. Most of these are the
duces the damage by 1 die. Leather armor reduces it common rat, found everywhere that humans go, but
by 2 dice and metal armor negates the damage alto- a few are of a perverted species known as the cra-
gether, but shields don’t do a bit of good. ’Course, all nium rat (see the Monstrous Supplement
this has got to be applied with some common sense. included in this boxed
A cutter can’t claim he’ll be unhurt when he grabs set). These miscegen
the vine bare-handed, just because he’s wearing plate tions are cunning
mail.
Razorvine wouldn’t be more than an oddity ex-
cept for the fact that the cursed stuff grows so fast. It
can easily spread a foot per day, and some bloods
catchers who
work Sigil’s
‘I ’
claim they’ve measured its spread at up to six feet in streets.
a single day! Furthermore, it seems to grow all over
everything. It’ll climb walls, encrust statues, choke
other plants, even run along a clothesline that’s been
left up too long (usually slashing it in the process).
About the only places it doesn’t seem to grow are
frozen wastes, burning deserts, and open water. Then
again, it wouldn’t surprise most bashers if there were
versions for all those places, too - razor-seaweed,
maybe.
The folks of Sigil, always able to turn misery
into a virtue, have found some uses for the weed. If a
cutter can plant and control the vines carefully -
a n d m a n y high-up men pay others to do this -
razorvine makes for fine protection. Not m a n y
thieves are willing t o climb a wall covered with
razorvine. A lot of the faction headquarters are cov-
ered with the stuff, all to keep unwanted visitors out.
Some of the folks hailing from the lower reaches r ‘4
grow a patch for its persuasive properties - a sort of
talk-or-we’ll-throw-you-into-the-vine-patch ap-
proach - and the threat’s very effective. It’s even m-
mored there’s a few back-door gladiator games in the
Hive, where combatants are pitted against in each
other in a ring grown from razorvine. Two naked
bodies fighting in a ring of that stuff guarantees that
I
blood’ll be drawn.
The main reason the weed hasn’t overrun the There’s were-
city is the dabus (see the Monstrous Supplement in- rats, too, with the au-
cluded in this boxed set). One of the main tasks of dacity to believe that someday
these creatures is cutting back the previous day’s they’ll control the Cage from beneath the strekts. .
growth, which is then sold off in bundles to fuel the Their miserable squeaking existences are a testament
city’s fires. This seems impractical given razorvine’s to hope for the dimmest of creatures. Most of the
 other “natural” life in Sigil’s just vermin. Roaches materials through. The result is that Sigil’s built of
and rot grubs burrow through the garbage heaps, everything. It’s not like some towns that’re noted for
mice scuttle through storehouses, and bats roost be- their black-green marble or the brilliant blond of their
neath the eaves. There’s not much in the way of pi- ash-wood lumber. Sigil’s got every kind of building
geons or birds, and although there’s a few packs of material imaginable and in no particular order, and
wild dogs in the Hive, that’s not to say they’re native it’s all made worse because scavenging’s really im-
creatures. Most of the beasts a cutter’s going to find portant; to keep down costs, most folks go out and
here were brought in from somewhere else. use what’s already here. Most cases in the Cage get
built with whatever a cutter can get, and if that
means mixing cracked marble from Carceri with Ely-
BU I j,D I N G mateR I A L S sium glory pine and pumice stone from the Elemental
Plane of Fire, then that’s the way it’s got to be.
Being an impossible place, Sigil’s got no natural re- Add to this the fact that Sigil’s completely un-
sources for all the things that’re needed to build a planned, like a good city always is, and the result is
chaos-construction. Folks build more or less how
they please on tracts that are too small and hinky. In
places like the Hive there’s even less control; there, a
berk builds wherever he can with whatever he’s got,
which ain’t much. For some this means building out
and into the street. For others, it’s building ram-
shackle shanties on the roofs of other houses. Space
is more important than beauty, berk.

K E E P I N G the P E A C E
In a place where almost anything and everything can
mingle, tempers can run high. It’s a tough bit for a
lesser baatezu to stand aside, just to let the proces-
sion of a greater tanar’ri pass down the street - a
fiend don’t forget the way of the Blood War so easily.
‘Course, it’s no easier for good creatures, either.
. There’s lots of times an agathion can’t see past the
fact that a berk just ain’t good-aligned. Then there’s
the factions. Each one’s got its own plans, and most
times those plans don’t include any rivals. Add to all
this the good old-fashioned cross-trade and the
Cage’s got all the potential t o be total anarchy.
. That’d suit the Revolutionary League and probably
the Xaositects well, but it don’t do other sods much
good:’
Sigil isn’t anarchy, though, and there’s a num-
ber of things that keep it from the brink. The DM
should sketch these out to the players, along with the
do’: and don’ts of Sigil, but onli if their characters
bare planars. The dark of things in Sigil’s pretty com-
mon knowledge to the natives, but the Clueless are
just going to have to learn by keeping their eyes and

Here’s what keeps the order in the City of Doors:

the Lady of Pain, her Mazes, and the dabus.
, 5. thing comes from outside. ’Course,.that’s not as hard
.as it sounds, siqce all it takes is a portal to import raw

+61+
 THe L A D Y Q F P A I N

would-be conquerors.
 cue. After all, they only have to find where the portal
opens in Sigil or else track down the demiplane in
The Mazes are the grandest of all Sigil’s punish- the Deep Ethereal. How hard can that be?
ments, and the Lady of Pain saves them for the worst
threats to her power. They’re a part and yet not a part
of the city, and no sane basher wants to go there. The T H F dabus
Mazes are the Lady’s special birdcages for the would-
be power mongers of Sigil. The dabus are both servants a n d lords of Sigil.
The Mazes are just that: mazes. There’s a differ- They’re unique to the Cage, never found anywhere
ence between them and some of the more confused else in the planes. In other words, the dabus never
sections of the Cage, of course, or they’d not be much leave Sigil. From this, bloods figure the dabus are ac-
of a punishment. For starters, they aren’t exactly part tually living manifestations of the city, which makes
of Sigil. When the Lady creates a new part of the sense since the beings maintain most of the infra-
Mazes, a small piece of the city - an alley or a court- structure that makes the city work.
yard, for example - copies itself and becomes a tiny Most of the time the dabus are found repairing
little demiplane. A portal of her making then carries what’s broken in Sigil. They keep the sewers and cat-
the copy into the heart of the Deep Ethereal. There, it acombs beneath the streets from crumbling, they cut
grows into an endless twisting maze that’s got no be- back the razorvine when it grows too rampant, they
ginning or end. It just doubles hack forever on itself. patch the cobblestone streets, and they repair the
(Actually, the Guvners insist that the Mazes are still crumbling facades of the city’s buildings. To most,
part of Sigil, even though they’re in the Ethereal, so the dabus are nothing more than cryptic workmen.
even their location is a mind-maze.) However, some berks discover another side of
A sod sentenced to the Mazes never knows it their duties, because the dabus also work as agents of
until it’s too late. Sometimes they form around him the Lady of Pain. Sometimes they appear to punish
just as he’s passing through some particularly de- those knights who’ve gotten too forward in their
serted part of the city; he turns a corner and the next plans, and sometimes they arrive in force to put
intersection’s not the way he remembers it, and by down riots, but they’re not concerned with normal
that time it’s too late. Those that figure the Lady’s crime. It’s the factions that are left to deal with the
after them - the ambitious and the cunning - try thieves and murderers in Sigil. The dabus only show
clever ways to avoid her traps. Some of them never up when there’s a threat to their Lady, and that’s usu-
leave their palaces so they never enter a blind alley, ally a sign that another one of the Mazes is about to
and others only travel with groups so they’re never appear.
caught alone, but it never works. A basher walks
down an empty hall in his house, only to discover a
maze of rooms that didn’t exist before. And sooner T H E code ofco
or later a berk turns his back to his friends, and when
he looks back they’re all gone. The Mazes’ll always So what’s a blood got to do to avoid the Lady’s at-
get a sod, no matter how careful he is. tention? What are the laws of Sigil?
Just spitting her rivals into the Deep Ethereal’s There aren’t many.
not enough for the Lady of Pain, either. Each little Sigil’s a place where anyone and anything can
chunk of the Mazes that’s kicked out is sealed one- happen, and a lot of it does. The Lady of Pain’s not
way from planar travel - things can get in with a interested in the petty squabbles of day-to-day af-
spell, but things can’t get back out. For instance, fairs. A murder here, a mugging there - that’s not
food and water always appear so the prisoner won’t her concern because the Harmonium can take care of
starve. But worst of all, those in the Mazes know it. The Lady of Pain only takes action against threats
there’s a way out, as the Lady of Pain always leaves a to the security of Sigil, and that means her security.
single portal back to Sigil hidden somewhere. Maybe The things she won’t tolerate include a berk trying to
it’s so the dabus can check on things if needed, and break open the portals so a power can enter, finding
maybe it’s just to torture the sod who’s trapped there. a way around her astral barrier, slaughtering the
’Course, since that portal’s there, it’s not impos- dabus, tearing the city down stone by stone, or incit-
sible to escape the Mazes - hard, yes, but not impos- ing general rebellion against her rule. These aren’t
sible. Maybe a berk gets lucky and finds the portal. the deeds most bashers are likely to try, so most often
Maybe his friends have got the jink to mount a res- the Lady just exists in her peaceful fierceness.

4 634
 It is possible to get put in her dead-
book for less than Sigil-shattering deeds,
though. All a berk’s got to do is make
the folks of Sigil question the Lady’s
power. Too many killings or crimes’ll
make the folks of Sigil nervous and fear-
ful, and they’ll start wondering if she’s
got the means to protect them. Given
that, it’s no surprise t h a t the dabus
start looking real hard for the crimi-
nal. Lasting power comes from keeping
the population happy.
It’d seem natural that the factions
would always be threatening the Lady’s
power, too. After all, each one’s got their
own idea of just what’s proper and right for
Sigil, and these are ideas that don’t always
include the Lady of Pain at the top of things.
Fact is, if they go too far she’ll crack them
like beetles. Now, t h e f a c t o l s a r e wise
enough to see that Sigil’s a safe haven from
their enemies, besides being the best way to
get around, and no faction wants to get it-
self spun out of Sigil. Philosophies who
foolishly challenge the Lady’s power get
Mazes all their own. Given the choice of
not holding a given idea or winding
up in the Mazes, it’s easy to see why
some philosophies have died off. The
most often told tale’s about the Com-
munals, sods who held that everything be-
longed t o everyone, including the Lady’s
share of the power. One day, everyone i n t h e
Communal headquarters (the City Provisioner’s)
vanished. The best guess is they were all trapped
into one Maze in the Ethereal Plane. Pretty quick,
no cutter admitted being a Communal, but it’s said
there’s still a small colony of true believers out on
the Astral somewhere.
Given that example, it’s no surprise the factions
police their own.

THE roles of + H E
factions I N S I G I L
For the factions, the best way to stay in the Lady’s
good graces is to run part of the city. This is some-
thing most factions try to do, though some are more
- .--.
.
I .
‘-1
.-it
successful than others. A Guvner believes in laws,
so it’s a lot easier for him to work the courts than,
-. say, an Anarchist, who doesn’t believe in the system
at all.
 Now, no faction fully trusts another, no matter T H E doomguard
how noble or trustworthy their goals might seem,
and everybody wants a play in the game. That’s why This faction controls the City Armory, and with good
the city offices are so divided. The Doomguard reason: As far as they can see, there’s no better sym-
doesn’t want the Harmonium to have the final say, bol of decay than weapons of destruction and death.
and the Guvners and the Xaositects both have dif- It makes sense, too, because by controlling the Ar-
ferent ideas about what’s good for Sigil. The solu- mory they’re also keeping the tools of order out of
tion, then, is for every faction to have a role. Some the hands of their rivals in the Harmonium. ’Course,
are official, like the Guvners’ control of the courts. no other faction’s going to let these bloods police the
Others, like the Anarchists’ refuge for the unfit, fill a city, anyway - a gang devoted to entropy ain’t ex-
needed hut unrecognized role in the city’s life. Each actly going to promote law and order.
of these parts is defined below. Only the Outsiders
are left out; the poor Clueless have no real role in
Sigil’s life. T H E dustmen
The Dead have a job that suits them well, and one
T H E A+HAR that nobody else is keen on anyway. In the Mortuary,
they’re the ones who dispose of Sigil’s deceased. The
Depending upon who a body asks, the Lost are either Cage doesn’t have space for graveyards or crypts, so
loyal supporters of the Lady or vile spies. They’ve got the bodies of her citizens get dispatched to other
no official position in Sigil, but they figure it’s their planes. These portals lead directly to mortuaries and
job to watch the doings of the various priests in the other places of death on each plane, and those on the
city. Anytime some yapping cleric starts to become other side are expecting nothing but dead bodies to
too powerful, the Athar’ll act. Sometimes they spread come through, so those cutters who somehow man-
rumors to bring the priest down a bit, other times age to sneak through any of these doors are in for a
they strike more directly. In an odd way, the Athar nasty bit when they pass through. The Dustmen han- -
and Godsmen often work together. dle all this work, a n d for the most part nobody
minds. Then again, there’s always the suspicion that
the faction’s keeping a few back and reviving them
for its own purposes. . . .

Like the Athar, the Godsmen don’t have authorized

jobs in the government. From the Great Foundry,
they take it upon themselves to be the peace keepers
of Sigil. After all, everyone could become divine, and
it would be a shame to put a potential power in the
dead-book before it reaches its destiny. They consider
their sacred duty to keep the peace between warring T H E fated
faiths (and they’ll use swords to do it if they must).
At least until a sod proves to a Godsman that he’s no The Takers handle the most hated and needed task in
power in the making, he can expect a fair shake from the city: They control the Hall of Records - a vital
the believers. piece of city administration. They record property
deeds, births, and deaths (when some sod bothers to
notify them). This isn’t what makes them hated
T H E B L E A K CABAL though. They’re also the tax collectors, a job nobody
thanks them for. With their “I got it, you don’t” atti-
For a group with such a miserable outlook on life, tude, the Takers are perfect for the job. Now, having
the Bleakers are the most charitable faction in Sigil. all this jink could be trouble for the other factions, so
These cutters have taken it upon themselves to run they all keep the balance by trying to pay as little as ,
an almshouse for the sick and insane. Not that it’s a possible. If things get too bad, any faction can al-
great place - the Bleakers have some pretty strange ways appeal to the Guvners - their control of the
ideas about treatment - but at least a sod can get a courts gives them the means t o keep the Fated’s
hot meal and a bed from them. greed under control, and the rest paying their taxes.
 The Guvners are a natural to act as judges and advo- The Red Death has a job which it performs with rel-
cates. They believe in laws and don’t like breaking ish: punishment. Now, the Mercykillers’d much prefer
them. The Guvners run the city courts, from the to hunt down, try, and punish criminals themselves,
small ward courts to the High Court of the city. They but that’s not something the other factions are too
also make the best advocates for pleading cases, so keen on. The faction is too rigid in its views, and
either way their faction tends to win, which keeps it telling a Mercykiller to pike it is just not an option.
fair. Their absolute belief in Law makes them chill- Still, they’re well suited to the task of running the
ingly legalistic. Still, the Xaositects and Harmonium Prison and carrying out sentences. After all, what
are both happy the Guvners don’t get the power to happens to a criminal who’s been arrested, tried, and
create laws, only enforce them. sentenced is only just, and who better to administer
justice than the Mercykillers?

THE FREE LEAGUE

THE revolutionary LEAGUE
Buying and selling is what keeps Sigil alive, and the
Indeps are there to make sure there’s always good trade The Anarchists don’t have an official role and aren’t
in the city’s markets. Their job’s not official, but these even organized enough to have an unofficial one.
cutters still make sure that every small merchant’s get- Still, their belief in pulling down the system does have
ting a fair chance. They don’t like the high-up guilds a twisted virtue in the works of the city: They’re a
fixing prices, strangling competition, peeling their haven for those who don’t - indeed, can’t - fit into
partners, or hiring bashers to beat up rivals. Since they the plan. Anarchists are proud of the fact their kind
don’t have an official rank, the Indeps use criers, ru- can be found anywhere, lurking in the streets as harm-
mors, and “friendly advice” to keep the markets more- less-seeming clerks or wand-wielding wizards lending
or-less honest. If they must, they’ll bring a case to the a hand to loners in trouble. These bloods keep Sigil
Guvnes, but they don’t like relying on others. alive and trying, or at least that’s how they see it.

THE harmonium
The Hardheads, always sure their’s is the only way,
I B E RI N G aF + H E A NARC H I s+s
have muscled themselves into control of the City Bar-
racks, which means the City Watch is theirs. Members
of the faction take it upon themselves to arrest those
they think are breaking the laws. Their hard-liner view
of order means they’re pretty eager to crush crime, but
THE S I G N of one
their laws and Sigil’s laws don’t always match, so they The Signers’ confidence that each berk’s the center of
often arrest people who aren’t really acting illegally. his own universe makes them probably the only folks
Fortunately, a sod arrested by the Harmonium’s tried who can actually govern Sigil . . . as much as the
by the Guvners, who are strict about what’s legal and Cage can be governed. They run the Hall of Speakers,
what’s not. With the Doomguard controlling the Ar- where the high-ups meet to make the laws of the city,
mory, the real tools to run Sigil the Hardhead way are and they settle feuds, handle treaties, and do all the
kept out of the Harmonium’s hands. That suits every- other legislative things that keep Sigil running.
body but them just fine. ’Course, the Signers aren’t the only ones on the
Council - every faction and power bloc’s got repre-
PIKE I+, BERK! sentatives - but the Signers are the only ones who
I’m thor’s proxy can preside over the sessions. Knowing every cutter’s
ANDYoUR LAWS the center of things, the Signers make sure t h a t
don’t A P P L Y +e m E everyone gets their say, and that’s the only way to

- LAS+ WeRDS
heiden toa
OF
mercykiller
franok
keep the sessions meeting. Other factions may not
like the Signers, but they respect the faction’s ability
to keep city business on the table.
 T H E society of sensation what makes Sigil alive and constantly changing. Per-
versely, their attempts to tear everything down is
The Sensates don’t have an official role either, but part of what keeps the city constantly building.
every blood knows the city’d go mad without them.
In their endless quest to experience everything, the
Sensates make sure that there’s plenty entertain-
ments and diversions flowing through Sigil. Here’s
the dark that makes it important: What basher wants
to be around when a lesser baatezu gets bored? Sound
bad? Now multiply that disaster by tanar’ri, modron,
tiefling, prime, bariaur, djinni, yugolotb, and more.
Thanks to the Sensates, there should be something, J

somewhere in Sigil, that’ll suit every taste. Pleasure

is the balm that keeps Sigil from fevered rage.

THE TRANSCENDENt
The most universally accepted of all the
the Ciphers are natural advisers. They
want the perfect union of thought
and action, and they embody the
qualities that other factions lack.
To the Guvners, the Ciphers are
the compassion missing from
the coldly legalistic courts. To
the Harmonium they try to
lend tolerance, to the
Mercykillers they preach
order, for the Xaositects
thev’re the voice of stability,
and so on. Their advice
usually gets ignored, and
some basher’ll take a poke at a
Cipher for his troubles, but
that’s the play of things and -
they’re ready to deal with it. ~

T H E xaositects
Chaosmen have no claim, no stake in
the city. Too capricious for ruling, too
uncontrolled to judge others, too free
to follow orders, the Xaositects, from .
their hole at the center of the Hive, are the
voices of the dispossessed. They don’t just -
represent those poor sods who don’t have any-
thing - the Chaosmen become them. Security, .
warmth, sustenance, none of these things matter.
The Chaosmen lurk on the edges of order, eager to
pull down the case that’s just been built. Along with -
the Anarchists, these wild addle-coves are part of
 mAKING AND for the right jink. There’s respectable and shady, too,
S P E N D I N G money and a cutter’s got to be careful of what he buys. After
all, there’s a lot of cross-trading knights out there,
A city can’t survive unless it has things a body waiting to bob and peel with false goods any basher
wants. Some places, like Ironridge (see page 37), have they can.
gold, gems, and ore. Others, like Xaos (page 50), are With all the merchants to serve the travelers,
homes to famous artists. Curst (page 35) draws mer- other folks have set up shop here, too. Wizards in
cenaries and Ribcage (page 46) only creates pain, but particular find Sigil’s a good place to practice their
every burg has something to offer. trade. A lot of swag that’s interesting to them, magi-
Sigil’s no different in that respect. The Cage has cal and nonmagical, passes through the Cage. Then
got its specialties, along with its secrets. ‘Course, there’s mercenaries of all stripes, who come because
Sigil’s not like every other town out there, either. For the merchants need bodyguards, bill collectors, and
one thing, it’s got no natural resources, unless a sod damn fools willing to risk their necks bringing hack
counts razorvine. Nobody comes to Sigil for its min- a hordling’s tusk. These folks breed more needs and
erals, lumber, or produce. All these things come from services in turn, until the whole thing starts feeding
elsewhere. The city’s constantly importing even the on itself.
most basic commodities: meat, grain, vegetables, Sigil’s got another unique property to offer folks
fruit, wood, iron, and stone. To do that, Sigil’s got to from other planes besides its portals, and that’s its
have something to sell. location for making magic. Swords, armor, and the
Not surprisingly, it’s the portals that keep the like that’re made in Sigil lose fewer of their magical
Cage from starvation. Sure, a cutter’s free to travel bonuses than things made on most other planes. A
through them without the slightest bit of garnish, sword made here loses only one plus out on the
but those portals go everywhere, and that means Great Ring. Compare that to a perfect blade from
eve ywhere passes through the City of Doors sooner Mechanus - on most other planes it’ll lose at least
or later. Sigil’s the one place that reaches the entire two pluses. About the only other plane that’s any
multiverse. Not only do bodies of all stripes pass better for making magic is the Astral, but that’s over-
through the streets - chasing business, pleasure, and run by githyanki. . . .
adventure - but goods from everywhere go along Sigil does a fair trade in the forging and selling
for the ride. Looking for a job or a good time, or of magical items, but that doesn’t mean there’s magic
both? Looking for bronzewood from Oerth? Need shops on every corner, hawking rows of potions,
fire wine from Toril? Want the feathers of a phoenix? scrolls, and blades. Instead, there’s a fair number of
Sure a cutter could wander out on the Great Ring “collectors” who’ll have a small shelf of minor magic
and beyond, but it’s a lot easier to pass through Sigil made by craftsmen in the city. A cutter should be
first. warned, though, that prices are high - he’ll usually
So, the first business in Sigil is putting up the spend no less than 5,000 gp for each basic plus of a
travelers. In another world and time it might be weapon. That cutter best not hope to find anything
called tourism, but here it’s just accommodating the really amazing either; weapons that good just don’t
travelers - and what an assortment they are! It’s not get put up for sale.
just a matter of having the best inn - a landlord’s When it comes to currency, Sigil’s got a real
got to specialize. Is he going to run a kip that caters “go for it” attitude. The merchants have worked hard
to humans or fiends? There’s stable-inns for bariaur, to make it easy to spend jink. They’ll accept stan-
fire-pits for efreet, the boisterous taverns favored by dard coinage from most any place, so long as it’s
Arborean einheriar, and more. Everybody coming gold and silver. A gold coin from Toril’s not much
here expects t o find the comforts of home, a n d different from one of Oerth’s gold pieces. ’Course,
smart landlords in Sigil ain’t about to disappoint the DM can use differences in size, weight, and rar-
them. ity as excuses to haggle (“It’ll cost double. That
All these folks lead to the second order of busi- jink’s tiny, not a proper size at all.”). A PLANESCAPE
ness in the Cage: trade. Everything from anywhere’s campaign’s not about exact money-changing - any
got the potential to pass through Sigil, so it makes player who wants that might as well go be a banker ,
sense that there’s merchants buying and selling it all - so the type of coin folks use can just be treated as-
right here. There’s the Great Bazaar, where stall- normal gold, silver, and copper pieces. Sure it may
keepers from a hundred worlds set up shop. There’s be minted in the likeness of hideous Juiblex, but
backstreet merchants who’ll get a blood anything - gold is gold.
 THE TWo Statuesque, smart, and sensual, Erin Darkflame
most important Montgomery is no cutter’s helpless doxy. She’s a
complete person, and being a woman (maybe a hin-
drance in some places) hasn’t made her any less ca-
. . . and how they got to that status. The second part’s pable of dealing with the seductions, intrigues, intel-
easy: These cutters bought their ways into power. lectualism, and dangers of Sigil. Though she’s no
Folks in Sigil almost respect that, and besides, no- more than average height, the combination of inner
body can argue with them because it’s worked. fire, lively green eyes, and short auburn hair make
Anyway, the highest of the high-ups in Sigil - her more than unforgettable. Yet for one so striking,
not counting the Lady of Pain, of course - are Priest- she shows little of the vanity folks associate with
ess Erin Darkflame Montgomery, Factol of the Sen- good looks.
sates, and Duke Rowan Darkwood, Factol of the Erin Darkflame Montgomery was born and
Fated. The priestess is the head of the largest voting raised on the Outlands, in the realm of Tir na Og (see
bloc in the Hall of Speakers, and Duke Darkwood is map). There, her philosophical bent, psionic talent
coming on as the fastest and most powerful opposi- (discovered at an early age), and good heart led her
tion she’s likely to face. The two of them, their per- to become of a priestess of Diancecht, the Celtic god
sonalities, and their conflicts shape a lot of Sigil’s of healing. For many years of her youth she served
everyday life. the god well, curing all who came to her. She didn’t
choose friend or foe, being only concerned with the
hurt and suffering of others. That view suited well
erin DARKFLAIIlE the plane’s view of balancing good and evil, order
mo N t G e m e RY and chaos.
Female human planar It was in the aftermath of a Blood War raid that
Factol of the Sensates and her peaceful life began to unravel. It started when a
9th-level priestess of Diancecht tanar’ri high-up figured a feint through the Out-
Lawful good lands was a good idea. Well, the leatherhead was
wrong. The folks of the Outlands managed to take
STR 9 INT 14 the fiend’s plan and pike it, but the problem wasn’t
CON 13 WIS 17 over. Renegade tanar’ri escaped into the plane and
DEX 14 CHA 18 some of these raiders hit Erin’s burg. Although the
locals won the battle, the injured taxed Erin’s heal-
HP 45 AC 5 THACO Ib ing powers so much that when the wounded fiends
were finally brought to her, she could do no more.
SPELLSPHERES: All, Animal, Creation, Divination, Several of them died, including Za’rafas, a favorite
Healing, Plant, Protection of one of the Abyssal Lords. Those fiends who re-
SPELLSILEVEL: 6/6/4/2/ 1 turned to the Abyss blamed her for Za’rafas’s death,
GRANTEDPOWER: All spells of the Healing sphere are and she became their scapegoat. Now she had a
considered one level lower (to a minimum of 1st sworn enemy in the layers of the Abyss, one who in
level) for purposes of memorization and casting fits of melancholy occasionally sent assassins in
(a cure serious wounds is treated as a 3rd-level Za’rafas’s memory.
spell, for example) Fearing for the safety of her village, Erin took to
PSIONICWILDTALENT: Lend health, 36 PSPs adventuring far from home. Gods only know where
MAGICAL ITEMS:Wand of magic missiles, purple ioun s h e wandered, since t h e woman’s pretty close-
stone (holds up to eight spell levels, set in a sil- mouthed about it, but somewhere she earned the
ver tiara), crystal mace (+2 vs. normal creatures, right to use the title, Lady Montgomery of the Skylar-
+4 vs. evil creatures, double damage vs. crea- ian Knights. She’s also hinted at her hatred of the
tures linked to the Negative Energy Plane, cre- Pax Imperica - probably some empire she encoun-
ates circle ofsunmotes” once per day) tered on the Prime Material.
sr * See Tome of Magic Finally, her wanderings brought her t o the
Cage. She became a Sensate there, as their views
matched her wild wanderlust and passionate beauty
(and she is beautiful). She wasn’t an addle-coved he-
donist, though, which is something that’s destroyed
more than one over-eager Sensate. She understood
that experience meant more than pleasure, that
sensing was t h e w a y t o knowing. Erin learned
quickly, progressing through a series of scholars,
lovers, and chefs among other things. Her grace,
beauty, and diplomatic skill didn’t hurt in a quick
rise to power, either.
Now Erin’s the factol of the Sensates. Some say
it’s simply because she looks good for the part, hut
those who dismiss her like that are most likely bitter
from dealings they’ve had with her, not to their lik-
ing. The woman’s secure in her position, secure
enough that she doesn’t even bother with
magical armor or other protections. She
-figures Sigil and her own reputation are
protection enough. Reputation she’s got,
too: kind a n d loving one minute, a cold-
willed blood the next. She’s got the love of most of
the Sensates to boot, so only a leatherhead’d ever
try to pike her in a foul fight.
In part because she’s charming
and more because she’s hard, Erin’s
got a lot of sway in the Hall of
Speakers. The Signers naturally tend
to agree with her positions, as do the
Guvners, but Erin’s even been able to pull in the sup-
port of the Bleakers and the Xaositects when the
need really demanded it.
Currently, Erin’s watching the rise of Duke
Darkwood, calculating the threat and the moves she’s
going to have to take if he ever becomes too danger-
ous. ’Course, not all her time is spent in plotting, and
she’s sometimes seen in the company of her longtime
half-elf paramour Cuatha (Pr/ d he/Rl 5/Sz/I an
;he met duiring he‘r travels on the me
Plane.
 DUKe R e W A N D A R K W e e D
Late of Vaasa and formerly Protector of the North,
Guardian of the Great Glacier
Male human prime
Factol of the Fated and dual class 19th-level ranger/
20th-level priest of Heimdall
Chaotic good

Sm 20 INT 17
DEX 17 WIS 20
Con 20 CHA 18

HP 104 AC -3 THACO 2

SPELL IMMUNITIES: Cause fear, charm person, c

mand, forget, friends, hold person, hypnotism
ray of enfeeblement, scare
SPELLSPHERES: All, Combat, Divination, Guardian,
Protection, Summoning, Sun
SPELLS/LEVEL: 11/ 111lo/ 11/7/5/2
GrANTED POWERS: See up to 100 yards, day or night;
hear any sound within 500 yards
RANGERabilities Animal empathy (-6 to saving
throw), hide in shadows and move silently
(both 95%, studded leather or less, halved in
nonwoodlands)
SPECIES ENEMY:Giants
MAGICAL ITEMS: Sword +2, giant slayer, ring of
protection +5 (not effective
splint mail, portable hole, red io
(water breathing), brooch of shie
tions of hill giant control an

Duke Darkwood‘s certainly an im

tall and whipcord lean, his tann
of scars even magical healing c
His hair is long, bound back with a leather
thong, and almost silver to match his eyes.
He might have been handsome, but years of
hard living - too many broken noses and
too many cares - have left his features fix-
rowed and craggy. Except during the mos
formal occasions of state, he dresses in
the plain, homespun, workmanlike
clothes of a common ranger. Yet even
in the most common garb, the duke is

ell settled into

comes across as a

rocket and isn

!-
about who he ruffles
on the way. Thinking about
it - that alone gives him all
the qualities to be the facto1 of the from Toril pick up his trail from there, for
Fated. The reason he can get away with it is just be- someone matching his type was supposed to have
cause he does - there ain’t many berks out there helped crush the witch-king of Vaasa in the Blood-
willing to challenge him straight up. stone wars. The Duke never said it was true, although
Rowan’s every inch the self-made man, and he admits the connection to Vaasa, but he never de-
there’s parts of his life that he’ll boastfully tell a cut- nied it, either. It’s quite possible he rebuilt himself
ter about. Although he usually gives his home as again, this time as a High Priest and noble lord in
Toril (of the FORGOITEN REALMS^ campaign setting), that northern region.
the truth is he was born on Oerth (of the GREYHAWK^ Now it seems that Duke Darkwood’s found Sigil.
world) a s t h e third son of a petty noble. There He’s only been in the Cage for about a year, but al-
weren’t any prospects for him there, so his first act in ready he’s staked his claim to the leadership of the
creating himself was to go out and learn the ranger’s Fated. Passionate about the cause of good and the
trade - hardly the calling for nobility of any rank. glory of Heimdall, Rowan seems determined to carve
Still, he did good by it and eventually set himself up himself a new fief in the very heart of Sigil. Given
a small fief, thus living up to his family’s name. what he’s already done, who’s to tell him it’s impos-
All that ended in a magical mishap with a deck sible?
of cards. For reasons he won’t say, it earned him the The Duke’s a driven man, both to his credit and
hatred of a lieutenant of Baator’s Dark Nine, who his harm. He believes in good a n d he cares for
eventually caught him and did something to him. people, but he’s also obsessed with success. He can’t
Rowan never talks about what happened to him, but accept obstacles, rules, or limits, so he’s always try-
bloods with good memories from Oerth report that he ing to push further than anyone else. For all his wit
vanished for more than a decade, and a few planar and wisdom, he’s not the negotiating type - action
bashers remember seeing him in the lower reaches of suits him more than words. He’ll gladly break those
the Great Ring. When Rowan finally returned, he he thinks deserve it, and he has few qualms about
found that Oerth had changed, and his old life was steam-rolling any opposition. In Sigil he’s made al-
long gone. most as many enemies as friends, and it doesn’t seem
That would’ve done in most sods, but Rowan to matter.
wasn’t the type to stay still. He’d seen the planes and Duke Darkwood’s greatest challenges stand be-
they fascinated him, so he learned the ways of get- fore him. First, there’s Erin Montgomery and the bulk
ting around and set out to adventure in the multi- of Sigil’s ruling class, but they’re trivial in compari-
verse. To hear him tell it (in his most convincing son to what waits behind them. It’s the Lady of Pain
bluster), he drank from Mimir’s well, was Heimdall’s he’s really preparing for, because the Duke’s no
right hand, and single-handedly saved Ysgard from leatherhead - he knows that someday they’re going
total destruction. Whether it’s true or not, somewhere to clash.
along the way he became a priest of that power and
rose quickly through the ranks. Certainly his adven-
tures were enough to literally remake himself until
he was stronger, fitter, indeed better
in almost every way than those
around him.

+73 +
 Sigil’s a big place, and it’s just not possible to cover the city with a
detailed street-by-street guide to all things interesting, useful, un-
usual, and outright bizarre. Doing that would have meant talking

-
less about all the other things a DM needs to know about the planes.
(Eventually, some blood’ll get around to mapping the Cage,
street by street, though.) Anyway, a party of bashers checking
out Sigil for the first time probably won’t want to learn every
corner of the Cage right away. Rather, there’s certain places in
the city that they’ll be looking for, and that’s what this’section’s
all about. The goal here’s not to leave the DM hanging with a
big street map and no idea of what to do with it. Instead of try-
ing- to tell everything at this point, it seems much bet-
ter to-show, teach, and advise on how to
make Sigil a blood-DM’s own. In-
Y
-
stead of saying
A
.

k
-what’s on what
street, this sec-
tion tells the
DM how t o
decide w h a t
belongs i n t h e
Cage and where he or
she should put it. It allows him
or her to build a neighborhood in the ward of his or her choice, one
that will be the adventurers’ stomping grounds. That means doing
more than just describing some interesting buildings, although that’s
done here, too, so here goes:
The first thing the DM should know is that almost anything can
be found in Sigil - almost any shop, guild, temple, house, business,
industry, laboratory, or library can be put in the Cage. Almost is the
key word, now - Sigil and the PLANESCAPE setting have got a feel that
could be ruined by throwing just anything into the pot. The points
below make this clear.

1. Sure, this is a weird place, but it ain’t science-fiction. Don’t stick

in stuff that isn’t medieval in flavor. It’s pretty obvious that space-
ports wouldn’t belong, but a DM’s got to resist the urge for things
so YCBU’RE looking like blasters as neat weapons, magical devices that feel a lot like
forthe O f +Hf computer networks, intra-city teleportation chambers, and crystal
multiverse ball phone systems.
E H , cutter?
G E + lost 2. Like the first point, this ain’t some prime-material 20th-century
world, neither. A lot of DMs forget that life was different in medieval
AND then you’ll
times - not just the buildings, but also the conventions of trading.
f l N D I+.
- DARRoL, V I N C ,
A DUstman
The DM shouldn’t go sticking in things like assembly lines, general
stores, travel agencies, cleric-staffed hospitals, newspaper stands, em-
ployment agencies (let the faction headquarters do that), grocery
stores, or even public street departments. Most folks in Sigil do or
deal in one particular kind of thing. One baker makes nothing but
bread, and another specializes in pastries. The armorer makes armor
but he doesn’t make weapons, and so on. Remember, a man either
makes something or sells something somebody else made. People who
provide nothing but services, like cleaners and investment advisers,
are called servants and councilors. There aren’t things like banks with
4. Avoid cute little businesses like Wanda’s Tea SEDAN CHAIRS
Shoppe or The Golden Bariaur Beauty Parlor (which
also goes against the second point). The reader may These are Sigil’s version of a taxi service. There’s
have noticed that Sigil’s not a cute place. Encounters not too many horses in the city, so most things are
and locations done for a quick laugh,ll sink the tone carried on the backs of others. A cutter can arrange
of Sigil faster than lead weights. That doesn’t mean for a sedan chair at the Great Bazaar and most of
there’s not stuff that’s funny, pleasant, relaxing, the important buildings, like t h e Festhall. Each
peaceful, and nice in Sigil - it’s just not cute. chair can carry two normal-sized folks and is car-
ried by four burly types, not necessarily human.
5. Be inconveniently convenient. If the characters re- There are some places, like the Hive, where sedan
ally want something in Sigil, it’s probably there. chairs won’t go.
Finding or using it, though, may not be easy.

harm o N I U PALE ro L S
The ever-vigilant Harmonium keeps the peace - or
their idea of it - with foot patrols of ld3 + 1 watch-
men (Pl/var/Fl-3/Ha/var). Now, a Harmonium guards-
man’s view of things is that everyone should obey
his orders, which are generally lawful and good. AI-
A F E W SERVICES guing or trying to explain one’s self is a sign of defi-
of sigil ance, which in itself is cause enough to arrest a berk.
It’s no surprise that when the watch sees something
After some generalities about what not to put in they don’t like, most all of the locals - not just the
Sigil, here’s some things that characters will find in guilty - make themselves scarce.
the Cage that might otherwise be forgotten.

couri E RS
touts
The best way to get a message across town is to de-
There’s a fair business in locals willing to lead a cutter liver it personally, but most basher’s don’t have the
around town, either to show off the sights or take him time or luxury for that, so they have to use some
to some place specific - whichever he needs. While other means. A high-up man sends a servant, and a
there’s no central guide agency, touts are found at craftsman’ll make his apprentice do it, but most
most marketplaces and gathered around the most fre- folks don’t have either, so they find a courier. Un-
quently used portals. ’Course, sometimes a cutter’s like guides, most couriers are fairly reliable sorts -
taking his chances with a tout - most are trying to get nobody with a public service job wants a dissatis-
a cutter to a specific tavern or inn because that’s what fied tiefling looking for them. Besides, a courier
the landlord pays them to do. A few’ll settle for quick makes his money delivering messages and knows
money by peeling the customer or mugging him out- he’s a n easy target to blame if things go wrong.
right. Wise bloods are always peery of anyone who’s Even so, no batch of couriers’re perfectly honest, so
too eager to help. there’s always the chance something important
might get lost or read by other eyes. All said, the
best thing to do is to not go telling t h e dark of
factotum s things to just anyone by writing it down and hand-
ing it to a stranger.
These are the official versions of guides. A factotum
works for a specific faction, and it’s his job to see
that important visitors get what they need, stay out L1GH.E B @ Y S
of trouble, and don’t see what they shouldn’t. They’ll
do more than just guide a body around. They also With so many hours of darkness and gloom, and no
know their way through the ins and outs of Sigil’s system of city street lights, light boys are a common
politics. service. These are usually street urchiqs who’ve got-
ten hold of a continual light wand (probably by stables
bashing some bubbed up wizard in a dark alley).
Light boys are useful for more than just light, since There aren’t many stables in Sigil, since most people
most of them know a particular neighborhood pretty get around the city on foot or by sedan chair. Still,
well and can act as unofficial guides or touts. there’s a need for a few stables to put up most any
kind of creature. This particular business is so small
that the grooms can’t choose to specialize in one type
BUSINESS SPECIFICS of animal or another, so a cutter doesn’t need to be as
particular about where he stables his mount as he
When the DM creates a place in Sigil, he’s got to be does about where he drinks. Nevertheless, it pays to
wary of the this-place-was-just-like-the-last trap. It’s be watchful of what’s stabled next to what. It doesn’t
easy to fall into a rut when a body’s making so many do nobody any good to put a einheriar’s pegasi in the
places all at once. To help the DM avoid it, here are stall next to a fiend’s nightmare. There’s a lot of po-
some suggestions for ways to give common busi- tential for short adventures in the mishaps that can
nesses new twists. occur when some stabled beast gets killed or escapes.

TAVERNS III arke t P L A C E S

Player characters spend a lot of time sitting in tav- There’s more than just the Great Bazaar in Sigil; a
erns, it seems, and there’s nothing wrong with a city this large can’t rely on a single marketplace.
common alehouse. There’s a lot more that can be Scattered throughout the Cage are places where a
found in Sigil, though. First off, all these folks from cutter can buy and sell all sorts of things.
the planes have different tastes, and some taverns’ll All the markets are either day or night markets.
cater to just one. There’s taverns, dark and low, with Common day markets deal mostly in food and house-
a definite fiendish bend, made to appeal to those wares, the stuff every sod needs for daily living.
bashers from the Lower Planes. There’s imitation ’Course, with a population like Sigil’s, even the food
mead halls for the einheriar of Ysgard, and humor- gets strange. There’s the regular meats, vegetables,
less ones for the rigid thinkers of Mechanus. Some and fruits that primes chew on, and then there’s stuff
are boisterous with good times, others are riotous to satisfy more exotic tastes. Slabs of quivering jelly-
with sullen tempers. Taverns can also vary by the like things that a sod doesn’t really want to know
type of drink served; there’s nothing that says every about can be bought, and there’s fruits gathered from
tavern has t o serve the same selection of ale and poisonous jungles on the Prime Material Plane, heaps
wine. Not only are there alehouses and wine cellars, of rare rock to suit the palates of earth elementals,
but then there’s differences even within those. steaming cauldrons of molten slag for the wandering
mephit - and that’s just food; there’s day markets for
all sorts of other things, too. Some markets specialize
INNS in a single craft like goldwork or weaving. Others
offer a wondrous variety of wares from other planes.
The difference between an inn and a tavern is usu- Over in the Hive, a few shops are run by thieves. It’s
ally that an inn offers more lodging and less drink. said a basher can go there and buy back anything
If taverns serve drinks to suit particular customers, that was stolen from him the night before, and at
inns cater even more specifically to the tastes of only a tenth of it’s true value.
planar travelers. Aside from common human-type The night markets offer a different variety of
inns, there’s the stable inns of the bariaur, pleasure- goods. Gone are the pots, rugs, piles of fruit, and
stocked inns that cater to the Sensates, communal bolts of cloth. From the shadows appear all the sell-
githzerai halls, flaming pits for visitors from the City ers of entertainment and pleasure. Food stalls, jug-
of Brass, and even black-draped halls devoted to the glers, musicians, prophets, and bawds all offer their
tanar’ri or baatezu. Of the last, a cutter’s best not wares. Those shopping in the dark hours seek excite- ,
knowing what they’re like unless he’s got a lot of ment, distraction, and solace, and the night markets
friends with him. A berk can be in for a rude shock if - fascinating and deadly - are only too eager to
he just wanders through the door without checking please. A cutter’s got to be careful so that his misfor-
on the clientele first. tunes don’t become another body’s pleasure.
 T H E WARDS this boxed set.) Everybody sort of knows where the
boundaries meet, yet depending on where he stands,
It’s easy for somebody like an Outsider to get the idea a cutter could ask two folks what ward he’s in and
that Sigil’s j u s t a scramble of places without any get two different answers. Nothing’s officially orga-
rhyme or reason to where they are. After all, the archi- nized or done by wards, either. For instance, nobody
tecture doesn’t make sense, streets are laid out in every votes for anybody by ward (but then common citi-
direction, and there’s not even an uptown, downtown, zens don’t get to vote for anybody, anyway).
edge of town, or city center to guide a body. Natives of Wards are used to help find things and people. A
Sigil know, though, that there’s different parts of basher looking for a good armorer goes to the Guild-
town, that the city’s divided into wards. hall Ward, and barmies are usually found in the Hive
Now, the wards aren’t official. In other words, Ward. Wards also are used to give directions (“The
here’s no map in the Hall of Records that shows the Golden Bariaur Inn? It’s on the third street after the
big statue in The Lady’s Ward.”). Wards can be used to
The closest thing to it is the judge folks, too; having a case in The Lady’s Ward
map of Sigil, included in suggests a cutter’s got power, even if some other
berks got a bigger place in the Lower Ward.
Ask a local and she’ll likely say there’s six
wards in Sigil: The Lady’s Ward, the Hive Ward, the
Lower Ward, the Guildhall Ward, the Market Ward,
and the Clerk’s Ward. Some folk’s argue that the
Hive shouldn’t be included because it’s gotten
smaller over the years,
but most folks stick with
the six because it’s tradi-
tional. A few scholars with
nothing better to do point
out the relationship to the
Rule of Threes (six and three and
all that), but this is probably nothing
but wind to justify their calling.
Within each ward are one
or more faction headquarters.
These buildings are more than
just the centers of a given faction
- they’re like islands for adven-
turing types. The faction headquar-
ters attract travelers from other
planes, and those travelers in
turn attract businesses to
serve them. Furthermore,
those shops are going to
take on the character of
their big neighbor. Around the Civic Festhall
here the Sensates cluster, player characters will
find more alehouses, more wine shops, more im-
porters of exotic goods. In the streets around
the Harmonium’s barracks, there are few busi-
nesses catering to customers from
the Lower Planes.
Thus, clustered in the
blocks around each head-
quarters, a cutter’s going to
find taverns, inns, markets,
and shops suited to the needs of adventurers, includ- For all it’s majesty, The Lady’s Ward is still cold
ing the player characters. This will always include at and lifeless. The regular hurly-burly of street life is
least two taverns and two inns, a stable, and at least missing, as too many folks are afraid of the Harmo-
one market that sells goods found on standard equip- nium and the Mercykillers (and not without good
ment lists. Since getting around is important to the reason). That suits the residents just fine, because
factions, permanent portals (see page 55) tend to be the rich haven’t ever been fond of the idea of the
concentrated around the headquarters’ buildings. In poor camping on their doorstep. The life that goes
fact, many headquarters are actually built around o n there, which is actually much more t h a n it
portals to the factions’ plane of major influence. seems, is carefully hidden behind iron-gated walls
With these “faction islands,” the DM can save and discreet facades. For the cutter that finds her
himself time and effort. Campaigning in Sigil can way inside, there’s great balls where rivals circle
begin centered on a small neighborhood with all the each other, where grand plots are hatched over lav-
services that characters are likely to need, saving the ish dinners, and where secret affairs are hidden far
DM the task of trying to develop the entire city all at from sight. . . .
once. All he needs to do is focus his attention on the Hey, don’t confuse power with security, berk!
one (or two) faction headquarters most often used by The ward’s far from honest, although a cross-trading
the player characters, and then gradually let things knight who’s nipping purses on the street’ll get
grow from there. scragged in an instant. Just like their prey, the crimi-
nals of that ward think on a grand scale. The risks
are great, but so are the rewards, and only the finest
THE LADY’S WARD of burglars can worm through the magical protec-
tions and alarms that safeguard the ward’s treasures.
It’s always The Lady’s Ward, not the Lady’s Ward, be- And only the wisest of thieves can avoid the revenge
cause they’re talking about the Lady of Pain here. that is sure to follow such a job. Nerve and luck are
Not that she’s got a house there, or that she appears needed in equal measure.
there more than anywhere else; the ward’s named so ’Course, housebreakers are small fish compared
because the greatest instruments of her might are to the real criminals. The corruption and graft in The
found there. Of the six wards, this is far and away Lady’s Ward make a jewel robbery look petty. See,
considered the richest and most powerful. Within its the high-up men who live here know the way of
boundaries are the City Barracks, the Court, the things - whom to squeeze just when and for how
Prison, and the Armory - things that make for real much. Behind the image of respectability may be the
wealth and power. Folks with both money and clout secret face of a hidden crime lord.
set their cases in The Lady’s
Ward, and over half the THEPRISON. The
city’s temples are based +
H E Y , I 4- H CB UG H + H E R E W f R f Mercykillers’ headquarters
there. The Lady’s Ward is only three bedrooms looks like everything a
the quietest and most orderly in IN this house .. berk fears: It’s a mass of
the city, because only a
leatherhead’d make trouble
in an area that’s home to
- THIRIN jecobs A f + E R
‘GIVING the LADY of P A I N
grim stone and spikes,
surrounded by broad av-
enues. Sometimes a cut-
both the Harmonium and the the LAUGH’ ter’ll hear a faint wail
Mercykillers. from within, and when he
Not surprisingly, the buildings in this does he doesn’t stop walking. There’s
ward reflect the power and wealth of their owners. things a sod just don’t want to know about.
The Prison’s a dominating, grim structure while the If there’s one up-side to the area, it’s that the
Temple of the Abyss - a cross between a portal to street-crime rate here is virtually nonexistent. There’s
and a temple celebrating that plane - soars danger- not a cross-trading body around who’s going to ply
ously into the sky. The Barracks are dour and humor- his skills under the very noses of the Mercykillers.
less, and the Court is regal and imposing. Naturally, There’s too many rumors of them deciding they can
every temple here is designed to display the might arrest, try, and punish a berk themselves, especially if
and glory of its high-up man. It’s as if the multiverse their headquarters is close and convenient. Rigidly
itself had been mined of it’s monuments, and all of honest folk who’ve got the money and no vices at all
them were placed here. set their cases in the blocks around the prison.

+ 79 +
 The businesses around the Prison seem as gray THEARMORY. Home to the Doomguard, this head-
and humorless as the cage, itself. The taverns are quarters is in the seediest part of the ward. In fact,
quiet, well-ordered places where nobody makes trou- some folks argue it’s really part of the grimy Lower
ble, as only a barmy’d attract the attention of the Ward. Like most of the other buildings in The Lady’s
Mercykiller squad drinking at the next table. The Ward, it’s huge and dominating. All the windows are
inns are spartan, with no hint of the temptations that covered with stone grates, and razorvine covers the
some of the other establishments in Sigil offer. The lower walls. The heavy iron gates make it clear that
markets are scrupulously honest, so the prices are the Doomguard’s got the weapons and intends t o
higher here than just about anywhere else. keep them. However, some of the shops in the neigh-
borhood specialize in custom-made weaponry that a
Trubun’s Forge. Located in a side street behind blood can drop a lot ofjink on, if she knows the right
the day market, j u s t across from the Prison, this words to get her into the back room.
smoke-spewing smithy produces fine nonmagical
armor. The ancient Traban (Pr/ d d/Fl/LG) specializes
in highly ornamental plate mail, suitable for tri-
umphs, parades, and battle. All work is done to order
and costs five-to-one thousand times the normal
price, depending on the workmanship.
Trahan’s assisted in his work by his son Traban-
son (312 years old), grandson Tarholt (205), great-
grandson Tarholtson (138), and a n adopted ogre,
Coal-chewer. The latter, with the family since he was
orphaned at two, is an experiment of Tarholt’s, who’s
curious to see if an ogre raised in proper dwarf fash-
ion can he reformed. So far, Coal-chewer hasn’t
killed anyone. The family came to Sigil from Krynn
about 120 years ago, as part of a small exodus of
dwarves to the Outer Planes. Traban’s got no plans to
ever go back, although his children are all curious to
see the homeland again.

THECITY COURT. Of all the places in The Lady’s

Ward, this area’s got the most life. Everybody, it seems,
comes here sooner or later. Because it’s got a public
function, the Guvner’s headquarters is divided into
public and private halls. In the public halls, a cutter’s
going to find criminals, citizens, witnesses, advocates,
clerks, accusers, and Mercykiller and Harmonium
guards. It seems like disorganized chaos, hut the Guv-
ners have everything scheduled and timed out. In the
private parts of the Court, a body doesn’t find anyone
but Guvners and their guests. There, the judges meet to
discuss cases and reach their decisions, often refemng
to the immense library of laws the faction’s assembled.
Outside the Court there’s a number of taverns
and inns to serve those attending trials. In compari-
son to other places in The Lady’s Ward, they’re pretty
lively. In comparison to places elsewhere in the city,
they’re damned quiet. The taverns serve anybody,
from thief to Hardhead, and there can’t help but be a
little life there. Most of the alehouses do extra busi-
ness selling meals to prisoners or running wine and
beer to the back rooms of the Court.

80
released b y t h e Guvners, b u t who w a n t s t o go The ward got its name from the number of por-
through that all the time? The taverns and inns in the tals to the Lower Planes that’re found here. These
area all closely follow the Harmonium official line. doorways have affected the nature of the place, so
there seems to be more smoke, steam, and cinders in
the air than there should be. The Lower Ward’s the
T H B lower WARD source of most of the foul industrial smogs that
sometimes choke the city, brownish-yellow blankets
It’s argued that this area of the city isn’t a proper of stinging sulphurous gas that cling to the air and
ward at all, an argument that ignores the fact there’s linger as a stench in clothes for days afterwards. Too
no definitions of wards to be found anywhere. Cer- long outside in the Lower Ward and a cutter’s throat
tainly the Lower Ward’s been shrinking over the gets raw and his eyes teary. After a while, his skin
decades. Old-timers remember when it included the absorbs enough crud to take on a sickly tone. His

ods agree that the Great and stubborn. Most of the craftsmen feel like they’ve
is the center of g o t trade secrets, a n d they’re always peery of
strangers, even customers. Their moods aren’t helped
by the number of lower-planar types that haunt the
dives and flophouses tucked in back alleys, or by the
barmies who slip out of the Hive by night to prowl.
The Harmonium patrols aren’t strong here, and most
folks expect they’ve got to take care of themselves.

THEGREATFOUNDRY. This is the headquarters of

the Godsmen. The foundry’s a dirty
sprawling complex of workshops,
warehouses, storage yards,
e concen- and furnaces. The Gods-
men work it non-

trict’s lit
the foundry, petty metal goods needed by everyone the area’s considered ill-omened by most, and nobody
throughout Sigil and beyond, are the Godsmen’s has ever built there since. Only a bunch like the Lost
major source of jink. They make tools, hinges, pots, would ignore these superstitions.
nails, and anything else that can be fashioned out of Still, even they can’t overcome other folks’ fears.
iron. Their skills are not great; very little of their wares The few Athar merchants who’ve tried rebuilding in
are fancy work, but it’s all strong and serviceable. the blasted zone have all gone out of business for lack
The streets around the foundry are a jumbled of customers - only other Athar’d even consider deal-
weave of workshops and worker’s taverns. They’re ing with the berks. Wagoners stop at the very edge of
not luxurious or particularly clean; when a cutter’s the ruins, porters with sedan chairs won’t enter, and
been at the forge all day, he tracks in a lot of grime. moneylenders refuse to give out loans to those foolish
Drinking and dealing are both serious business. enough to ignore the tradition. While all this makes
There’s always somebody haggling over the price of good security for the Athar, it’s lousy for business.
goods. Other deals get cut there, too, for that’s the Yet there’s always a way to turn trouble into
neighborhood where men and fiends meet. Their dark profit, folks figure. Packed at the outer edges of the
talk doesn’t get whispered outside these doors. ruin a?e a whole host of shops and inns catering to
the Lost and their visitors. These form a ring of
The Styx Oarsman. If the name doesn’t give a cut- gaudy nightlife around the ruin. Over the years, the
ter a clue about this kip’s ambiance, the tiefling guard- reputation of the area’s grown enough to attract even
ing the door will. Nobody gets inside without knowing wealthy lords looking for a little low-life fun.
the password, which tends to change from day to day.
(’Course, the one password that never changes is “jink,”
as in grease the bouncer’s palm, berk.) Once inside, a THE HIVE WARD
body knows for sure he’s in a fiendish watering hole.
The common room’s dark - not just romantically dim, On the ring of Sigil, this ward runs from the edges of
but outright dark. A single candle glimmers by the the Shattered Temple to beyond the walls of the Hive,
taps. Voices whisper to each other in the blackness. A the Xaositect headquarters that give the ward its
cutter may feel the touch of cold, snakelike skin name. Embraced within the ward, among other sites,
against his side. Eyes flash with their own light. are the Mortuary and the Gatehouse. The Hive Ward
The tavern’s run by Zegonz Vlaric (Pl/&gz/F4/ is physically synonymous with the chaotic sprawl
W6/BC/CE), an emaciated and scarred githzerai with and the tangled slum that surrounds it. Indeed, it’s
one arm frozen into a clawlike pose. He was perma- almost impossible to be sure where the faction head-
nently maimed beyond the means of even magic to quarters end and the true slum begins.
repair during a run-in with a band of good-aligned Life in the Hive is the worst of all places unless,
adventurers. This tavern is now his revenge on all of course, a berk likes living in the heart of decay,
those he blames for his sorrows. Zegonz openly where anyone’s life is cheaper than the cost of a cut-
courts tanar’ri clientele, giving them a place to dis- ter’s next meal. Life here is seldom boring, but it’s also
cretely meet and do their business. The fiends know short and deadly. Honest work is scarce, so people live
it, too, and they protect him from the wrath of the by whatever means they can. For most, that means
Harmonium or any band of self-styled do-gooders stealing or signing on for dangerous jobs that no sane
who might try to close his place down. basher’d touch. This is where a cutter goes when he
needs bodies for a staged not, if he wants to raise a
THESHATTERED TEMPLE. The faction headquarters company of ill-trained fighters, or if he wants an as-
of the Athar stand at the heart of a zone of destruc- sassin willing to risk all on a desperate job.
tion several blocks across. They’ve only repaired what There’s high-ups and bloods within the Hive,
little they had to in order to make the temple useable, too. They’re smart and careful. They know how to
preferring the broken look of the place. (They are the hide from their enemies and conceal their wealth be-
Lost, after all.) The area’s been a ruin for a long time, hind seamy facades. (Those that can’t do so just don’t
as anyone who knows anything about Sigil can tes- make it that high.) They’re the master thieves and the
tify, but there’s no clear hint as to what caused it. The most unscrupulous of adventurers.
best guess is that it involved the Lady of Pain and a Not everybody in the Hive’s evil and sinister,
conflict with a rival power. That would explain the though. The ward holds more than its share of noble
broken temple, once belonging to the power Aoskar, folks, too: folks broken by Sigil or their enemies.
which is now the Athars’ home. Whatever the cause, There’s poets and bards waiting for their break, wiz-

+ 82+
 THEHIVE.This is it: faction headquarters, ward sages, and scholars. Here, life is peaceful and without
name, and slum all bundled up in one simple name. surprises - or without too many surprises, at least.
The Hive’s the heart and headquarters of the Xaosi- It’s the perfect burgomaster’s neighborhood.
tects, the harbingers of chaos. The headquarters of Pure fact is, the claim ain’t too far from the
the Chaosmen is like no other. There’s no one build- truth. This ward’s got the Hall of
ing that holds all the faction’s secrets and Records and the Hall of Speakers,
powers. It’s broken up, scattered, sprawled the instruments and voice of
’
through the tangled alleys of the slum. the city’s daily life. Without
Hive (Headquarters) and Hive (Ward) these there’d be no law, no
are one, but Hive and Hive are also proof of ownership, no listing of citizens, no tracking
many. A cutter goes to one of debts, no records of arrest, and no taxation. (It’s
shack for healing, to no wonder folks in other wards sneer at this lot.)
another for food, and Folks in the Clerk’s Ward try hard to achieve
to still a third to meet “normalcy.” The streets are well patrolled and the
with his factol. buildi6gs are maintained. There’s less duplicity here
The shanties aren’t all than in the two-faced world of The Lady’s Ward and
what they seem on less danger than in the turbulent Hive. Travelers from
the outside, either. the Lower Planes don’t visit here too often, but the
There’s genuine wonders to ward’s popular with primes and upper-planar types.
und inside some of them, wild col- In fact, their presence adds even more security to the
lections of things that make no sense to one sod and place. Some folks would say the ward is dull, but it’s
shed light on the meaning of life to another. What dullness that attracts a sod who’s looking for a little
else’s a berk to expect from the Xaositects? peace and quiet for the night.
Unlike other places, folks in the slum of the Folks common to t h e Clerk’s Ward include
Hive are far from despairing. They’re too busy fight- shopkeepers, moneylenders, importers of exotic
ing and struggling for life. Maybe they’re the greatest goods, go-betweens, sages, wizards, common priests,
capitalists in all of Sigil. They see all around them and - naturally - clerks. They try to lead quiet lives,
what happens to those who get ahead and what hap- friendly but not intrusive to their neighbors. Scat-
pens to those who slip behind in the game, which tered among them are more intriguing types who
only makes them all the more determined to stay in favor untroubled surroundings, like mercenaries rest-
the race. Treat him well and a Hiver can be a loyal ing between campaigns, devas in disguise, and even
ally. Turn stag on him and a berk will regret it for- lone thieves who enjoy the discrete privacy of the
ever. area.
The Hive’s got every service a cutter’s likely to
need. Most of it’s not the best quality - the bub’s THEHALLOF RECORDS.This is the headquarters of
cheap, the weapons are plain but usable, and the ser- the Fated. The building once was a college, but the
vants are insolent - but it’s all there. Exotic goods Fated foreclosed on a slightly overdue debt and made
from other worlds may be rare, but there’s always a it their home. After selling off the library (they didn’t
hand willing to go get them for a fee. There’s plenty need it), the Fated settled into the broken campus
of entertainment, too. There’s bodies who’ll do any- and made it theirs. It wasn’t long before they con-
thing for jink: perform gladiator fights, magic duels, vinced the Speakers that the city needed to keep
death-defying stunts, and more. A lot of folks from proper books, and who better to do it than the Fated,
the Lower Planes mingle here, like tanar’ri, yugoloths, with all that shelf space? Now the Hall of Records is
and baatezu to name a few. It’s no surprise that the the center of Sigil’s financial world. Foreign mer-
Blood War’s secretly fought in these very alleys. chants file their bills of credit here, moneylenders set
the official exchange rates, landlords register their
property deeds, tax rolls are revised, and debtors’ de-
T H E C L E R K ’ S WARD faults are posted for the public to see. In another part
of the Hall, records of the Court are filed in huge,
The Lady’s Ward may be the most powerful and pres- dusty stacks, while elsewhere the proclamations of
tigious, but cutters from the Clerk’s Ward proudly the Speakers are carefully copied for posting. The
point out that it’s their ward that keeps the city run- Fated run the City Mint, too, although almost every
ning. This is the domain of bureaucrats, scribes, other faction closely supervises their work. In the
 THEHIVE.This is it: faction headquarters, ward sages, and scholars. Here, life is peaceful and without
name, and slum all bundled up in one simple name. surprises - or without too many surprises, at least.
The Hive’s the heart and headquarters of the Xaosi- It’s the perfect burgomaster’s neighborhood.
tects, the harbingers of chaos. The headquarters of Pure fact is, the claim ain’t too far from the
the Chaosmen is like no other. There’s no one build- truth. This ward’s got the Hall of
ing that holds all the faction’s secrets and Records and the Hall of Speakers,
powers. It’s broken up, scattered, sprawled the instruments and voice of
’
through the tangled alleys of the slum. the city’s daily life. Without
Hive (Headquarters) and Hive (Ward) these there’d be no law, no
are one, but Hive and Hive are also proof of ownership, no listing of citizens, no tracking
many. A cutter goes to one of debts, no records of arrest, and no taxation. (It’s
shack for healing, to no wonder folks in other wards sneer at this lot.)
another for food, and Folks in the Clerk’s Ward try hard to achieve
to still a third to meet “normalcy.” The streets are well patrolled and the
with his factol. buildi6gs are maintained. There’s less duplicity here
The shanties aren’t all than in the two-faced world of The Lady’s Ward and
what they seem on less danger than in the turbulent Hive. Travelers from
the outside, either. the Lower Planes don’t visit here too often, but the
There’s genuine wonders to ward’s popular with primes and upper-planar types.
und inside some of them, wild col- In fact, their presence adds even more security to the
lections of things that make no sense to one sod and place. Some folks would say the ward is dull, but it’s
shed light on the meaning of life to another. What dullness that attracts a sod who’s looking for a little
else’s a berk to expect from the Xaositects? peace and quiet for the night.
Unlike other places, folks in the slum of the Folks common to t h e Clerk’s Ward include
Hive are far from despairing. They’re too busy fight- shopkeepers, moneylenders, importers of exotic
ing and struggling for life. Maybe they’re the greatest goods, go-betweens, sages, wizards, common priests,
capitalists in all of Sigil. They see all around them and - naturally - clerks. They try to lead quiet lives,
what happens to those who get ahead and what hap- friendly but not intrusive to their neighbors. Scat-
pens to those who slip behind in the game, which tered among them are more intriguing types who
only makes them all the more determined to stay in favor untroubled surroundings, like mercenaries rest-
the race. Treat him well and a Hiver can be a loyal ing between campaigns, devas in disguise, and even
ally. Turn stag on him and a berk will regret it for- lone thieves who enjoy the discrete privacy of the
ever. area.
The Hive’s got every service a cutter’s likely to
need. Most of it’s not the best quality - the bub’s THEHALLOF RECORDS.This is the headquarters of
cheap, the weapons are plain but usable, and the ser- the Fated. The building once was a college, but the
vants are insolent - but it’s all there. Exotic goods Fated foreclosed on a slightly overdue debt and made
from other worlds may be rare, but there’s always a it their home. After selling off the library (they didn’t
hand willing to go get them for a fee. There’s plenty need it), the Fated settled into the broken campus
of entertainment, too. There’s bodies who’ll do any- and made it theirs. It wasn’t long before they con-
thing for jink: perform gladiator fights, magic duels, vinced the Speakers that the city needed to keep
death-defying stunts, and more. A lot of folks from proper books, and who better to do it than the Fated,
the Lower Planes mingle here, like tanar’ri, yugoloths, with all that shelf space? Now the Hall of Records is
and baatezu to name a few. It’s no surprise that the the center of Sigil’s financial world. Foreign mer-
Blood War’s secretly fought in these very alleys. chants file their bills of credit here, moneylenders set
the official exchange rates, landlords register their
property deeds, tax rolls are revised, and debtors’ de-
T H E C L E R K ’ S WARD faults are posted for the public to see. In another part
of the Hall, records of the Court are filed in huge,
The Lady’s Ward may be the most powerful and pres- dusty stacks, while elsewhere the proclamations of
tigious, but cutters from the Clerk’s Ward proudly the Speakers are carefully copied for posting. The
point out that it’s their ward that keeps the city run- Fated run the City Mint, too, although almost every
ning. This is the domain of bureaucrats, scribes, other faction closely supervises their work. In the
private sections of the headquarters, the factol super- But all that’s just whispers to the folks who
vises the work on The Secret History of Sigil, a col- come here for the shows and excitement. They’re
lection of all the Fated’s doings and all the secrets here to have a good time - a safe, cultured good
their followers have learned. time with just enough daring to make them feel dan-
The businesses that cluster around the Hall mir- gerous. Not that the folks who come here are at any
ror life behind those walls. The great merchant- particular risk. Aside from the cutpurses and peelers,
houses of Sigil maintain well-appointed townhouses there’s no real danger in the streets around the Sen-
in the district, where the ground floors hum with in- sate headquarters. In fact, true Sensates make for
dustry and the families live upstairs. The few re- other parts of town for the “true”
 With the Civic Festhall as an anchor, the district THEHALLOF SPEAKERS. The Sign of One’s head-
around it has attracted a number of artistic busi- quarters is a marked contrast to the normally dour,
nesses. There’s dealers in artistic curiosities from all heavy and dark buildings chosen by many other fac-
the worlds of the multiverse. There’s taverns noted tions, especially the Harmonium. The Hall of Speakers
for the bards that play there. Other businesses have is a soaring, almost graceful structure that rises like a
the finest wines, the best food, or the best of many spire over the neighborhood. This is the seat of every-
other comforts. Jongleurs wander down the streets, day government in Sigil. Here the factols and ple-
portable puppet theaters are set up at the intersec- beians meet to debate the few laws and ordinances of
tions, fire eaters belch their talents from the alleys, the city. More often than not, the Speaker’s Podium is
and wizards craft beautiful illusions for the crowds. a forefront of the war between the factions. On a reg-
Even stranger beings from the hinterlands get into ular day, the factol of the Xaositects is likely to pro-
the show, acting for coins or using their strange pose getting rid of the Harmonium guard, which in-
powers to dazzle the multitudes. stantly gains the s’lpport of the Doomguard, since the
Those that live and work in this district - the , move is sure to promote chaos and decay. The Har-
showmen, the actors, the musicians, and the mounte- monium counters by demanding the arrest of the
banks - are all just a hair’s breath above disreputable Xaositect factol, promising the Mercykillers that they
or at least that’s what other folks say. The good fo
of the district’ll point out their entertainments d e
d can administer the punishment. On and on it goes, as
factions attempt to recruit political allies, until some-
honest products of training and skill. ’Course, the body - usually the Guvners - manages to kill the
idea that a strolling singer or comedic actor ha6 to whole issue on a point of order. The chant is, real
work hard just sits foreign with most other berks. lawmaking in Sigil’s a rare event.
It makes sense that this place is the Signers’
The Greengage. Located just across the street headquarters. Where can a berk be
from the Sensate headquarters is a tiny little any more at the center of his
cider shop known as the Greengage. This is own multiverse than on the
the establishment of Marda Farambler Speaker’s Podium? Unlike the
(Pr/ 9 ha/O/CG). Marda followed her other factions, where all the
adventurous husband out to the speaking’s left to the factol, the Signers like to rotate
planes, and after he got their followers through the Speaker’s chores, giving
himself killed, she de- each a chance to address all of Sigil. ’Course, the fac-
cided to stay. Scraping
up what little jink she Fa“ to1 always makes sure he’s the one speaking anytime
there’s an important vote (this is his multiverse more
had, she bought this than anybody else’s, after all).
place. Over the Most of the Hall of Speakers is open to the public
years it’s earned a fine for a fee. The Hall’s got council chambers, meeting
reputation, although rooms, private apartments, and more; these can be
it’s not popular with big leased for official uses. The heart of the Hall is private
U folks. Marda, it seems, refused to faction territory, however. Here, the Signer’s hold
bow to common sense and built the place to a proper their own sessions and plot their many-branching
scale. The commons are both immense and cozy to courses, but how they agree on anything is anybody’s
short folk, but the seating is cramped for anyone guess. It can be pretty tough for so many centers of
over four feet in height. A cutter might think that the multiverse to agree on even the smallest issue.
small drawback‘d be the end of the business, but the The streets around the Hall are noteworthy in
Greengage is popular with t h e communities of that the lodgings are expensive and the drink strong.
gnomes and halflings found in Sigil. Marda special- There’s little in the way of entertainments, and the
izes in cider, both unfermented and hard, from the choice of adventurer services - armorers, weapon-
orchards of the goddess Sheela Peryroyl. The latter smiths, map dealers, etc. - is limited. There are a fair
cider is such a potent brew that Marda normally al- number of street-comer criers and scribes for hire.
lows only two tankards per customer - it’s sure sign
of her trust in a basher when he gets more than this Grundlethum’s Automatic Scribe. In a tawdry
in a single night. Nobody knows how she manages to shop on a back street behind the Hall of Speakers is
get this rare brew, but most guess it’s a repayment the city’s first and only “Automatic Scribe,” a cre-
for a debt owed to her late husband. ation of Grundlethum Blackdagger (Pl/&h/W15/FL/

+86 +
ten announc

local scribes heate

loss of their live1

hood if Gmndl
Revolutionary League, have been talking about unstated and ill-watched truce between all things
smashing up the shop and teaching the wizard not to that come to this ward.
meddle with a basher’s career, but their fear of Grun- The streets here are alive, day and night, with
dlethum’s kept them still so far. He may be old and he commerce, but just what’s being bought and sold
may be a leatherhead, but the man’s a wizard after all. changes with the hours. Who wants to buy fruit in the
If they knew, the angry scribes might take heart blackness of night, when a cutter can’t see the rotten
in the fact that Grundlethum’s invention isn’t perfect. produce that’s being passed off on him? Who can
It seems the wizard didn’t bind some over-educated take their entertainment during the day when there’s
elemental into the machine, like he planned, but acci- too much work to be done earning a living? Hence,
dently magicked a flaw into The Lady’s defenses by day the market’s alive with fruit sellers, vegetable
-
around Sigil, instead. Now, a lesser stalls, drapers, cutlers, and tinkers. And by night it’s
power of the Abyss has managed to filled with bards, cookshops, wine peddlers, illusion-
leak a little bit of its power in- ists, and companions. There’s something for everyone
side by pretending to here.
b e t h e Automatic
Scribe. Whether it THE GREATGYMNASIUM. This is a gymnasium in
can s t a y hid l o n g the grand old sense: It’s got baths, steam rooms,
enough to gather its strength massage tables, an exercise field, pools, lounges, and
is a question, because it’s malicious and mischievous even a portico where the teachers of the Transcen-
by nature. Already unpleasant things have been hap- dent Order instruct their students. All of this is en-
pening in and around the shop. It’s only a matter of closed in a great compound of gold-veined black
time before something serious happens. marble. The Gymnasium is open to all, but only on
the Ciphers’ terms.
Compared to other parts of Sigil, life here is de-
THE GUILDHALL liberately unhumed. The Transcendent Order (whose
A N D market WARDS faction headquarters these are) believes understand-
ing can only come with a calm mind, so they do their
Although the Lower Ward is far bigger, it’s the one best to keep the pressures and concerns of the out-
folks argue is vanishing. That should give a cutter side world at bay. Those who enter must leave weap-
some idea of the clout of these two wards. Each of ons and magic behind. No spells can be cast there,
them is tiny, but folks in Sigil can’t imagine the city nor are beings with innate powers allowed to exer-
without them. cise their talents. ’Course, none of these rules apply
Still, for all their supposed importance, there’s to the Ciphers, although these edicts are generally
not much to tell the two wards apart. The things that followed by most of them, too. Nor are the rules per-
make them so ordinary are just what make them im- fectly obeyed by visitors. There are always little inci-
portant to the city. Life’s impossible with the basics dents to disturb the perfect calm of the place, distur-
of food, clothing, and the like, and that’s what these bances the Ciphers have to put down.
wards provide. These are the wards of the mercers, Because of the rules and services here, the Gym-
greengrocers, provisioners, rug sellers, tinkers, and nasium serves two purposes. First, it’s a place for cit-
peddlers. This is where a cutter can buy all the com- izens to relax and forget the cares of
mon, useful, and everyday I ”
things he needs for the world. Noise, uressure, even so-
life inside and outside the city. This is where a cia1 class can be forgotten. Sec-
basher can find the great permanent por- o n d , t h e Great Gymnasium
tals t o t h e other trade cities of t h e serves as a neutral ground for
planes. Of all the areas in the city, this hostile parties. Many a truce,
one is the most cosmopolitan. There’s treaty, and pact have been negotiated in the steam
no greater preponderance rooms and baths. Like every other part of Sigil, the
of beings from one Great Gymnasium is vital to the functioning of the
plane or another here; city. If it didn’t exist already, it’d have to be created.
everything, from The streets around the Great Gymnasium are
aasimons to host to a score of smaller competitors, so the whole
tanar’ri, mingles district is noted for its baths and spas. Some are gen-
here, and there’s an eral while others cater to particular races or planes.
With the baths come inns and food shops, many of The Free League’s headquarters hold a loose af-
which offer nothing put healthful exotica. filiation of traders and merchants that come and go
as they please. There’s always somebody providing
The Flame Pits. This specialized bathhouse is each service the faction needs, but one week a cutter
run by Laril Zasskos (Pl/ 0 gz/W14/RL/CN), a sharp- might have to go to a rug dealer near the central
tongued and sharp-eyed githzerai. Located three fountain for information on where to find a portal,
streets toward the Great Bazaar, her establishment and the next week he’ll have to visit a passing tinker
specializes in exotic conditions. She began by using who’s set up on the edge of the ward. It’s all a matter
her magic to build and contain lava pools for ele- of a wink here and a nod there, the business of
mentals and a few lower-planar things. Since then, knowing the right people, and knowing the right
she’s expanded the selection to include scouring questions to ask. ’Course, a cutter’s expected to do
whirlwinds, tubs of rank ooze, the purest of pure the same for others, too. The Free League’s more like
water, and bubbling ichors the nature of which she a brotherhood ready to lend a hand to its members
doesn’t reveal. than a rigid organization.
Laril actually works the place as a safe haven It’s hard to say exactly where the Great Bazaar
for the Revolutionary League. Several of the pools ends. The wheeling - and
have false bottoms. Beneath these are entrances to dealing spills
secret catacombs that honeycomb the streets
under the city. There, Laril has created
apartments for her brethren, and stock
piled supplies for the day when
the old, corrupt system falls. peddlers vie for spaces to
show their wares. The folks in
THEGREAT this neighborhood are always
BAZAAR.This ready to make a deal or haggle over
a price. Taverns hum with pitches of
hucksters, and there are large inns capable of
housing and stabling entire caravans. Open-air
cafes serve anybody who comes along, and that’s
the best place for creature-watching; everybody,
except the most reclusive rich, comes here sooner or
League, and it later.
just fits that their case ain’t even a build-
ing. The Great Bazaar’s a huge square filled with car-
avan tents and rickety merchant stalls. The air’s rich cam P A 1G N
with smells of flowers, meats, fruits, animals, and Q U I C K mstart S
sewage. Walk through the crowded aisles and a cut-
ter’s assaulted by calls to examine, smell, feel, and - After absorbing all this PLANESCAPE material, the DM
most of all - buy the wares of every merchant he should be raring to start playing, but the question re-
passes. Anything on a general equipment list can be mains, “What’s he or she going to do first?” The fol-
bought here, even things too big to actually bring to lowing sections are suggestions for beginning adven-
Sigil. Need a galley for the River Oceanus and a tures that get the player characters into and set up in
blood’ll find a merchant here willing to sell him one. the hub of the multiverse, Sigil.
Not that everyone’s honest and forthright, though.
A basher’s got to be a smart shopper to take care he
don’t get peeled by some dishonest trader. Buy some-
thing that’s supposedly waiting out on the planes and a
F e R the pice of A rose
sod better have ways of making sure it’s really there. PREPARATION. This adventure is meant to get low-level
The other thing a berk’s got to be cautious about is the player characters from a prime-material campaign
pickpockets and cutpurses that roam the market. It world to Sigil, where they can then begin their ca-
takes money to shop in the bazaar, and where there’s reers on the planes. Characters should be a t t h e
money, there’s thieves. But those are the risks every Ist-3rd levels of experience and should have a vari-
cutter takes. ety of classes among them.
 THESETUP.On the prime-material world where place clean. The first night the characters are on
the adventurers live, Lady Kindernis has a puzzle. It’s watch is when Yangol amves.
not a desDerate or
KOL (GI~ RAI MAGE/THIEF)
(W21T3): THACO 19; Dmg Id8
(sword); AC 8 ; hp 13; M V 12; SA sleep,
change sei$ backstab x2 dmg, move
puzzle, just silently 35010, hide in shadows 25%; SZ
curious. Her husband, a M; INT avg; AL CE; ML 9; XP 420
knight, is off on his own adventure,
so she’ll prevail upon the player characters to get to As soon as Yangol steps through the portal, he no-
the bottom of the mystery. tices any player characters who aren’t
Someone or something’s been stealing her rose hidden. He expected guards,
blossoms every night, o n e by one, a n d leaving though, so he’s not sur-
strange flowers behind. At first she thought it was prised by them. He’ll at-
the work of her servants, but a search of their quar- tempt to use his sleep
ters and accounting for their actions proved that spell against them and
wrong. Then she posted the gardener to watch during then hide in the castle,
the night, but he fell asleep. The guards she posted using change self to
the next night swear they stayed awake, but a rose get around. Small
still vanished. Now, Lady Kindernis doesn’t want to things will start di
accuse them of sleeping (she’s too good-hearted), but appearing, like
she thinks it’s time t o get some better help. She’s food, clothes, and
asked one of her servants to inquire in town for a the like, which
suitable group of investigators. There’s not much pay should be enough
in it, but a group could earn a little gratitude from to build a trail
the lady for their work. . . . that the char-
acters can
THE R E A L CHANT. Unbeknown to everyone, a follow back
shifting portal to Sigil has opened just outside the to him.
Lady Kindernis’s garden, and its gate key is a freshly If the
cut flower. On the Sigil side, the only folks who sleep fails or
know about it are a gang of thieves, the Plunderers. some characters
This group specializes in hitting worlds of the Prime are hidden, Yan-
Material Plane and stealing treasures to sell back in gol’s not going to
Sigil. They’ve been sending scouts through the portal stay and fight.
(which skips from prime-material world to prime- Knowing he’s been
material world while its other end remains anchored spotted, he’ll try to
in Sigil) to size up the opportunities on the other grab a rose and make
side. Each night a thief and a wizard have slipped for the portal, a window
through the portal (using a sleep spell on the guards to the main house. If he’s
the lady posted), then discarded the flower-key captured, he’ll talk: he’s not so loval
among the rest of the Lady’s blooms. To get back to a s t o get himself killed or hurt. B e sure to use lots of
Sigil requires a freshly cut flower, hence the missing planar slang in his speech to confuse the player char-
roses. Their mission has been to establish that the acters (see page 95). If the characters chase him,
portal is relatively stable and that the shifting end is they’ll need a rose to follow, or they’ll have to be
grounded in a nonhostile environment before send- within 5 feet of Yangol as he steps through, in which
ing anyone “important” through. case up to five player characters can go along for the
Now the scouting is done. The Plunderers are ride. Doing so transports them into Sigil, not far from
sending one of their top agents, a githzerai named the Great Foundry.
Yangol, through to set up an assault base in Castle
Kindernis. Once he’s compiled a full listing of what IN SIGIL.When the characters arrive, hit the
there is to take, the gang’ll sweep in and strip the players with descriptions of everything. The player

+ 90 +
characters should feel lost. The characters appear in Plunderers aren’t about to leave Lady Kindernis’s
the doorway to a crowded street. There’s no flowers castle alone, something that should be stressed to
in sight for a quick return home, assuming they even loyal and m e player characters.
know that a flower’s the key. Nonplayer characters
elbow them out of the way and jabber in strange
tongues. Before they can chase Yangol, one of the IIIISPLACED SPIRI+
group bumps a spinagon (see the Baatezu pages in
the “Outer Planes” MONSTROUS COMPENDIUM Appendix). TION. This problem can be used to start new
The fiend turns on the group with its best snarl. Have pd3/Cl characters directly in Sigil, or it can he used for
it threaten them, demand apologies, and generally characters who are a mix of primes and planars. The
rage. Before a fight breaks out, the group can be res- party should be between the 1st and 4th levels of ex-
cued by a bariaur named perience, and there should be a variety of classes
Stronghoof (Pl/$ b/F4/ among them. At least one character should be a priest,
TO/NG). At this point, +nd a wizard would be very useful in this scenario.
Most or all of them should have a good alignment.

THESETUP. Once every year, Yen-Wang-Yeh, the

Judge of the Dead (see LL), is called away by the Ce-
lestial Emperor. During the week that the master is
away, his proxies continue to handle the business of
sorting out the dead. Now, they’re well-trained and
well-meaning, but things do go wrong, and that’s
just what’s happened now.
Faithful Servant Li, a minor clerk in the Palace
of the Dead’s bureaucracy, has discovered a terrible
error: One of the petitioners has been mislaid! Worse
still, it looks like she was able to make her way to
Sigil! Although Faithful Servant Li didn’t make the
COMPLICATIONS. error, it’s clear he’ll be blamed when Yen-Wang-Yeh
returns. In desperation, Faithful Servant Li has aban-
doned his duties and come to Sigil to find the miss-
ing petitioner.
The petitioner, Golden Morning Radiance, has
the prime-material discovered she likes Sigil. She has no desire to go
end of the portal back to the Palace of the Dead or to the plane she is
stable until the due to be assigned to (Arcadia in this case). Suspect-
player characters are ing there will be pursuit (Golden Morning Radiance
ready to return home, was a sorceress in her previous life), the erstwhile pe-
or it could be one that titioner is determined to disappear within the jungle
moves around. If the latter that is Sigil.
is the case, then the player
characters have to learn its pattern THEREALCHANT. The characters can discover
of movement before they can get back. If Faithful Servant Li shortly after he steps through the
the campaign is to permanently move on to portal from the Palace of the Dead. It’s real obvious
the planes, then the portal can disappear forever. he’s not a local, and he’s wandering around, help-
(“Course, there’s always another door h o m e . . . lessly accosting everybody and asking if they’ve seen
somewhere.”) this woman. Why, it’s only time before the poor sod
Second, there’s still Yangol and the Plunderers. gets himself peeled or maybe even lost for good.
The githzerai’s not happy that the player characters Player characters of good conscience just can’t let
ruined his gang’s plans, and to save face he’ll try to him go wandering around.
get revenge. This can draw the characters further into If that doesn’t work, Faithful Servant Li hits on
Sigil, until they finally gain enough experience to the player characters. He describes Golden Morning
face the whole gang. Even if that doesn’t work, the Radiance - about 5’”’, long black hair, etc. - and

+91+
 also explains she’s a petitioner who really, really be- GOLDENJ RAI )(W2):
longs in the Palace of the Dead. He’s already so be- THACO 2u; urng l d 4 (aaggerj; xc iu; np 3 ; IVIV 12;
wildered by Sigil (it’s his first time in the big city) SA charm person, magic missile; SZ M; INT high; AL
that he hardly knows what to do. If the group looks NG; ML 13; XP 150
capable, he’ll offer to pay them for help.
Unfortunately, other folks have over- DUSTMAN TEFL1
heard Faithful Servant Li. One of the first FIGHTER)(F3):THACO 18; Dmg
folks he told his tale to was a Dustman, 1d8+1 (sword + I ) ; AC 6; hp
who instantly realized the news 17; MV 12; SZ M; INT avg;
might be interesting to his factol. AL LE; ML 12; XP 120
Another was a Mercy-
killer. In that basher’s MERCYKILLER AGENT (HALF-ELF INVOKER)(^^): THACO 20;
mind, Golden Morning Dmg Id8 (sword);AC 7; hp 7; MV 12; SA magic mis-
Radiance is mocking sile (x2), shield, bracers of defense AC 7 , can use
justice by trying sword; SZ M; INT high; AL LG; ML 14; XP 175
to escape her fate.
His factol, too, BLEAKER AGENT( G I T H Z E R A I FIGHTER/MAGE)(F3/W3):
might be interested. THACO 18; Dmg ld8 (sword); AC 6; HD 3; hp 14; MV
Before the characters 12; SA burning hands, phantasmal force, wizard lock;
have a chance to get far along the trail, MR 10%; SZ M; INT avg; AL N; ML 11; XP 270
both the Dustmen and the Mercykillers are also
hunting the woman. Since she’s a free petitioner, the FUTURE COMPLICATIONS.First off, Faithful Servant
Dustmen would love to recruit her. Since she’s an es- Li is under time pressure. The longer things take, the
capee, the Mercykillers want to bring her to justice. more panicky he gets, until he’s little more than a
Player characters belonging to either group must de- nervous wreck. Second, the characters need a trail to
cide where their loyalties lie - with their friends or follow. Have them get reports of a woman matching
with their faction. (The DM could also have the the description from several different places. This is a
player characters hunting for Golden Morning Radi- chance to make the characters explore the different
ance f o r one of these factions.) wards of the city and learn more about Sigil. Some
In the meantime, Golden Morning Radiance people will try to cheat them, demanding payment
hasn’t made herself easy to find. Knowing others’ll and then giving useless information. Along t h e
look for her, she’s moved into the Hive. She’s still be- course of their hunt, they should have several run-
fuddled about who she is and where she is, so she’s ins with the other factions hunting Golden Morning
been taken in by the Bleak Cabal. For them, she Radiance.
works simple magic. They’ve figured out what she re- Once they do find her, the player characters
ally is and hope to hang on to her. After all, her be- have to decide what to do. Should she be given over
liefs are a blank slate on which they can write their to Li, handed over to one of the factions, or let alone
own ideas. to manage her own life? Encourage the player char-
acters to role-play this problem, perhaps by offering
FAITHFUL SERVANT Lr (HUMAN B A R D ) ( F I )THACO
: 20; them different rewards for each course of action.
Dmg l d 4 (dagger); AC 10; hp 3; MV 12; SZ M; INT
avg; AL N; ML 11; XP 50
 NEW
SURELOCK (Abjuration)
&-level priest spell
Sphere: Wards
Range: 0
Components: V, S, M
Duration: 1 day/level
Casting Time: 1 hour
cast, the area does not move - although originally
centered on the priest, it does not follow him around
thereafter. I
- -
The material component for this spell is a crys-
tal key that must be shattered when the spell is cast.

WARPSENSE(Divination)
2nd-level wizard spell
Range: Touch
Component: V, S
Duration: 1 round/level
Casting Time: 3
Area of effect: 60 feet
Saving Throw: Special

In order for some characters, particularly

primes, to use the gates that dot the planes,
they’ve got to be able to find them.
Hence, an unknown wizard created
warp sense, a spell that finds and
analyzes the gates and portals of
the planes. When cast, the spell
allows the person empowered to
sense any gate or portal, active
or not, along a 60-foot path,
dead ahead. Scanning in a
single direction (out of four in a
complete circle) takes one full
round, so the person can shift
directions while scanning. However,
they cannot move in any other
way without disrupting the spell;
full concentration is required.
Once a portal is detected,
the affected person can try to
deduce where the other end
discharges and the key
required to use the portal,
if any. Each piece of
information requires a
separate saving throw
and if either is failed,
nothing further can be
learned about that portal.
The player can state which
question will be asked first.
If the player character has
actually seen the portal in
operation, a +2 bonus is
applied to the check.
 K N B W I N G + H E CAN+ point, and it can be used a s a warning: “Bar
that, Jannos, there’s Dustmen over there.”
By now, a poor sod might have gone barmy from all BARMIES.The insane folks, especially those in Sigil,
the cant he’s tumbled into, and maybe he’s wondering who’ve been “touched” by the impossible big-
if he’s just a leatherhead as he tries to read it. Well, ness of the planes.
there’s a dark to it that any cutter can master, and BASHER. A neutral reference to a person, usually a
pretty soon he’ll be rattling his bone-box like a proper thug or fighter.
blood. Why, he’ll be able to give the chant to a high- BERK.A fool, especially one who got himself into the
up man and tell a cross-trading knight to pike it. mess when he should have known better.
Huh? BIRDCAGE. A cell or anything that compares to it.
Readers who’ve made it this far have undoubt- BLEAKER. A faction, one of those despondent members
edly noticed the slang that’s used throughout the of the Bleak Cabal.
PLANESCAPE material. It may be fun to read, but some- BLINDS. The dead-ends of the Mazes, it also means
times it sure can get confusing. What’s given below anything impossible or hopeless, as in, “He’ll hit
is a glossary of all those odd expressions and terms the blinds if he tries lying to the factol.”
that pop up throughout the text. BLOOD.Anyone who’s an expert, sage, or a profes-
There’s more to it than that, though. The “Voice” sional at his work. A champion gladiator can be
of the PLANESCAPE setting is unique, and it’s part of a blood, just like a practiced sorcerer. Calling
what sets the tone for adventures. To get the most someone a blood is a mark of high respect.
from t h e PLANESCAPE campaign setting, the DM BOB. The business of cheating someone, whether it’s
should really use these expressions on his players. of their cash, honor, or trust. A good guide to
It’ll make the world come alive for the players. After Sigil will warn a cutter when someone’s bobbing
all, having the angry factol say, “There’s this barking him. Thieves boast t h a t they “bobbed some
thief I want scragged or put in the dead-book,” is a leatherhead on the street.”
lot more colorful than just, “I want you to get this BONE-BOX.The mouth, named because of its teeth,
thief, dead or alive.” To help DMs get used to using fangs, or whatever. “Stop rattling your bone-
this color, the glossary also tries to show when and box,” is telling a berk to lay off the threats or
how to use these terms to best effect. bragging.
First, though, a note. Too much colorful slang in BUB.Booze, wine, or ale that’s usually cheap and
a single sentence is going to sound silly - like the barely drinkable.
first paragraph of this section. The DM doesn’t have BUBBER. A drunk, especially if he, she, or it has fallen
to use all these terms at every possible opportunity. on hard times. Bubbers don’t get any sympathy
He doesn’t have t o use any of them if he thinks from most folks in Sigil.
they’re stupid. Use what sounds natural, and don’t BURG.Any town smaller than Sigil, either in size or
force the rest. Feel free to add new terms and expand spirit - at least that’s how folks from Sigil see it.
on old ones. Other bodies don’t always agree.
For those who want to expand the PLANESCAPE CAGE,THE. This is a common nickname for Sigil, used
vocabulary, here’s a tip to help keep the tone focused. by locals. It comes from BIRDCAGE (see above), so
A lot of the terms here came from the extremely col- it’s a pretty harsh judgment on the place.
orful slang of thieves, swindlers, and beggars in the CASE. The house or place where a cutter lives.
16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. ’Course, not every CHAOSMEN.A nickname for the Xaositects. It does a
possible term was used. Most are just too cryptic to pretty good job of describing their point of view.
modem ears and modern times - words like jarkman, CIPHER. A faction nickname of the Transcendent
bridle-cull, figging law, and worse. Choose terms that Order, because most folks don’t know what
sound slightly odd and antiquated but still have an they’re talking about.
edge t o them. If it’s a historical phrase, don’t be CLUELESS, THE. The folks who just don’t get it, usually
afraid to twist the meaning or the way it’s used. primes. Use this on a p l a n a r a n d it’s likely
there’ll be a fight.
ADDLE-.COVE. A not-particularly friendly way to call CHANT, THE. An expression that means news, local
someone an idiot, as in, “Did you hear what that gossip, the facts, the moods, or anything else
addle-coved wizard wanted us to do?” about what’s happening. “What’s the chant?” is
BARTHAT. An almost-polite way to say “shut up” or a way of asking what’s latest information a
“don’t talk about that.” It’s quick and to the basher’s heard.

+95+
CROSS-TRADE.The business of thieving, or anything ment unless, of course, that’s what the basher
else illegal or shady. “A cross-trading scum” is a wants to be.
thief who’s probably angered the Mercykillers. LEAFLESSTREE. The gallows, which is where some
CUTTER. A term that refers to anybody, male or fe- berks wind up after they’ve been scragged.
male, that a person wants. It does suggest a cer- LFATHERHEAD.A dolt, a dull or thick-witted fellow. Use
tain amount of resourcefulness or daring, and so it to call somebody an idiot.
it’s a lot better than calling somebody a berk. LOST. Dead. “He got lost,” means he ain’t coming
DARK.Anything that’s secret is said to be a dark. back without a resurrection.
“Here’s the dark of it,” is a way of saying “I’ve LOST,THE. A faction in the planes, properly called the
got a secret and I’ll share it with you.” Athar. Its members hold.that there are no true
. One of the factions of Sigil. They believe powers. The local priests would like to see them
everybody’s dead. See A Player’s Guide to the get lost, like the meaning above.
Planes for more information. MAZES,THE. The nasty little traps the Lady of Pain
E. A faction of the planes which holds that creates for would-be dictators. It’s also come to
11 mey’ve got something, it’s because it belongs mean any particularly well-deserved punish-
t o them. This doesn’t always sit well with ment, as in, “It’s the Mazes for him and I can’t
others. say I’m sorry.”
GARNISH. A bribe, as in “Give the irritating petty offi- MERCYKILLERS. A faction of the planes that believes
cial a little garnish and he’ll go away.” there is an absolute justice.
GIVE ’EM T H E LAUGH. Escape or slip through t h e MUSIC.A price a cutter usually doesn’t want to pay,
clutches of someone. Robbing a tanar’ri’s house but has to anyway. “Pay the music or you’ll
and not getting caught is giving him the laugh. never find your way out of here.”
GrVE . What happens to condemned criminals OUT-OF-TOUCH.Outside the Outer Planes. A body
who uun’t manage to give the law the laugh. who’s on the Elemental Plane of Water is “out-
Usually thieves are the only folks who use this of-touch.’’ This vernacular comes from Sigil,
term. which is considered to be the center of the mul-
GODSMEN. A faction of the planes that believes every- tiverse by those who adopted this phrase.
body’s got the chance to be a power. OUT-OF-TOWN.Like the phrase above, this one’s used
GUVNER.A faction in Sigil that believes knowing by Sigilians to describe a body who’s on the
physical laws will give a cutter power over Outlands.
everything. Not the kind of folks to argue logic PEEL. A swindle, con, or a trick is a peel. It’s often
with. used as a verb. Peeling a tanar’ri is usually a bad
HARMONIUM. A faction of the planes. “Do it our way or idea.
no way,” could be its slogan. PEERY. Suspicious and on one’s guard. What a basher
HIGH-UP MAN. This is what everybody - man, woman, Should be if he thinks he’s going to get peeled.
and thing - in Sigil wants to be: somebody with F IT. A useful, all-purpose phrase, as in, “Take a
money and influence. Factols are automatically Short stick and pike it, bubber.”
considered high-up men. It’s bad form to call h T IN THE DEAD-BOOK. Dead. Some people have others
one’s self this; it’s a phrase others bestow. “put in the dead-book.’’
INDEPS.A faction of the planes whose members live SCRAGGED. Arrested or caught.
their lives as they please, with no allegiance to 5 YES. Nickname for the Society of Sensation, a
others. Some folks figure that makes them un- Jaction. Its members believe life’s got to be ex-
trustworthy right there, but they’re pretty useful perienced to be understood.
as mercenaries. SIGNERS. A faction nickname for the Sign of One. Its
JINK.The goal of the poor: money or coins. “That’s members figure everybody is the center of their
going to take a lot of jink!” for an expensive bit own universe. t
of garnishing. SOD. An unfortunate or poor soul. Use it to show
KIP. Any place a cutter can put up his feet and sleep sympathy for an unlucky cutter or use it sarcas-
for a night, especially cheap flophouses in the tically for those who get themselves into their
Hive or elsewhere. Landlords of good inns get own mess.
upset if a fellow calls their place a kin. TUKNSTAG. To betray somebody or use treachery. Say-
KNIGHTOF THE POST or KNIGHT OF 1 S-TRADE. A ing “he’s turned stag” is about the worst thing
thief, cheat, and a liar - clearly not a compli- that can be said about a cutter.