Infinite Codex (Setting Primer)

Sigil: the City of Doors. It’s considered by some to be the jewel of the Outlands, the nexus of power of the multiverse, a place of great beauty or ugliness. Every day in Sigil, deals are made that seal the fate of hundreds and thousands, negotiators barter for peace in the Blood War, and factotums seek the truth to the meaning of everything. People die, ideals are born, and great power is wielded with the flick of a finger. Sigil is a place of contradictions. It’s the center of an infinite multiverse. It’s an embattled neutral ground in a battlefield of philosophy. It’s the City of Doors and yet it’s called the Cage. It’s home to pit fiends and solars, devas and yugoloths, all living and drinking and socializing in more or less peaceful state. Sigil is located atop the Spire in the Outlands. It has the shape of a torus; the city itself is located on the inner surface of the ring. There is no sky, simply an all-pervasive light that waxes and wanes to create day and night. Sigil cannot be entered or exited save via portals; although this makes it quite safe from any would-be invader, it also makes it a prison of sorts for those not possessing a portal key. Thus, sometimes Sigil is called "The Cage". Though Sigil is pseudo-geographically located "at the center of the planes" (where it is positioned atop the infinitely tall Spire), scholars argue that this is impossible since the planes are infinite in all dimensions, and therefore there can never truly be a center to any of them, let alone all of them; thus, Sigil is of no special importance. Curiously, from the Outlands one can see Sigil atop the supposedly infinite Spire. Sigil contains innumerable portals that can lead to anywhere in the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology: any bounded opening (a doorway, an arch, a barrel hoop, a picture frame) could possibly be a portal to another plane, or to another point in Sigil itself. Thus, the city is a paradox: it touches all planes at once, yet ultimately belongs to none; from these characteristics it draws its other name: "The City of Doors".

The ruler of Sigil is the mysterious Lady of Pain. The Lady is sometimes seen in Sigil as a floating, robed Lady with a face bearing a mantle of blades. The Lady does not concern herself with the laws of the city; she typically only interferes when something threatens the stability of Sigil itself. However, she is an entity of inscrutable motives, and often those who cross her path, even accidentally, are flayed to death or teleported to her hidden Mazes, lost forever. It is widely believed that she never speaks, although some unconfirmed (and, most would argue, highly questionable) rumors to the contrary do exist. Sigil is also highly morphic, allowing its leader to alter the city at her whim. Sigil is, theoretically, a completely neutral ground: no wars are waged there and no armies pass through. Furthermore, no powers (such as deities) are allowed to enter into Sigil; the Lady has barred them from the Cage, but some disguised avatars (and Vecna, see below) have made it in and been promptly dispatched by the Lady. It is also of great interest to them, as they could use Sigil to send their worshipers anywhere, and it is at the center of the Outer Planes. Population : About 125,000, fluctuating with planewalkers coming and going, with diverse races, humans and plane-touched dominant. Wards : The Lady’s Ward, Lower Ward, The Hive, Clerk’s Ward, Guildhall and Market Ward. Government : The enigmatic Lady of Pain is the absolute ruler of Sigil who allows the city’s denizens to enjoy a laissez faire environment managed by councils, factions, and guilds. Defenses : Besides the Lady of Pain and her dabus servitors, defense is largely a matter of whatever group that dominates a section of town pulling together guards. Factions like the Harmonium and Mercykillers (both the Sons of Mercy and Sodkillers) often provide protection, but in other places protection rackets and magical guardians are common place. Commerce : Sigil is a major center of planar commerce. The Great Bazaar in the Guildhall and Market Ward hosts the greatest number of merchants. Organizations : Countless factions, sects, guilds, and temples are active within Sigil. Among the most active are the 15 factions, Magical Conditions : Magic which allows planar travel and summoning creatures fails to function in Sigil, and such magic never works to bring creatures into Sigil. The city can only be entered or exited via portals.

Vecna once managed to circumvent the ban by entering while in a transitional state where he wasn't strictly a god when he entered Sigil, and by using Ravenloft as the instrument of his entry, instead of one of Sigil's portals. The Lady has since enacted Wards to prevent this from happening again. Later, it is revealed that the Torus underneath Sigil is the physical manifestation of the Multiverse's Fulcrum, and gods are banned because divine energy disrupts, destabilizes and will eventually "break" it, causing the multiverse to come apart at the seams. Aoskar lived in Sigil for a significantly long time before he was destroyed by the Lady, however. Sigil is hardly peaceful; with such a condensed population, consisting of everything from angelic devas to demonic glabrezu, violence is common, usually befalling the foolhardy, the incautious, or the poor. Most natives of Sigil ("Cagers") are quite jaded as a result of living there. People coming to Sigil from the Prime Material Plane are often treated as clueless inferiors by the planar elitists who dwell there. They are thus widely referred to as the "Clueless", or more charitably, as "Primes". Administrative divisions: Sigil is divided into six districts, called wards: • The Hive Ward, the slum and the ghetto, home to the poor, the rogues, and the unwanted dregs of the city. • The Lower Ward, an industrial district, clogged up with the smoke from the foundries and from the portals to the Lower Planes. • The Clerk's Ward, an affluent district, home to most of the city's lower-rung bureaucrats and middlemen. • The Market and Guildhall Wards are the home to the traders, craftsmen, artisans, guild members and other members of the middle class. • The Lady's Ward, the richest and most exclusive section of the city, is home to the elites of society and of its government, though not the Lady herself.

The Ramshackle House is located on the borders of the Lady's Ward and the Lower Ward. 

Factions: The Factions are the organizations that run the day to day affairs of Sigil. These groups run the kriegstanz , the battle for belief that gives the city its meaning and makes life in the Cage that much more dangerous and exciting. If a character has business with a faction, then they need to head to one of the various Faction Headquarters. All Faction Headquarters have public areas – accessible to visitors and those who have business with the faction – and private areas, which are accessible only to faction members. A person looking for information into a faction could do worse than visit the public areas of the faction headquarters – most such areas have factotums available willing to discuss faction philosophy, current events, and provide general information about goings on in the faction. Visiting such areas is typically free. The Factions are also willing to provide guides for some visiting dignitaries. These guides are factotums trained for such duties, bloods well trained in the ebb and flow of the city and who know their way around town. These factotums are specially trained to show the dignitaries a good time – the better to loosen their tongues and extract whatever information or favor the Faction needs out of them. Such services are not for hire by anyone, however, and are provided only on special occasions for special individuals.

The Planescape setting has a distinct "spellpunk" vibe to it. Magic suffuses the everyday life of characters in Planescape at a fairly deep level. It is literally the thing that allows a lot of planar adventures, simply because of the nature of the environments - a bubble of air or a shield from the elements or an illusion cloaking your alignment are often necessary to simply go to a place and come back. This is because adventurers in Planescape are fairly common. Planewalkers (as they tend to be called) are called upon to guard caravans, find lost items, deal with locals, and otherwise handle the hazards of simply living on the planes. Not all of them rise to the level of heroic champion of their beliefs, but however powerful a given player character is, there's always someone stronger out there. Due to this heavy use of adventuring magic, a lot of normal folks know a lot about magic that they might not otherwise. To simply get business done on the planes requires that you know your illusions and your abjurations, your prayers and your cantrips, and often at a significantly high level since creating a survivable environment is hardly a minor alteration of the environment. In addition to this common use of magic, Planescape characters tend to be jaded and practical. Conjuring a sphere of fire might be enough to make some Clueless folks “ooh and aah”, but here on the planes they're just as likely to see that, shrug, and say "Better not try that on a balor, berk." A lot of these characters can experience an entire world made of fire if they just step through the right doorway. While they might recognize that such a spellslinger is probably pretty potent, capable of more than they are, the great equalizing force on the planes is knowledge to use these powers correctly, and any urchin on the street might know more about that than the grandest grand high poobah wizard from some elven island. So the common folk aren't easily impressed by shows of magical force. It's also worth noting that the "weave" mentioned in the core rules isn't how planars understand their magical effects. Rather than a web of magical underpinning, in Planescape, magic is considered to basically be energy channeled from some location. To cast a fire spell, you are channeling energy from the Plane of Fire, to cast a healing spell, the Positive Energy plane must be accessible, to divine the future, you must be able to see into the cracks in time in the Astral, etc. Magical effects are specifically geographical in this way, and that means that traveling around the planes changes how you can channel this distant energy. If you're hanging out on the Elemental Plane of Earth, it matters that it's hard to reach the Astral Plane or the Elemental Plane of Air in that such spells become difficult or impossible to cast. The nature of Carceri as a prison plane interacts with conjurations and abjurations. The raw chaos of Limbo is likely to screw with any spell. And if your god lives in Arborea while you're trying to cast divine magic in Hell, well...your gods cannot help you there. This is why an important part of any planar adventure is magical keys - things added to spellcasting that allow you to use and access distant planar energies, despite your location. These are manifold and varied components, but those who know how to use them can defy their geography and tap into powers that the plane would rather shut down.

The tale of Aoskar’s fall is well known by denizens of Sigil. Once, long ago, nearly every planewalker uttered a prayer before crossing a portal’s threshold; this prayer was to Aoskar, Keeper of Gateways, god of portals, doors, and opportunity. Worship of Aoskar became so prolific that he nearly became the patron god of Sigil and even began converting the dabus to his faith. Whispers were that conflict with theLady of Pain was inevitable. When the dabus Fell became Aoskar’s proxy it was the straw that broke the baku’s trunk. In retaliation for Aoskar’s hubris, the Lady of Pain decimated Aoskar’s worshippers and cast the god’s corpse into the Astral Plane, where his husk is said to float to this day as a warning to gods who would claim Sigil as their own.

The Incanterium (Incantifers) were a sect of spellcasters revering arcane magic as the source of all greatness and power. Originally they were formed by emigrants to the planes, a cabal of mages seeking to give mortals magic to defend against the otherworldly forces arrayed against them. Most of Sigil and the factions came to rely on Incanterium magics - lantern staves and portal traps number among their creations that can be found in Sigil’s markets today. The Incantifers realized magic was the path to true power in the multiverse and thru forbidden rites transformed themselves into beings sustained by magic, thirsting for ever greater sources of arcane energy to devour, eventually turning their eye to Sigil. However, they reached too high and the Lady of Pain destroyed them. In one night their numbers were decimated and their factol Tivvum, along with their headquarters the Tower Sorcerous, were banished to the Mazes. The few remaining Incantifers pursued their own selfish ends or became monsters consumed by an unquenchable thirst for magic; even Tivvum’s apprentice Alluvius Ruskin would seek control over Sigil only to be defeated by planewalkers, presumably killed or likewise banished to the Mazes. The Incanterium was a fractured shadow of its former might, and without leadership seemed destined to become extinct.