The multiverse is dazzlingly infinite, a multitude of
dimensions and planes coexisting across all time and space. Travellers can step
from technologically-advanced worlds to worlds of choking fog to planes of
eternal fire or water, all in an instant. It’s a confusing, dizzying morass of
nestled realities, jaw-dropping wonders and horrific obscenities.
Sigil is where planewalkers go to get a beer and
information, or buy exotic goods, or sometimes just to find a better way of
getting from A to B when A and B are located in different universes.
Sigil is the City of Doors. It lies at the precise centre of
reality, according to the marketing, equidistant from all other points in the
entirety of creation. People with too much time on their hands argue that this
is piffle and indeed codswallop, since the multiverse is infinite and cannot
have a centre. They then get into lengthy arguments and send angry letters to
one another. The inhabitants of Sigil don’t really care.
Sigil is not pronounced like “sigil”, for sign or badge. It
is instead pronounced “Sig-ill”. Getting this wrong will immediately identify
you as a newcomer in the city, or “Clueless”.
Physical Description
The city is located on the inner surface of a curved torus six
and a half miles in diameter, one-and-a-half miles thick and twenty miles in
circumference, located many thousands of feet above the Spire, a massive
mountainous structure (tens or hundreds of thousands of feet high) located at
the heart of the Plane of Concordant Opposition (please don’t use this name in
public), or more colloquially, the Outlands. The torus floats freely on its
side, so gravity in Sigil is slanted ninety degrees to the world outside. To
avoid metaphysical confusion and/or vomiting, it is not possible to see the
outside world from within Sigil, thanks to a sort of grey-brownish haze that
permeates a lot of the city. This also frequently blocks the view of the far
side of the city directly overhead, which can also be disconcerting. Flying
creatures can fly from one side of the city to the other, but cannot fly out of
the city and down to the ground (given the titanic height and the thinness of
the air immediately outside, this would not be recommended anyway). Nor can
people “fall” out of the city from one side or the other, nor can flying
creatures enter the city from outside. Any attempt to do any of these things
results in the entity in question being teleported to another part of the
Outlands, or sometimes another plane altogether.
The torus, or “tyre” as some describe it, is curved on its
inner sides, meaning that walking down the street on a relatively clear day
when the smog and haze is light, a traveller will see the streets rising up
ahead and behind her, as well as on either side, giving the impression of being
at the bottom of a bowl or valley at almost all times. Looking straight up
across the centre of the torus, the opposite side of the city can be seen
several miles away, with its ribbon of streets and landmarks clearly visible.
Simply walking around in Sigil can be an unnerving experience until travellers
acclimatise.
The city is divided into six major districts or wards. The Lady’s Ward is home to the city’s
administrative offices and its most exclusive and rich estates. Adjacent to
that is the Lower Ward, the
industrial district clogged with smoke from foundries and the portals to the
Lower Planes. Beyond that lies the Hive,
a slum where the poor and dregs of the city can be found, along with a thriving
black market. Those criminal enterprises that are permitted in Sigil are
usually centred here. Further along the ring lies the relatively affluent Clerk’s Ward, which is home to the
city’s lower-rung bureaucrats and administrators. The small Guildhall Ward lies beyond, which is
home to many craftsmen and artisans. They in turn sell their goods in the
neighbouring Market Ward, the
commercial wing of the city and arguably its beating heart. Just beyond the
Market Ward, the Lady’s Ward commences
again, and a traveller has completed one circumnavigation of the ring (and is
probably very tired and thirsty).
Sigil as it appears in Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Artwork by Jason Engle.
Population
The city of Sigil is a way-station for people travelling
across the planes. At any one time it is estimated that well over three million
sentients are within the city, but most of them will be transients. The
permanent population of the city is much harder to gauge, with estimates
ranging from half a million to one million. The Lower Ward and Hive are crowded
and jam-packed with rickety buildings, whilst the Lady’s and Clerk’s wards are
home to more spacious, sprawling estates and are relatively quieter. The Market
is bustling and rowdy. The city’s population also consists of every species
imaginable from the multiverse: humans (who tend to get everywhere) are
reasonably common, but so are tieflings and other more adventurous of the
planar species.
The Doors
The only way in or out of Sigil is through interdimensional portals,
often called “doors” in the city. Some portals are clearly and publicly marked,
and people can freely pass through them. Other portals open and close at random
in the city, ready to snare the unwary; some portals are only passable through
one direction so cannot be used to return to the city. Yet other portals,
usually those leading to more exotic, dangerous or unstable parts of the
multiverse, can only be passed by those who have the correct key. The
difficulties of accessing or leaving the city have occasionally led it to being
nicknamed “The Cage”, although other sources for the name have been proposed.
As a result of the doors, the city is home to almost every
species imaginable in the multiverse. Tieflings and elves from Toril mix with
demons of the Abyss and half-dwarves from Athas and kender from Krynn. Normally
hostile species – such as beholders, dark elves, devils from Baator and even
the occasional smaller chromatic dragon – may be found peacefully engaged in
uncharacteristic pursuits, such as shopping in the Market Ward or visiting the
Brothel for Slating Intellectual Lusts. Violence in Sigil is certainly not
unknown, but large-scale riots, civil disorder and conflict simply do not occur.
The Factions
The city is dominated by fifteen political factions, each
one of which pursues a moral or thematic philosophy. The fifteen factions are
the Athar (who deny the divinity of
deities); Godsmen (who believe in
the potential divinity of all living beings); Bleak Cabal (who believe that there is no metaphysical reality
imposed from without and only physical laws and individual action matter), Doomguard (who believe in the
inevitability of entropy and the eventual annihilation of everything); Dustmen (who believe that life and
death are false states of existence and strive for a balanced existence of emotional
denial, the True Death); the Fated
(who believe that might makes right and the strong are allowed to profit from
the weak); the Guvners (who believe
that knowledge is everything and are experts in both scientific and judicial
law); the Indeps (who believe in
absolute individual freedom and reject the notion of the factions altogether);
the Harmonium (who believe in power,
stability and control through authority and discipline); the Mercykillers (who believe that mercy is
for the weak and the merciful should be punished); the Anarchists (who believe in anarchy); the Signers (who believe that everyone is the centre of their own
personal reality and they should strive to make the most of their individual
existences); the Sensates (who seek
to experience that all can be experienced to make the most of existence); the Ciphers (who seek “oneness” with the
multiverse to achieve transcendence); and the Chaosmen (who believe that truth is only revealed in uncertainty
and discord, if not outright chaos and mayhem).
The factions are powerful and influential in the city,
although they are also dangerous. Travellers passing through Sigil are advised not to
let themselves get caught up in their political webs if they do not plan to
stay long. Conversely, those who plan to make a home permanently in the Cage
will have little choice but to pick a side. The factions engage in
philosophical debate with one another and conflict in the city, particularly
between the factions whose philosophies are not in conflict, is often limited
to high-minded (if often spirited) discussions in the city’s many taverns.
However, some of the factions are diametrically opposed to
one another. The Harmonium, for example, has little to no time for either the
Anarchists or Indeps, and frequently comes into conflict with the Chaosmen. But
widespread violence in the city is limited by the true ruler of all Sigil and
her word of law: the Lady’s Peace.
Her Serenity the Lady of Pain as she appeared in the Planescape Campaign Setting Boxed Set (1994). Artwork by Tony Diterlizzi.
The Lady
The true ruler – or guardian – of Sigil is known only as the
Lady, or occasionally (and not in her hearing), the “Lady of Pain”. The
standard form of address is “Her Serenity”. The Lady is an extremely tall
humanoid female with a piercing gaze. She is always clothed in immense robes
and floats above the ground, never touching the street. Her head is surrounded
by a mantle of imposing blades. She has no castle, manse or known abode,
appearing and disappearing in the streets at will. She also never speaks.
Instead, the Lady is always accompanied by her minions, the dabus. The dabus
are humanoids with yellow skin, white hair and goatlike horns, likewise
floating slightly above the ground, who communicate through visual written communiques,
floating hieroglyphs known as rebuses. Over the centuries most of the
inhabitants of Sigil have come fluent in what these symbols mean, which is
essential because they are ignored at mortal peril.
Those who threaten the Lady’s Peace are “mazed”, disappearing
into pocket dimensions consisting of mazes. These mazes may be physical
obstructions, or conjured out of the nightmares of the individual, or form some
kind of existential paradox challenging the prisoner’s very beliefs and
self-identity. Those who escape their maze may return peacefully to Sigil, but very
few ever do, having usually been exposed to sights and ideas that haunt their
waking and sleeping moments alike for the remainder of their existence. Being
mazed is considered a mild punishment compared to the alternatives, however.
Those who transgress further, by inciting faction wars or
riots, may find the Lady’s Shadow falling on them. The Lady herself maintains a
clam demeanour at all times and certainly never engages in physical combat or
spellcasting. Instead, the merest touch of the shadow of her mantle of blades
will result in maiming, dismemberment, or instantaneous flaying alive. The Lady
is immune to all forms of physical coercion or magic.
Indeed, the Lady’s very presence appears to warp the
standing field of null-magic on the plane. The Outlands are notable as magical
effects disappear closer to the centre, and at the base of the Spire magic
simply becomes unusable. The Lady appears to reverse this field and allows
magic to be used within the confines of Sigil. Many mages theorise that the
Lady’s presence also allows Sigil itself to exist. If someone were to somehow
kill the Lady, it is possible Sigil would plummet out of the sky to its
destruction seconds later.
The Lady’s true name, origins and nature are all utterly
unknown. It is known that the only time she was ever even slightly challenged
was when the god Aoskar managed to gain entrance to the city to strive for
dominance. The Lady destroyed him without drawing breath. This has led to the
widespread belief that the Lady herself is either a goddess, or has the powers
of one within Sigil. Some have theorised that if Sigil is the Cage, then the
Lady may be its gaoler or, more disconcertingly, its prisoner.
Behind the Scenes
Sigil, the City of Doors, is arguably the single most
intriguing and compelling city ever created for the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game. A bizarre city where
ideology and philosophy determined a person’s circumstance and wars were fought
with ideas and arguments rather than swords and magic, it was the New Weird a
good few years before the New Weird even existed. The fact that it came from
the game that was arguably the very definition of “stock fantasy” was even more
remarkable.
Sigil originated in the Planescape
Campaign Setting boxed set, released by TSR, Inc. in 1994 for the 2nd
Edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.
The idea behind the Planescape world
was to take the long-standing different planes of reality established in
previous D&D products, most notably Jeff Grubb’s Manual of the Planes (1987), and flesh them out into a full
setting.
Veteran and well-regarded game designer David “Zeb” Cook
took charge of the project. Early on he realised that the planes were too vast
and remote a concept to easily explain, so he created Sigil and the Outlands as
a way of presenting the planes in miniature and concentrating the ideas in a
smaller area of space. Sigil also conveniently provided the players with a home
base, somewhere they could use to range out to other worlds on adventures, but
also vast enough in itself for entire campaigns to play out in its streets and
on its rooftops.
Monte Cook (no relation) and Colin McComb fleshed out the Planescape setting over numerous
expansions, but the setting didn’t really take off in popularity the way TSR
had been hoping. The final Planescape
roleplaying product was published in 1998 and the setting faded out of print
afterwards. However, the adventures and materials related to Sigil had proven
quite popular so Sigil lived on. When the 3rd Edition of D&D was released in 2000, Sigil
was referenced in the rulebooks and the Manual
of the Planes, new editions of which were released in 2001 and 2009 (for 4th
Edition). The city has been referenced in the current 5th Edition of
the game, with the hope it may be the focal point for a future setting or
adventure.
However, the pen-and-paper game is not the real reason for
Sigil’s popularity. In late 1999 Black Isle released a computer roleplaying
game called Planescape: Torment,
created by Chris Avellone and Colin McComb, who had worked on the pen-and-paper
game. The game, almost fully half of which was set in Sigil, fully embraced the
setting’s ideals and gripped the imagination of hundreds of thousands of
players as they grappled with the fate of the mysterious “Nameless One” and his
growing crew of damaged and strange friends. The game has often been hailed as
the single greatest CRPG ever created, in no small part to its vividly strange
setting.
In terms of fiction Sigil has appeared in only a handful of
novels, most successfully Pages of Pain
by Troy Denning which attempted to fill in some of the backstory of the Lady of
Pain without actually ruining the character. It was an arguable success.
However, the cessation of the Planescape
campaign line in 1998 meant that the fiction line was cancelled as well.
Sigil stands as one of the weirdest and most interesting
cities created in the history of fantasy, owing more of a debt to Moorcock and
Harrison than Tolkien or Leiber. It’ll be interesting to see if it returns to
prominence in future D&D
products, especially with a new line of movies based on the setting in
development.
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