3-chapter-2-sigil-the-city-of-doors

Chapter 2: Sigil, the City of Doors

Source: Sigil and the Outlands, p. 15

Sigil is the crossroads of the multiverse, a city at the center of the Great Wheel. Connected to every plane of existence and the infinite worlds among them, the City of Doors brims with commerce, travel, schemes, and adventure. Sigil is commonly referred to as the Cage because the only way into or out of the city is through one of its countless portals—pathways controlled by the enigmatic Lady of Pain.

Where Is Sigil?

Sigil simultaneously exists at the center of the Great Wheel and nowhere. In the middle of the Outlands, an impossibly tall needle of a mountain, the Spire, rises into the sky. Sigil floats above the apex of the Spire, barely visible from the ground, constructed on the inside of a massive stone torus. Attempts to ascend to the city by climbing or flight are futile, as are efforts to reach the top of the Spire.

Sigil at a Glance

Once inside the city, a visitor is greeted by a vast urban tangle of bladed buildings in a wild array of architectural styles. Built within a great ring, the city curves before and behind observers, as if they stood in a bowl or valley, stretching upward and disappearing into an industrial haze. On a clear day, a creature that looks upward sees the other side of the city, curving far overhead. Visitors can find this reality unsettling. There are no suns, moons, stars, or other celestial bodies in the sky above Sigil, though city lights twinkle above in the darkest hours.

Sigil is built to the edges of the ring, forming a wall of structures along its border. Anyone who climbs atop this outer wall of buildings can look out over the edge into an empty sky. Few who cross the edge are ever heard from again. Those who pass over the edge don’t end up in the Outlands; rather, they are flung to random corners of the planes.

Sigil Poster Map

Included with this product is a “poster map of Sigil”. The city’s ever-changing nature and its myriad portals render concepts like distance, size, and travel time irrelevant. How long it takes to get from point to point in Sigil is up to the DM. Prominent sites of interest are noted on the map, but countless other locations fill the city’s ever-shifting streets, which the DM can detail.

Features of Sigil

Sigil has the following features:

• Day and Night. Sigil observes a 24-hour day-night cycle. The sky gradually fills with luminescence during the day and fades into deep darkness at night. This light isn’t sunlight. Sigil’s brightest and darkest points in time are known as peak and antipeak.
• Gravity. Objects are pulled toward whichever section of the city’s ground is closest.
• Weather. Fog, smog, and drizzle—the most weather variation Sigil sees—gather at ground level and limit visibility to 1d6 × 50 feet on the murkiest of days. The temperature varies between balmy and chilly year-round and rarely nears extremes.

Alterations to Magic

Planar magic works differently in Sigil. The following magical restrictions apply there:

• Banishment. Effects that banish a target from Sigil treat the target as if Sigil were its home plane.
• Extradimensional Space. Extradimensional spaces, demiplanes, and pocket dimensions—such as those created by a bag of holding or the rope trick spell—function within Sigil, but those spaces follow all these restrictions as if they were part of the city.
• Planar Travel. Effects that allow interplanar travel, such as astral projection or plane shift, fail if used to try to enter or leave Sigil, with one exception (see the “Teleportation Circles” section below).
• Summoning. Spells, magic items, and effects that summon creatures or objects from other planes, such as a ring of djinni summoning, instead summon targets from within Sigil if possible or otherwise fail. Effects that summon a specific target from outside Sigil, as with a Leomund’s secret chest spell, fail automatically.
• Teleportation. Attempts to teleport into or out of Sigil fail, but such magic functions normally when used to teleport within the city.
• Teleportation Circles. Permanent teleportation circles exist within Sigil, but attempts to create new ones fail. Those with permission can use them to enter the city via the plane shift spell but not to leave.

Note

Summoning in the Cage

With the exception of permanent teleportation circles, the Lady of Pain prevents spells and other powers from allowing anything to enter the City of Doors. That means creatures and objects from outside in the multiverse can’t be summoned or conjured into Sigil by any means. Summoning abilities a character might have, such as the conjure elemental spell or a class feature that summons a companion, still function as normal with these features calling only creatures that exist somewhere within Sigil itself.

The unique planar geography of Sigil should create interesting, even if sometimes confounding, twists, but it shouldn’t prevent a character from doing what they do best.

Life in Sigil

Creatures from every corner of the planes live and toil in the City of Doors, bringing fragments of their cultures to the multiversal hub. Over eons, these cultural tenets have blended and evolved into a unique way of life made possible by the myriad portals that exist at the Lady of Pain’s sufferance.

Inhabitants

Sigil is the backstage of the multiverse. Celestials and Fiends share drinks in genie-owned taverns, agents of evil gods trot through the streets astride nightmares, and hags stable faerie steeds alongside pegasi and beasts of living stone. As a result of this mingling, fundamentally incompatible parts of the multiverse come into direct contact. They don’t always clash, but when they do, authorities maintain order and stifle cosmic peril. Only when these eruptions threaten the city on a grand scale does the Lady of Pain intervene.

Humans are the earliest known inhabitants of the City of Doors. Some sages track the existence and spread of humans back to Sigil itself, rather than to a deity or its creations.

Various factions handle the day-to-day governance of Sigil, enforcement of laws, and maintenance of civic infrastructure. These groups each follow a philosophy inspired by a cosmic aspect of the multiverse, and they actively recruit visitors and citizens into their ranks.

Gods and godlike figures—including archdevils and demon lords—can’t enter Sigil by any means. However, their schemes and influence still find their way into the city through their agents.

Currency and Trade

Neither port nor proximity dictates trade in the City of Doors, granting its merchants and artisans access to the planes and their wondrous offerings. Woodcarvers whittle toys from golden trees toppled in Arborea, blacksmiths forge weapons from infernal ingots, and tavern chefs cook halfling recipes passed down on worlds of the Material Plane. With enough time, connections, and coin, one can find anything in Sigil’s markets.

A dizzying array of coinage flows through Sigil. It doesn’t matter where a coin was minted—if it’s made of precious metal and the weight is right, the money is usually good. However, some traders are particular about the currencies they accept. An efreeti merchant selling instruments from the City of Brass might accept only rainbow sapphires from the Elemental Plane of Earth. Perhaps a night hag hawking rare spell components refuses all currency but fresh larvae from Hades, while a bone devil might siphon years off the buyer’s life as payment for a diabolical blade.

Buyers can find goods of every shape, size, and sort in one of Sigil’s many marketplaces, the largest of which is the Great Bazaar (see the ""Market Ward"" section later in this chapter), though individual businesses lie scattered among the wards.

Services

Any and every service is for sale in the Cage. Courier services staffed by mephits, imps, and lantern archons (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) carry messages across planar boundaries. Brave exterminators rid buildings of cranium rats, curses, and dangerous afflictions. Clandestine agencies offer escape from infernal debt collectors or other looming perils by killing their clients, keeping the bodies safe and preserved, and resurrecting them when trouble has died down, sometimes years or decades later.

Travelers from across the multiverse flood the city, whose establishments cater to a diverse clientele. Taverns and inns are common, their taprooms shaped by the fantastical folk who own them—angels, githzerai, and a host of friendly monsters who scrape by in the City of Doors. No matter where a visitor is from, they can find familiar comforts in Sigil.

Getting Around

Knowing where to look for something one needs is made challenging by Sigil’s prodigious sprawl. Without the aid of magic or in-depth knowledge of portals within the city and their destinations, navigating the Cage is a dizzying affair.

Fortunately, two services exist throughout Sigil to help travelers find their way: sedan chairs and touts. Visitors to the Clerks’ Ward can also hire the cabs of “Tea Street Transit” (see the ""Clerks’ Ward"" section).

Sedan Chairs

Sedan chairs are comfortable chairs carried by burly types, Humanoid or otherwise. Sedan chairs act as a citywide taxi service, lingering near civic buildings, municipal hubs, and marketplaces.

A typical sedan chair ride costs 1 sp per passenger and can carry two Medium or smaller creatures to a destination in Sigil, but there are some places they simply won’t go—like “Undersigil” or unsafe parts of the “Hive Ward”. Heavier chairs that ferry larger customers or groups exist, carried by brawny creatures such as ogres or umber hulks. These deluxe chairs cost more, a minimum of 1 gp per passenger, and those who carry them might be willing to travel to dangerous areas of the city for an extra fee.

Touts

Touts are independent local guides and translators who know the ins and outs of Sigil’s wards. The best touts know shortcuts through the city to hidden gems off the beaten paths.

A typical tout charges 2 sp per hour of guidance. More reliable touts vetted by influential clients charge premium prices, starting at 2 gp per hour. Touts who speak more esoteric languages, who have connections with one or more factions, or who can provide magical assistance can command upward of 20 gp per hour.

Language

As people and beings from everywhere find their way to Sigil, every conceivable language comes with them. Common is the most frequently spoken language. The fact that Common-speaking travelers from different worlds can meet in Sigil and understand one another perplexes linguists and suggests that the language originated in Sigil. Creatures native to Sigil are typically fluent in Common and one other language.

Visitors who need help communicating can always find touts willing to translate for a price. This service extends to the Cant, a complex local slang heard in some corners of the city.

Local Nuisances

While Sigil’s inhabitants potentially pose the greatest threat to those exploring the city, two dangers pervade Sigil: cranium rats and razorvine.

Cranium Rats

Rats thrive on the garbage that gathers in Sigil’s alleys and sewers. Common and giant rats are found throughout the Cage, as are variant cranium rats known as squeakers (further detailed in “Morte’s Planar Parade”). Adapted to the city, squeakers share their psionic abilities with citizens to create a citywide communication network, though some cranium rat swarms have agendas of their own.

Razorvine

Farming in Sigil is virtually nonexistent due to the scarcity of arable land. Outside of private gardens and the occasional community plot, the only plant that flourishes in the City of Doors is razorvine, a prickly hazard native to the Lower Planes. This black, creeping ivy has broad, glossy leaves with razor-sharp stems and thorns. Work crews fight the rapidly growing weed from overrunning the city. Others use razorvine strategically to deter intruders by letting it grow along estate walls or as carefully cultivated hedges. Rules for “razorvine” can be found in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide”.

Portals

Sigil boasts more planar portals than any other location in the multiverse. These innumerable doors link locations in Sigil to destinations on other planes or elsewhere in the city. Any opening in the City of Doors might be one of these magic gateways. Fundamental to any Planescape campaign, “portals” are further detailed in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide” and the sections below.

Portal Basics

Most portals aren’t always open. Instead, they open at certain times, when a particular condition is met, in response to a command word or phrase, or when a traveler is holding a particular object called a portal key. When a creature with a portal’s key crosses a portal’s threshold, the portal remains open until the start of that creature’s next turn.

Portals are usually invisible when they’re inactive (including to detect magic spells), but they can be detected by the true seeing or warp sense spell (see “chapter 1” of this book for a description of the latter). When a portal activates, it typically becomes outlined in light with its destination visible beyond.

Portal Keys

A portal key can be any sort of object or a particular key created for that portal. Keys often bear some symbolic connection to their destination, such as a silver sphere for the Astral Plane, a length of chain for Carceri, or a white lily for Elysium. The key functions on either side of a portal, be it in Sigil or its destination.

Far rarer are portal keys that aren’t objects. These can be simple or strange: a type of creature, a memory in the traveler’s mind, or a whistled tune.

Portal Quirks

Some portals have strange magical quirks. If you want to dress up a standard portal, roll on the Portal Quirks table or choose from its examples.

A quote from A mimir to a planar traveler

WARNING: Based on publicly available municipal data, the portal in front of which you are standing leads to a vertical drop of approximately calibrating… calibrating… two hundred feet. Proceed with caution.

Creating a Portal

You can create portals quickly by choosing or rolling on the Planar Portals table. First, decide whether the portal’s destination resides in Sigil or on another plane. Then, roll on the table twice: once to generate a portal anchor—the physical location in Sigil where the portal exists—and again for a destination and its thematically related portal keys.

Sigil destinations appear in the ""Sigil Gazetteer"" section later in this chapter. The “planes of existence” are detailed in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide”.

The Lady of Pain

The greatest entity in Sigil is the Lady of Pain, an eternal being who watches over the Cage. She appears almost human, although she most definitely isn’t. She wears ornate robes that shroud her body, and a mantle of blades coated in blue-green verdigris surrounds her masklike face. No one is certain who or what exactly the Lady of Pain is, but it’s widely accepted she’s a being on par with deities. Strong enough to bar gods and their ilk from entering her city, the Lady of Pain forbids followers of her own. To worship her is more than taboo; it is an unforgivable crime punishable by imprisonment in the Mazes.

The Lady maintains the cosmic neutrality of Sigil. The city doesn’t take part in the Blood War, it doesn’t throw its weight behind the shining righteousness of Mount Celestia or contracts originating in the Nine Hells, and it’s never a battleground for the conflicts of Material Plane worlds.

On rare occasions, the Lady of Pain drifts through the streets, hovering above the ground. Creatures that interfere with her are flayed by her stare or vanish into nothingness as she turns to face them. Wise travelers give the Lady a wide berth, finding pressing business elsewhere as she passes by. Some locals claim that the Lady’s features occasionally take on a golden or steely sheen. Whether this is in response to threats to her city or other influences is a mystery.

Residents of Sigil view the Lady of Pain with fearful awe. A distant guardian, she leaves the city’s daily governance to the many factions that call it home. She has no residence, and no temples to her exist within the city.

The Lady’s means of protecting Sigil are the dabus, the Mazes, and her complete control over the city’s portals.

Dabus

Dabus are silent, floating beings who serve the Lady of Pain. Found only in Sigil, dabus communicate through visual rebuses, conjured illusory images that convey their thoughts.

Dabus maintain Sigil’s infrastructure, repairing crumbling buildings, ensuring portals function properly, cutting back rampant razorvine, and patching city streets. To most citizens of Sigil, dabus are nothing more than cryptic workers, yet these mysterious beings also punish those who disrupt city life. Whatever opposes the Lady’s edicts or the smooth functioning of Sigil, dabus work to correct.

For more details on dabus, see “Morte’s Planar Parade”.

The Mazes

The Mazes are demiplanar cages created by the Lady of Pain. Reserved for would-be power mongers and dissidents who threaten the city on a grand scale—or foolishly target the Lady herself—the Mazes swallow their prisoners in an instant. The Mazes resemble a dense labyrinth of empty streets and alleys in Sigil but are devoid of life and repeat endlessly.

No magic allows a creature banished to the Mazes to escape or communicate with the planes beyond. Creatures in the Mazes don’t require food, drink, or sleep and are cursed to an indefinite, isolated existence. An urban legend states the Lady of Pain leaves a single portal in every Maze, but finding the escape route is all but impossible for the imprisoned, as even if such portals exist, they can’t be detected through magical means. The few who claim to have escaped the Mazes are quickly branded as liars.

Locking the Cage

Sigil’s portals operate at the Lady of Pain’s will, as do the few permanent teleportation circles hidden among the city’s wards. Her influence stops spells and other features from allowing creatures to enter or leave the city. She even bars gods from stepping foot in the city—a ban she can extend to anyone at any time. The Lady knows when any creature uses a portal and can block that creature from entering or leaving, but she reserves this intervention for extreme circumstances.

During times of great strife, notably when Sigil’s factions war openly against one another, the Lady can cause all the city’s portals to cease functioning. This grinds the city to a halt; food and drink can’t enter the city, sewage and refuse pool in the streets, and corpses stack in the Mortuary with no hope of being interred. This compels the factions to quickly resolve their conflicts.

Interfering with the Lady

The Lady of Pain is omnipresent, unknowable, and invincible. With a look, she can flense troublesome creatures to within an inch of their lives. Any creature that targets her with an attack, a spell, or any other hostile or prying effect—in some cases so much as speaking to her—is assailed by overwhelming pain and immediately drops to 1 hit point. If the creature hasn’t learned its lesson, the Lady sends it to the Mazes in the next blink.

Similar to other godlike beings, the Lady of Pain has no stat block. She is beyond the ability of characters to defeat by conventional means.

Factions of Sigil

On the Outer Planes, belief shapes reality. Cosmic concepts such as law and chaos can imbue true believers with newfound power, and when enough creatures unite under one ideology, their beliefs can remold the planes themselves. In Sigil, this power rests with the factions, like-minded philosophers guided by cosmic truths about the multiverse and its workings. Their philosophies are often associated with a plane or realm.

Factions control aspects of civic existence in Sigil, governing the day-to-day needs of a thriving metropolis, such as entertainment or law enforcement. Despite their influence within the city, factions have been erased from the city in the past, and current factions tread carefully to avoid that fate for themselves. They actively recruit new members from citizenry, travelers, and even the ranks of other factions. In the meantime, they vie for power in the Cage in a way that doesn’t upset Sigil’s order or provoke the Lady of Pain.

Factions are led by individuals known as factols. These leaders embody their groups’ philosophies and serve different roles depending on their factions’ needs. Factols and their delegates also represent their factions in a council that debates and passes laws in the “Hall of Speakers” (see the ""Clerks’ Ward"" section later in this chapter). Most factions also have a physical headquarters in Sigil where they carry out aspects of civic governance. Within these areas, both geographical and influential, dedicated midranking faction members called factotums act as officers, furthering the interests of their factions within the city as clerks, squad leaders, and tutors. Factotums also keep an eye out for promising recruits to their philosophy.

Ascendant Factions

Factions wax and wane, shifting the balance of power in Sigil. The most influential factions are known as ascendant factions, widely recognized groups that oversee aspects of daily life in the city. Currently Sigil has twelve ascendant factions.

The following sections present these factions, along with notes on their leaders, sites in Sigil that serve as their headquarters (detailed later in this chapter), planes on which they operate, common members, common nicknames, and their roles in the City of Doors.

Athar

Who Claim the Gods Are Frauds

• Factol. Terrance
• Headquarters. “Shattered Temple”
• Aligned Plane. Astral Plane
• Members. Disillusioned worshipers, skeptics
• Epithet. Defiers

The Athar believe that the gods are impostors. For all their might, the so-called deities are merely mortals who have accumulated enough power to convince the rest of the multiverse otherwise. With enough time, talent, and dedication, anyone could ascend to godhood.

Defiers accept that there might be true deities that oversee everything, but such beings are beyond comprehension. They assert that worshipers of the gods draw their power from unknowable sources—false gods simply take the credit.

The Athar aren’t fools. They let the powers that be call themselves gods, while the faction works subtly to discover the secret behind the curtain of the multiverse and look on the unknowable.

The Athar are led by Factol Terrance (neutral good, human Athar null; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”). While many Defiers become bitter, Terrance remains compassionate, pointing wayward souls toward truth like a friendly guide—a guardian and shepherd of priests who fall from their previous devotions. Terrance reveres an entity known as the Greater Unknown, which he believes is the source of all divine power.

Faction Attire

Defiers wear geometric, starry fabrics that hint at their astral ties. They adorn their outfits with silver chains and broken holy symbols.

Role in Sigil

The Athar gather in the Shattered Temple, a place once dedicated to Aoskar, a now-dead god of portals. Rather than serve in Sigil’s government, the Athar’s self-appointed spy network closely surveils the city’s faiths. When a temple pushes a god’s influence too strongly, the Athar either deal with the problem themselves or leak the information to a faction that will, such as the Harmonium. The Athar regard members of the Mind’s Eye as allies.

Bleak Cabal

Who Find No Sense in the Multiverse

• Factol. Lhar
• Headquarters. “Gatehouse”
• Aligned Plane. Pandemonium
• Members. Consolers, healers, nihilists
• Epithet. Bleakers

To the Bleak Cabal, the quest for cosmic meaning is futile—the multiverse doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t supposed to. With no greater truth, individuals must derive their own meaning from the multiverse. This introspection kindles empathy and kindness in many Bleakers, who commit themselves to easing the suffering of others. Existence is merciless, so the Bleak Cabal must show mercy in its stead.

Bleakers tend to those overcome by the strange realities of the Outer Planes, which exert their influence on travelers who wander past their boundaries. The Bleak Cabal rehabilitates creatures that have been stricken with planar curses, glimpsed mind-shattering expanses, or ventured into the howling darkness of Pandemonium.

Factol Lhar (chaotic good, orc gladiator) surveys the citizens of Sigil with growing concern. Lhar works to expand the Bleak Cabal’s charitable influence. Under his direction, the Bleak Cabal has opened community kitchens throughout the city where hungry citizens can get a free hot meal. However, some factions don’t view this expansion as benevolent. Lhar moves carefully, always looking for like-minded individuals to further his cause.

Faction Attire

Bleakers dress in gloomy, drab color schemes. Frayed clothing and weather-beaten gear are common.

Role in Sigil

The Bleak Cabal’s headquarters is the Gatehouse, a fortress of healing and respite in the Hive Ward. Bleakers offer sanctuary to anyone in need, notably to those afflicted by planar maladies. The Bleak Cabal’s philosophy puts them at odds with the Fraternity of Order, Harmonium, and Mercykillers—if there’s no meaning, there can’t be order. Conversely, the Doomguard, Hands of Havoc, and Heralds of Dust all find enough common points with Bleakers to call them allies.

Doomguard

Who Celebrate Destruction and Decay

• Factol. Pentar
• Headquarters. “Armory”
• Aligned Plane. Elemental Chaos
• Members. Entropists, soldiers, weaponsmiths
• Epithet. Sinkers

The Doomguard understands the purpose of everything is to crumble. Existence inevitably falls into ruin—nothing lasts forever, not even the gods.

Sinkers don’t stand in the way of the multiverse’s destruction. They see decay and entropy as entirely natural, something to be fostered in its own time. They don’t recklessly hasten destruction or oppose creation. Instead, they see that every act of creation is intrinsically tied to destruction. Trees must be felled and stone cut to build a house, and the house must eventually burn, rot, or wither away.

The highest-ranking Doomguard members aside from the factol are the doom lords, who each oversee a faction citadel built at the edge of the Elemental Chaos.

The Doomguard’s leader is the fearless Factol Pentar (human Doomguard doom lord; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), who revels in danger and decay. Pentar has come to blows with Harmonium patrols on many occasions. She toys with the idea of aligning with the Hands of Havoc, hoping to toss a spark into the mass of dry razorvine that is Sigil.

Faction Attire

Members of the Doomguard garb themselves in the bones of long-dead creatures and deliberately allow their weapons and gear to rust. Sinkers display their scars proudly.

Role in Sigil

The Doomguard controls the Armory in Sigil and oversees the production and sale of weapons in the city. Thanks to the quality and number of armaments required by the factions, the Doomguard holds leverage in many interfactional negotiations. The Doomguard bears a long, bitter, mutual enmity toward the Harmonium, and the Fraternity of Order rejects the Doomguard’s philosophy entirely. Sinkers have strong allies in both the Bleak Cabal and the Heralds of Dust.

Fated

Who Take All They Can and More

• Factol. Duke Rowan Darkwood
• Headquarters. “Hall of Records”
• Aligned Plane. Ysgard
• Members. Bullies, moguls, warlords
• Epithet. Takers

To the Fated, the multiverse belongs to those with the strength to take it. Destiny and the will of the gods are poor excuses used by folk too weak to go after what they want—everyone makes their own fate. At the same time, nothing’s free. It takes work, dedication, and sometimes blood to seize greatness.

There’s no inherent malice in the Fated’s philosophy. It takes more than material wealth to provide for one’s needs, and not everything worth having can be taken by force. Respect and happiness, for example, must be earned (or bought). Still, Takers are branded as callous and selfish, if not outright feared, and they never offer assistance willingly unless it benefits them in some way.

Factol Rowan Darkwood (chaotic neutral, human archmage) holds the reins of the Fated in his tightfisted grip. “Duke” Darkwood, as he’s sometimes known, is a commanding presence whose every step is an implacable stride toward his next prize. With brutal efficiency, he exploits the financial stranglehold his faction has over Sigil, richly rewarding informants for secrets that might give the Fated leverage over the other factions.

Faction Attire

Takers dress in ostentatious outfits marked by heavy embroidery. They sport elaborate hairstyles, and each member carries an hourglass of golden sand—a reminder that time is money.

Role in Sigil

Secure in the Hall of Records, the Fated cement their role as the tax collectors of the Cage. Their ruthless debt collection efforts and aggressive foreclosures earn them a heaping share of animosity. They have bad blood with the Harmonium, who view the Fated as wrongheaded and dangerous, and Factol Darkwood and Factol Montgomery of the Society of Sensation are bitter rivals.

Fraternity of Order

Who Discover Laws to Find Truth

• Factol. Hashkar
• Headquarters. “High Courts”
• Aligned Plane. Mechanus
• Members. Con artists, lawyers, spellcasters
• Epithet. Guvners

The Fraternity of Order examines existence through the lens of three tenets: laws are representations of power, knowledge is power, and knowledge of law is the ultimate power. By understanding those laws, individuals can exploit them—or break them under the right circumstances.

According to the Guvners, there are three types of regulations. The lowest of these are Rules, the laws that govern people’s behavior. Next come Laws, such as the laws of nature or the edicts of gods. Ultimate authority descends from Axioms, overarching laws that govern existence and give gods their immense power. Guvners theorize about Axioms but know few of them. A being who masters all Axioms can rule the multiverse.

Factol Hashkar (lawful neutral, dwarf Fraternity of Order law bender; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) is the highest authority in Sigil’s court system, though he casts verdicts in only the most important cases. Hashkar is as long winded as he is knowledgeable, and any inquiry sparks an impromptu lecture. Outside legal matters, the factol splits his time between learning and lecturing. He has mastered at least one Axiom, from which he derives his magical abilities.

Faction Attire

Guvners wear distinctive tall hats and matching robes. They are often accompanied by small attendants—mephits, imps, and homunculi who carry their tomes of order.

Role in Sigil

The Fraternity of Order reviews, studies, and adjudicates the laws of Sigil, all the while searching for hidden truths that dictate reality. Guvners gather detailed records of every portal and key they find in Sigil and pay well for such information. Unsurprisingly, the Guvners are staunch allies of the Harmonium and Mercykillers and bitterly oppose the Hands of Havoc.

Hands of Havoc

Who Free Society through Chaos

• Factol. None
• Headquarters. “Various warehouses”
• Aligned Plane. Limbo
• Members. Anarchists, arsonists, freedom fighters
• Epithet. Wreakers

The Hands of Havoc are a controlled burn. A collection of radical individualists united under the banner of change, they set fire to outdated and oppressive institutions, letting the ashes pave the way for something new.

Wreakers vehemently oppose rigid laws, especially those that serve bureaucracies more than they do people. The Hands of Havoc convene in secret and mobilize as one—a wildfire that burns away crumbling structures and systems alike to create sanctuaries for those in need.

No one individual leads the Hands of Havoc. To confuse enforcers, the mantle of factol is passed between members. Whenever it seems the faction’s leader is on the verge of arrest or death, another nonconformist rises from the ranks to light the path forward.

The Hands of Havoc are champions of freedom and self-expression. Wreaker artists decorate bland buildings and forlorn structures throughout Sigil with bold murals in avant-garde styles. The passion of their ideology fuels artistic innovation, sparking trends in writing, music, and dance that spread throughout the city.

Faction Attire

Wreakers prepare for every possibility in their battles against entrenched institutions. Medical supplies and smoking lanterns dangle from their singed clothing. Members typically hide their identities behind masks, goggles, and scarves.

Role in Sigil

An official role in Sigil is inimical to the faction’s philosophy. Instead, Wreakers masquerade as members of other factions, keeping tabs in case those factions grow too powerful and need dismantlement. The Bleak Cabal and Doomguard work well with the Hands of Havoc in short bursts.

Harmonium

Who Enforce Peace through Might

• Factol. Sarin
• Headquarters. “Barracks”
• Aligned Plane. Arcadia
• Members. Authoritarians, guards, mediators
• Epithet. Hardheads

The Harmonium looks at existence and sees only two states: war and peace. Where neighbors share the same views, there’s peace—the perfect state of the multiverse—but disagreements breed conflict and instability. Members of the Harmonium believe their purpose is to unify the multiverse into peace, no matter the cost.

The Harmonium seeks to eliminate discord by any means necessary. Hardheads use education and enforcement to convert others to their philosophy, extolling the virtues of peace as they crack down on chaos in all its forms.

Many members are good-natured protectors who protect all citizens, even those who disagree with the faction’s philosophy. However, some among the ranks pursue unity at any cost. Cruel martinets who earn the Hardheads their nickname, they enforce laws ruthlessly, without flexibility or compassion.

Factol Sarin (lawful neutral, human Harmonium captain; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) commands the Harmonium. His devotion to his fellows, particularly new recruits, is renowned, and he takes a personal interest in all members who cross his path. Tough as steel, Sarin is a decisive factol who promotes honor, dignity, and peace in word and deed.

Faction Attire

Most Hardheads wear the faction’s standard-issue armor, a distinctive suit of red plate with bladed pauldrons. Under their helms, they sport short, no-nonsense hairstyles.

Role in Sigil

In the Barracks, Hardheads train, plan patrol routes, and keep records of every arrest in the Cage. The Harmonium works closely with the Fraternity of Order and the Mercykillers as Sigil’s tripartite of justice, cycling criminals through arrest, trial, and punishment. They staunchly oppose the Hands of Havoc and others who defy authority.

Heralds of Dust

Who Believe Everyone Is Already Dead

• Factol. Skall
• Headquarters. “Mortuary”
• Aligned Plane. Hades
• Members. Corpse collectors, the grief stricken, Undead
• Epithet. Dusters

The Heralds of Dust believe the multiverse itself is an afterlife—a shadow of some other existence now gone—and every creature is already dead. The “life” that beings cling to is simply the first stage of death.

Dusters seek to understand and experience the stages of death, the last of which they hold is True Death: a transcendence to a state of being beyond the multiverse. In their quest for True Death, the Heralds of Dust slowly set aside the hope and passion that chain a soul to this false life.

The Heralds of Dust have a macabre fascination with Undead. They believe undeath is a precursor to True Death and count many Undead among their ranks. Skeletons and zombies serve the faction in droves, and sapient Undead—such as ghosts, vampires, and liches—rise to factotums.

Factol Skall (neutral evil lich) is the oldest factol in Sigil. The founder of the Heralds of Dust, Skall has yet to transcend his current existence, lingering to guide as many souls as possible along the path to True Death. Skall strives to know everything and feel nothing. He makes generous use of adventurers to gather knowledge or help lay the dead to rest with dignity.

Faction Attire

Dusters dress in grim clothes associated with the work of the dead. An individual member might be mistaken for—or actually be—a gravedigger, a mortician, or a ghoul in tattered rags.

Role in Sigil

Part morgue, funeral home, and tomb, the Mortuary is the destination for Sigil’s dead. There, the Heralds of Dust count the Bleak Cabal and the Doomguard as allies. Conversely, the Mind’s Eye bristles at the Dusters’ fatalistic dismissal of life, and the Society of Sensation viscerally opposes their rejection of passion.

Mercykillers

Who Bring Justice to the Deserving

• Factol. Alisohn Nilesia
• Headquarters. “Prison”
• Aligned Plane. Acheron
• Members. Bounty hunters, executioners, vigilantes
• Epithet. Jailers

The Mercykillers believe that cold, relentless justice is absolute and that no one is above it. To the Jailers, a perfect multiverse is one purged of injustice.

Mercykillers earned their name for their ruthlessness. They’ve killed their own mercy, viewing it as an exploitable weakness. Criminals may beg as they please, but their sentences are carried out with unshakable fervor.

Jailers don’t make laws or pass judgment. Similarly, they don’t arrest lawbreakers—that’s the Harmonium’s job. Mercykillers act only after a verdict has been made, administering punishment without leniency. Members believe they answer to a higher cosmic law that absolves them of any wrongdoing during their unabating pursuit of justice.

Factol Alisohn Nilesia (lawful evil, tiefling mage), a young and cunning leader raised in Sigil’s penitentiary, was born to head the Mercykillers. She’s a strict warden, using divination magic to track down fugitives and deploy agents to retrieve them. Somehow, she finds time to personally sign off on every punishment in the Cage. Mercykillers whisper that justice never sleeps, and neither does Nilesia.

Faction Attire

Mercykillers are the picture of vengeance. Manacles rattle against their bladed armor, and masks or hoods obscure their expressions, ensuring the face of justice is detached from its duty.

Role in Sigil

The Mercykillers headquarter in the Prison, an imposing gray fortress that holds criminals sentenced by the courts of Sigil. Non-Mercykillers can gain entry under certain circumstances, such as to present evidence that might exonerate an inmate or visit a low-risk prisoner. Jailers clash with factions that elevate individual freedom, most notably the Hands of Havoc, Mind’s Eye, and Society of Sensation.

Mind’s Eye

Who Grow to Godhood

• Factol. Saladryn
• Headquarters. “Great Foundry”
• Aligned Plane. The Outlands
• Members. Crafters, guides, wanderers
• Epithet. Seekers

The Mind’s Eye sees experience and exploration as the means of fully realizing one’s own potential. By taking in the challenges and wonders of the multiverse, individuals can leverage their perspectives and insights not only to improve themselves, but also to shape reality as they see fit.

Growth and understanding are the keys to the Mind’s Eye philosophy. Members advocate for experiential learning based on observation and experimentation instead of formal study. Every Seeker practices some craft to shape their experiences into something new and refine themselves in turn.

The Mind’s Eye arose when two former factions, the Believers in the Source and the Sign of One, merged their philosophies together into a formula by which individuals seek to transcend their potential and attain the power of gods. Even still, Seekers suspect that divinity isn’t the ultimate expression of their core beliefs, but rather a stepping stone to an unknowable state of superior being.

Factol Saladryn (neutral, elf archmage) guides the relatively young faction. She rarely sojourns beyond Sigil anymore, sacrificing her own journey of personal discovery to lead the Mind’s Eye. Saladryn focuses her energy on creation, practicing many crafts she’s learned in her centuries of life.

Faction Attire

Members of the Mind’s Eye dress in sleek, opalescent robes and ornament their bodies with delicate, metalwork embellishments.

Role in Sigil

In the Great Foundry, the Mind’s Eye oversees the creation of tools and parts that most take for granted. The Athar and the Fraternity of Order both relate to the Seekers, while the Bleak Cabal and Heralds of Dust oppose them.

Society of Sensation

Who Find Truth Only in Experience

• Factol. Erin Darkflame Montgomery
• Headquarters. “Civic Festhall”
• Aligned Plane. Arborea
• Members. Artists, entertainers, revelers
• Epithet. Sensates

The Society of Sensation perceives the multiverse through experiences—the more varied, the better. By experiencing all there is—every sensation, emotion, thought, everything—one can learn and understand the entirety of existence.

Sensates live each moment as if it were the only one that ever mattered, drinking it in to know another sliver of reality. Many Sensates, particularly new members, focus only on experiences that delight the senses, but as Sensates grow, they aim to experience every facet of existence, even the bad ones. Sweet fragrances and savory bites must be balanced with the sting of failure, the weight of responsibility, and the gnawing ache of grief.

The Society of Sensation pays a price for its lack of inhibition. Outsiders view Sensates as flighty, lascivious, or untrustworthy, always jumping from one event to the next. For a Sensate, to dwell on one endeavor is to deny the truth of existence.

Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery (lawful good, human Society of Sensation Muse; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) guides the society through every lingering exploration. Factol Montgomery ensures that Sensates maintain a balance of cerebral pursuits, physical experiences, and deliberate contemplation, knowing the harm that pleasure-seeking alone can cause.

Faction Attire

Sensates garb themselves in flowing, colorful fashions that emphasize their free-spirited natures. Floral elements and glasswork embellishments are common.

Role in Sigil

The Society of Sensation provides joy and diversion to the people of Sigil, temporarily freeing them from the everyday struggles of the Cage. Sensates and members of the Mind’s Eye find common ground. Factol Montgomery’s rivalry with Duke Rowan Darkwood of the Fated sparks trouble between the two factions.

Transcendent Order

Who Act Unfettered by Thought

• Factol. Rhys
• Headquarters. “Great Gymnasium”
• Aligned Plane. Elysium
• Members. Athletes, daredevils, rescuers
• Epithet. Ciphers

The Transcendent Order holds that for a person to attain a higher state of being, they must unify their mind and body until thought and action are one. Those who act on instinct alone can achieve perfect harmony with the multiverse.

Members of the Transcendent Order rigorously train every aspect of self to align with the cadence of the multiverse. Ciphers are encouraged toward athletic regiments, but many also pursue artistic endeavors to perfection, becoming dancers, virtuosos, or abstract painters. Whatever resonates with a Cipher’s path, they must practice until the body no longer requires the mind to guide it.

Factol Rhys (neutral, tiefling Transcendent Order conduit; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) stepped up to take control of the Transcendent Order when the last factol achieved perfect understanding and vanished right in front of Rhys and other ranking Ciphers. Rhys is an enlightening coach, providing direction to trainees with choice remarks.

Faction Attire

Athletes and acrobats of all shapes and sizes, Ciphers dress in simple clothing that allows for agility and flexibility.

Role in Sigil

The Transcendent Order headquarters in the Great Gymnasium in the Market Ward. There, the Ciphers train their bodies to attune to their minds and the multiverse’s ebb and flow. The Transcendent Order looks inward for meaning, and thus it tends not to form alliances with other factions. Its members are generally well liked, and no ascendant faction opposes the Ciphers outright.

Minor Factions

In addition to the ascendant factions, Sigil contains a host of minor factions—up-and-coming philosophies, those that have seen a resurgence of members, and once-ascendant factions whose ideologies have since entered a period of decline. The following are three examples of minor factions currently in Sigil.

Free League

Who Prize the Individual Foremost

• Factol. None
• Headquarters. “Great Bazaar”
• Aligned Plane. The Outlands
• Members. Merchants, mercenaries, nonconformists
• Epithet. Indeps

The Free League is a loose collection of individuals and remnants of disbanded or fractured factions. Merchants, individualists, and dissociated citizens, the Indeps eschew factions and other organizations, simply wishing to choose their own paths.

Incanterium

Who Consume Magic and Its Secrets

• Factol. Unknown
• Headquarters. “Tower Sorcerous”
• Aligned Plane. Astral Plane
• Members. Mages, lore seekers, scribes
• Epithet. Incantifers

The Incanterium was a faction thought dead when its headquarters, the Tower Sorcerous in the “Clerks’ Ward”, vanished along with all known Incantifers. Most thought the tower was banished to the Mazes, but it has since returned, rematerializing in the vacant lot where it once stood, bringing with it the return of the Incantifers. Members of the Incanterium siphon magic from items, spells, and those who wield them to lengthen their own lifespans. They believe that by absorbing magic and mastering its rules, one can rewrite reality.

Ring Givers

Who Give as Much as They Get

• Factol. Jeremo the Natterer
• Headquarters. None
• Aligned Plane. Ysgard
• Members. Altruists, beggars, philanthropists
• Epithet. Bargainers

A direct foil to the selfish Fated, the Ring Givers hold a philosophy of charity and giving as the path to enlightenment. The Bargainers give away all they have and redistribute the hoards of greedy tycoons to the poor and needy. A common superstition in Sigil holds that any gift to the Ring Givers comes back to the donor tenfold.

Sigil Gazetteer

The City of Doors is divided into wards that are as varied as their inhabitants, from the polished heights of the bureaucratic “Clerks’ Ward” to the musty anarchy of “Undersigil”, the city’s forsaken warrens. Each ward contains one or more faction headquarters: grand buildings where Sigil’s philosophers convene and divide the city’s functions. Establishments near one of these hubs tend to align with the faction’s character. Shops clustered around the “Civic Festhall”, for example, cater to the pleasure-seeking tendencies of the Society of Sensation—wine shops, concert halls, and vendors hawking one-and-done novelties.

The Sigil Wards table outlines each of the wards and the ascendant factions that headquarter within them, as well as six minor factions, which are marked with an asterisk (*).

The sections that follow present each of the wards in greater detail. They share the following format:

• Ward Encounters. A table after the introduction presents interactions that characters might have while adventuring in the ward.
• Factions. This section details the factions that are headquartered in the ward and their operations.
• Locations. A sampling of the ward’s notable sites, including any faction headquarters, are provided here. Locations mentioned in these sections are designated on the “poster map of Sigil”.
• Megastructures. Most sections also include a map to one of Sigil’s megastructures. Often the headquarters of a faction, a megastructure can host countless adventures. The map provides an overview of some important areas within the location but doesn’t represent the megastructure in totality. To accommodate your adventures, locations can be detailed as needed, and their scales are flexible.

Clerks’ Ward

The wheels of bureaucracy turn steadily in the Clerks’ Ward, an administrative haven for bookkeepers, scribes, and petty officials. Like oil to a machine, the Clerks’ Ward provides a necessary conformity to Sigil’s turbulent streets under the fastidious eyes of the Fated.

The pristine buildings within this affluent ward are well maintained and regularly patrolled by officers of the Harmonium. Residents of the Clerks’ Ward claim it’s the safest and most honest ward in Sigil. Conflict usually occurs on paper, and structured forums for debate allow folks to resolve disagreements without resorting to violence.

Despite its rigidity, the Clerks’ Ward is a place of beauty and wonder, due in large part to the presence of the Society of Sensation. For each strict fact-checker, policy maker, and enforcer in the ward, there is an open-minded artisan, entertainer, or thrill-seeker to match. Locals routinely direct inquisitive newcomers to the Hall of Information, where visitors can ask questions, hail a sedan chair, or pester a tout for directions.

Sigil Clerks' Ward Encounters

Clerks’ Ward Factions

The following factions are headquartered in the Clerks’ Ward:

• Fated. The Fated earn widespread ire as Sigil’s tax collectors, leveraging their administrative position to serve their insatiable greed. Takers record financial agreements in the Hall of Records and revel in seizing properties at bargain-basement prices when owners default on payments. The Fated regularly hires adventurers as debt collectors.
• Incanterium. Long thought to have been banished to the Mazes by the Lady of Pain along with their base of operations, members of the Incanterium are slowly trickling back into the Cage. Called “mage drinkers” by the few who remember them, the aged Incantifers siphon magic to sustain their ancient power. Disturbed residents murmur about the Incanterium’s newly returned tower (see the ""Tower Sorcerous"" section). Rumor has it Duke Rowan Darkwood pays handsomely for information about his reclusive neighbors and their fortress.
• Society of Sensation. Sensates pepper Sigil’s otherwise drab streets with entertainment, tempting pedestrians with curiosity and excitement. All of Sigil is a stage to the Society of Sensation, but the greatest attraction is the “Civic Festhall”. Factol Erin Montgomery weaves masterful arguments in the “Hall of Speakers”, where she sways naysayers with one guiding principle: they might not recall what you said, but they always remember how you made them feel.

Clerks’ Ward Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in the Clerks’ Ward.

Civic Festhall

Creativity blossoms in the Civic Festhall, the headquarters of the Society of Sensation. Sensates spared no expense constructing this majestic building, which reaches nearly one thousand feet in height. Visitors find all manner of sensory delights within: gastronomic masterpieces served by innovative chefs; halls lined with fragrant, scratch-and-sniff statuaries; and pitch-black deprivation chambers bathed in supernatural silence.

Artistic Amenities

The Civic Festhall boasts a panoply of arts available to the public. Galleries, concert and lecture halls, museums, and exhibits too eccentric to describe fill the festhall and its satellite buildings. Contests and duels are held at the Northumber, an outdoor amphitheater, while magical light checkers the stages of its two indoor theaters: the intimate Elloweth Theater and the prodigious Ren Hall. Elloweth Theater is renowned as Sigil’s preeminent venue for high-brow performance art, and performers from across the Great Wheel flock to Elloweth Theater to take their shot at interplanar fame. Map 2.1 depicts Elloweth Theater and its promenade.

Sensoriums

The most popular offerings in the Civic Festhall are the Sensoriums, semiprivate rooms where creatures can record and relive one another’s sensory experiences through sensory stones (see “chapter 1” of this book). For a price of 10 gp, a client can feel the thrill of a researcher’s epiphany, the weight of a widow’s grief, or the warm bite of a flaky pastry. Memories and longer, more complex sensations tend to cost more, but the lure of nostalgia draws repeat customers.

The Society of Sensation pays well for sensations not contained in its extensive collection. Sensates reward adventurers for delivering sensory stones that contain coveted yet dangerous experiences, such as the thrill of stealing a coin from a sleeping dragon’s hoard. Rumors say the sensates also keep a collection of sensory stones containing unspeakable insights and experiences disruptive to multiversal peace. Sensates sequester these and other restricted sensations in a demiplanar sanctum accessible only to trusted members.

Greengage

Sensates quench their thirst at the Greengage, a humble cider shop across the street from the Civic Festhall that’s popular among gnomes, halflings, and anyone else who can tolerate its four-foot ceilings. To stay in business, the establishment’s owner, a chipper sprite named Clea Appleblossom, updates its menu daily. Clea sends adventurers to gather supplies from the “Market Ward” or, for especially rare ingredients, the Outer Planes.

Hall of Information

Located between the Hall of Records and Hall of Speakers, the Hall of Information is a gleaming, blue-domed repository of knowledge that serves as Sigil’s de facto welcome center. Sedan chair drivers, touts, and translators loiter nearby, hollering their services at pedestrians.

Public notices and odd jobs are posted to a board outside the hall. For more information, interested parties can consult a directory of municipal departments and pay any applicable fee to meet with an officer of the appropriate ministry. Inside, stewards warn visitors against touching the hall’s many polished surfaces, lest they anger Chief Bordon Mok, a no-nonsense, lawful good bariaur wanderer (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) who extinguishes misconduct with a crack of her silvered whip.

Hall of Records

Once a thriving college, the Hall of Records was foreclosed on for a slightly overdue debt to the Fated centuries ago. The Fated has since repurposed the building as its headquarters. The campus consists of six stately towers—originally seven, but the library was sold and walled off—and a sprawling network of underground archives linked to each of the academy’s founding structures.

Records

Inside the guarded complex, members of the Fated conduct all manner of documentation. Clerks file property deeds, issue birth and death certificates, and maintain extensive financial records, while scriveners meticulously prepare official proclamations for posting.

In theory, anyone in Sigil with proper approval can request a specific document or wade through the hall’s dusty stacks, but the process is mired in bureaucratic entanglements. More often, a bribe can accomplish as much in half the time, and hefty sums can convince a Taker to lose or even alter a document in the Hall of Records.

Vaults

Valuable tomes are stored in vaults beneath the campus, including The Secret History of Sigil, a detailed account of the Fated’s activities and the secrets its agents have learned. Volumes of this ongoing research project, especially recent ones, fetch a high price with opposing factions.

Unsurprisingly, the underground compound is heavily defended. Within the campus lies a thrumming portal to Ysgard, a plane where might makes right and the Takers hoard their spoils. Giants stomp out of the portal to squash intruders in the name of the Fated, causing books and scrolls to quake in their lumbering wake.

Hall of Speakers

The voices of Sigil ring out within the Hall of Speakers, where everyday complaints plant the seeds of laws. Formerly the headquarters of the faction known as the Sign of One, the Hall of Speakers is an orrery-like arrangement of rings and domed structures that beckon onlookers to make themselves heard. Before the hall stands a massive iron statue of a woman heaving a world on her shoulders with power and grace, a Signer remnant turned local landmark named The Power of One.

Debates

Public hearings take place within the Speaker’s Podium, a spacious chamber named after the wooden lecterns that dominate its stage. Though anyone can spectate, only the Council of Speakers can participate in these debates. Each ascendant faction in Sigil has at least one speaker: typically the factol and one or two other high-ranking members. However, speakers sometimes delegate their time behind the podium to an eloquent representative whom they trust to represent the faction’s interests. The debates are largely performative affairs—hour-long bouts where faction representatives embarrass each other and themselves with thinly veiled insults, boasting, and magniloquent rhetoric. The factions of Sigil are rarely in agreement, and the few proposals voted into law by the Council of Speakers are either inconsequential or quickly overturned in favor of the status quo.

Trianym

Citizens can voice their opinions freely at the Trianym, a public forum located a block from the Hall of Speakers. The Trianym consists of three cylindrical platforms with seating for scribes and spectators to witness the exchanges. Locals reward shrewd debaters by tossing coins to them, reserving fistfuls of garbage for truly awful orators. The Trianym is more than a glorified soapbox—the thoughts that ferment in the Trianym pave the way for new factions and ways of thinking.

Tea Street Transit

The onion-shaped cabs of Tea Street Transit shuttle customers throughout the Clerks’ Ward. The proprietor is Kyl Silkfoot (lawful neutral, elf druid), a crotchety elf with a raspy voice, easily spotted by the nauseating cloud of smoke that issues from his tarweed cigars. Kyl’s cabs are always clean and comfortable. Fantastic mounts—such as displacer beasts, unicorns, and bizarre ponies warped by the magic of the Outer Planes—pull the bulbous carriages.

Trusted by the ward’s wealthy elite, the cabdrivers of Tea Street Transit are a reliable source of information pertaining to government officials, esteemed intellectuals, and known criminals.

Tower Sorcerous

The Tower Sorcerous is a spiny spire of unknown material, its surface shifting like a puddle of oil. The structure has no visible doors or windows save for eight balconies that jut from its twisting frame. Although the tower’s surfaces are impenetrable to most, Incantifers step into the tower as if it were porous, leaving ripples behind them as they enter and emerge.

When the Tower Sorcerous disappeared from Sigil, it left behind an empty lot. The business that went up in its place, Fretter’s Fetters and Fritters, was destroyed when the tower suddenly reappeared. Until recently, most folk believed the Lady of Pain consigned the tower and its inhabitants to the Mazes. Few know the circumstances of the tower’s disappearance and reappearance, or what machinations brew within.

Hive Ward

Neglected by the dabus and the generosity of other wards, the Hive Ward has fallen into disrepair. Its buildings are lopsided hodgepodges of architectural styles and materials, their floors haphazardly stacked atop one another to conserve space. The crooked high-rises darken cramped alleys, many of which are dead ends in more ways than one. Many residents of the city avoid the ward when possible, but those willing to risk the Hive can partake in its seedy establishments and hidden gems.

Crime is commonplace in the Hive. Grifters, cutpurses, and miscreants band together in the moldering streets, preying on the desperate and downtrodden. Pickpockets masquerade as touts, eager to pilfer coin from stumbling sots and newcomers. Professions not outwardly criminal in nature are often morally suspect, such as corpse collectors, opportunistic scavengers who scrape out a living by gathering bodies throughout the ward and delivering them to the Mortuary for meager payouts.

Rain is more frequent in the Hive than elsewhere in Sigil, reflecting the ward’s dismal mood. When it falls, gutters ooze sludge into brackish pools of oil and rainwater, their surfaces disturbed by scurrying cranium rats. Damp rags and swollen planks cover broken windows, blotting what little light ekes through the ward’s perpetual fog.

Of all the wards in Sigil, the Hive Ward has the least oversight. Harmonium patrols are less frequent here, and peacekeepers have been known to avert their gaze from disreputable establishments. Though crime runs rampant, so do creativity and trade, and opportunities abound for those ready to seize them. Residents live unhampered by bureaucracy or judgment, free to pursue their deepest passions or indulge their guiltiest pleasures.

Sigil Hive Ward Encounters

Hive Ward Factions

The following factions are headquartered in the Hive Ward:

• Bleak Cabal. Within the Gatehouse, members of the Bleak Cabal reject the philosophies of other factions, believing the multiverse is devoid of meaning. Bleakers combat their existential dread with optimism and compassion, enriching the lives of those in and around the Hive through small acts of service. The faction maintains a network of safe havens throughout the ward where those in need can find refuge and a warm meal.
• Hands of Havoc. Arson and vandalism are tools of the trade for the Hands of Havoc, a faction of rebels. In other wards, the Wreakers’ destructive activities pave the way for reconstruction and renewal. In the Hive, however, Wreaker activity sometimes compounds the miseries of everyday life when their fires—vain attempts to garner attention from the movers and shakers of Sigil or burn away detritus within the ward—engulf the innocent. Rather than maintain a single base of operations, the Hands of Havoc operate out of warehouses strewn throughout the ward, moving constantly to evade Sigil’s enforcers.
• Heralds of Dust. The Heralds of Dust are Sigil’s undertakers. They conduct funerary rites for creatures from all places, ensuring their souls pass to the next stage of death undeterred. The bulk of the faction’s workforce consists of skeletons, zombies, and other dull-minded Undead whose bodies were donated to the Mortuary by their owners in life. The Dusters rely on corpse collectors—grim-faced laborers found primarily in the Hive—to deliver a steady stream of bodies to them for interment.

Hive Ward Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in the Hive Ward.

Bottle and Jug

Raucous, booze-fueled brawls take place in the back room of the Bottle and Jug, one of the Hive’s most infamous drinkeries. This mass of steel, barbed wire, and black granite is owned by Beatrice Bazlan, a flightless erinyes who won the joint but lost her wings in a high-stakes match against its previous owner and his two trolls. Beatrice is tough as nails and loves a good laugh at someone else’s expense. Anyone’s welcome in her taproom.

A portal to a massive pit-fighting arena rests at the back of the Bottle and Jug, disguised as the door to an always-out-of-order lavatory for big and tall creatures. Gabel, a retired pit fiend judge, guards the entrance, but most entrants respectfully call him “Your Honor.” On the other side of the door lies a bloodstained amphitheater where spectators place bets and combatants test their mettle. The current heavyweight champion is a bloodthirsty cyclops named Akra.

In addition to the typical variety of cheap swill peddled throughout the Hive, Beatrice keeps a selection of top-shelf liquors in a chilled demiplane behind the bar for scoundrels with coin to spare:

Beverages available at the Bottle and Jug include the following offerings:

• Annam’s Blood. Barreled on Ysgard, this crimson mead swirls with scenes of battle. A war cry bellows from the tap when a mug of Annam’s Blood is poured.
• Chaos Frog. This distilled spirit constantly shifts in color. Made from a plant harvested on Limbo, each bottle contains a dead slaad tadpole.
• Eight Squared. This small-batch, amber hooch comes in a rectangular bottle with a tiny cog for a cap. When placed on a flat surface, the cap rotates like the gears of Mechanus.
• Golden Gout. Imported from the Nine Hells, this spiced whiskey burns all the way down. Imbibers often belch a small flame after taking a shot.
• Swamp Water. Bottled locally by a green hag with six teeth and an infectious laugh, this murky, sour gin causes the drinker to break out in a harmless rash of purple warts that vanish within minutes.

Fell’s Tattoos

Fell, a dabus (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), runs a tattoo parlor in the Hive. From a distance, he looks like any other of his kind—a lean, purple-skinned figure in flowing robes, his horns protruding from a voluminous tuft of white hair atop his head. Shunned by the Lady of Pain and ostracized by his kin for declaring himself a priest of Aoskar, the dead god of portals, Fell now walks on the ground instead of floating above it. However, some of the dabus’s magic remains, evident in the indelible designs he weaves into his visual rebuses.

Fell’s Tattoos is a modest, oblong shack down the street from the “Smoldering Corpse Bar” (detailed below). A pearl lightning bolt above the door marks the parlor’s entrance. Inside, the quiet artist lets his handiwork speak for itself. Fell nods and smiles at his clients, producing wispy images that hang in the air and adjusting the shapes to their liking. The dabus applies each tattoo with a wave of his hand, wafting the design toward the client’s skin where it grafts itself in vibrant ink.

Magic Tattoos

The dabus’s tattoos are tinged with magic. Most effects are minor—a temporary glow or shifting pattern—but some designs function as spell scrolls that burn away once used, singeing hair, fur, or scales in the process. As a devotee of Aoskar and longtime resident of Sigil, Fell knows the locations of hundreds of portals throughout the City of Doors and their keys.

At the DM’s discretion, Fell can reproduce any of the “magic tattoos” detailed in “Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything” that are common, uncommon, or rare. He charges 60 gp for a common one, 600 gp for an uncommon one, and 6,000 gp for a rare one.

Gatehouse

The Bleak Cabal’s headquarters is the Gatehouse, a fortress of rehabilitation and renewal. The tiered, ivory sanctuary rests on a hill at the end of Bedlam Run, a curved road that rises to meet the headquarters above the Hive. Calming fountains cascade over its chalk-white balconies, which radiate from its central tower. The Gatehouse specializes in treating planar afflictions. Inside, Bleakers tend to those harmed by the planes and by the creatures that inhabit them.

House of Rehabilitation

Members of the Bleak Cabal find solace in existence by relieving the burdens of others. Bleakers in the Gatehouse restore creatures warped by demon ichor, research and remove complex curses, and comfort those who have glimpsed otherworldly horrors of sinister realms.

Althax Darkfleece (bariaur wanderer with an Intelligence of 17; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), serves as the Gatehouse’s resident expert on the negative effects of planar magic. Hailing from the gate-town of “Bedlam” (detailed in “chapter 3” of this book), Althax is a wise and compassionate academic who keeps unreasonable hours. To aid her ongoing research, she occasionally hires adventurers to investigate locations suffused with planar magic—or collect samples from the planes themselves.

Gatehouse Night Market

Honest shoppers stick to the Market Ward, where prices are firm and goods can easily be traced back to their sources. Customers interested in less reputable wares, however, haunt the after-hours stalls of the Gatehouse Night Market just a few blocks from the Gatehouse. Booths unfold from pocket dimensions at last light, their dealers lit by the neon glow of indifferent will-o’-wisps: devils pawning stolen souls to rule-bending angels, interplanar fences selling stolen modron parts, demodands advertising jars of their liquefied cohorts as instant bodyguards, and the like. The night market relies on adventurers to settle disputes between vendors and their unrepentant clientele.

Grease Pit

The flavors of the multiverse converge at the Grease Pit, a noisy alley brimming with planar street food. Creatures come from far and wide to sample its delights or hawk them to hungry customers over the hubbub of the daily crowds.

The Grease Pit offers patrons a taste of the Outer Planes. Deep-fried meat skewers sizzle in bubbling oil taken from the battlefields of Acheron, marinating in a bath of rage and zeal. Meanwhile spicy dishes rise to infernal heats in devil-owned rotisseries, where sadistic pitmasters boast literal kicks that sear the taste buds of the uninitiated. Sobbing patrons cool their mouths on heavenly snow cones sold by dessert-loving devas, then later shred their tongues on face-puckering sour candies topped with caustic, gelatinous ooze. Portions range from bite-sized nibbles to bottomless portal buffets worthy of a giant’s appetite.

Grease Pit Grub

The following are some of the vendors one might encounter in the Grease Pit:

• Bog Standard. Prepared by a court of not-so-noble bullywugs, the patties served up at this unfussy shack were described by one Sigil food critic as “damp—with an unexpected crunch.”
• Humongous Fungus. Located in an enormous toadstool, this myconid-operated sandwich parlor specializes in fungal creations. Customers rave about the Mushroom Meld, a spore-topped melt that allows eaters within 30 feet of each other to communicate telepathically for 1 hour.
• Make It Snappy. This rolling seafood cart sports a bottomless tank linked to an aquatic demiplane. Buyers who fish their own catch from the aquarium pay half price for the cooked dish, but at Make It Snappy, the seafood snaps back.
• Slim Pickens. Owned by a wake of buzzard-looking aarakocra, this tin-roofed barbecue joint serves up “sustainably sourced” roadkill, scavenged fresh daily from arid stretches of inhospitable realms.
• Sugar and Spice. This candy shop is co-owned by a faerie dragon named Pancake and an imp named Qribbig. Their saccharine concoctions are sweet enough to rot a lich’s teeth.
• The Vine. Purveyors of plant-based cuisines cluster in the Vine, a vegetarian oasis nestled in the corner of the grimy spittoon. It’s home to the Gentle Mug, a humble shack where musteval guardinals (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) offer magical teas and throat-scratching razorvine wraps.

Mortuary

The Heralds of Dust look after Sigil’s dead in the Mortuary, the city’s morgue. Situated between Blackshade Lane and Ragpicker’s Square, the menacing stone structure rises above the Hive like a corpse from the grave. The Mortuary’s towers bear low, gloomy domes with buttresses bristling with blades and windowless vaults clustered around the structure’s base. Its dark, mournful halls reek of embalming fluids, their sterile tang sparing nostrils from viler odors trapped within the musty tombs.

Grim Workforce

The Dusters who run the Mortuary are the visage of death—slack jawed and bony framed, with unblinking eyes sunken into their gaunt, skeletal faces. Corpse collectors are often heard before they’re seen, as their creaking wooden barrows are engulfed in clouds of buzzing insects. They wheel wagonfuls of bodies to Death’s Door, a metal chute supervised by joyless undertakers, who pay collectors a pittance for each corpse they round up.

The Mortuary’s uninviting halls echo with the moans of the Undead. Skeletons and zombies perform menial tasks, such as cleaning or guard duty, while more intelligent Undead—such as wights, vampires, and death knights—serve the Heralds of Dust in high-ranking positions under their factol, the dreaded lich Skall.

Hall of Vigils

As Sigil’s mirthless morticians, the Heralds of Dust are afforded the secrets of life and undeath. In the Mortuary’s research area known as the Hall of Vigils, Dusters study deceased wayfarers from across the planes, preparing the corpses in accordance with an ever-widening archive of funeral rites before sending them through planar portals to distant burial grounds, faraway family crypts, or elemental planes for storage or cremation.

The funerary process often uncovers a creature’s cause of death—and possibly the knowledge of how to kill others like it in the future. Assassins, poisoners, and hunters regularly attempt to infiltrate the Hall of Vigils in search of these secrets, only to die at the hands of the faction’s Undead guards and be reanimated into their ranks. Map 2.2 depicts the Hall of Vigils.

A quote from Skall, Factol of the Heralds of Dust

“Without passion, a body has no pain. Divest yourself of all passions, and you will achieve the final stage of death.”

Parakk Pest

In the Cage, rat catching is a family business. Over the years, Parakk Pest has become a household name in the City of Doors. The tiered shack stands out from the rest of the ward thanks to the giant rat skull that sits atop its roof. Generations of exterminators follow in the footsteps of its githzerai founder, Parakk—whose name means both “servant” and “master.” They adopt both his name and the duties that come with it. The githzerai eradicators, individually referred to as Parakks, service every ward in Sigil and are easily identified by their bright-pink skullcaps.

Sigil is a delicate ecosystem, and cranium rats play an important role in it. But while individual cranium rats are mostly harmless, swarms can rapidly become local menaces. The largest of these is the Us, a hyperintelligent hivemind based in “Undersigil” (detailed later in this chapter). When cranium rat populations grow to dangerous sizes, the Parakks step in to cull their numbers. However, some conspiracy theorists claim the ratcatchers secretly serve the rats, collecting rodents to add to the horde.

Particularly malignant infestations call for outside help. In such cases, Parakk Pest offers as much as 1 gp for a single cranium rat tail and larger sums to clear out entire swarms.

Sandstone Strip

A sliver of tightly clustered buildings stands between the orderly “Clerks’ Ward” and the chaos of the Hive. Named for its granular, red cobblestone streets, the Sandstone Strip shelters charlatans and scoundrels who take care of their own, along with anyone else burned by administrative backlash from Sigil’s more powerful residents. When bureaucrats abuse their stations, the ward’s rank and file rely on adventurers to even the scales and ensure Sigil’s laws apply to all its citizens, not just those at the bottom.

The Slags

The Slags were just another part of the Hive until a portal to the front lines of the Blood War, the eternal conflict between devils and demons, opened in the middle of the neighborhood. For weeks, weapons of war tore through the fragile shacks, reducing them to smoldering piles of rubble, and demons massacred anything with a pulse. Save for a few stragglers, the portal and its invaders are long gone, but their devastation remains. Scavengers scour the ashen wasteland for infernal supply caches, clashing with enforcers on the lookout for fugitives. Repeated calls for reconstruction go ignored in the “Hall of Speakers”.

A quote from Ignus, Hands of Havoc arsonist

“You are all tallow for my flames.”

Smoldering Corpse Bar

The wrought-iron walls of the Smoldering Corpse Bar muffle the mayhem of the Hive. Locals wet their whistles in the dive bar, raising dented mugs to angels and devils, off the clock and shooting the breeze with each other. Heat rises through vents in the taproom’s drab-tiled floors to warm banged-up metal tables, their surfaces marred by blades and stained with dried blood. The watering hole’s jaded proprietor, Barkis (chaotic neutral, human veteran), can usually be found behind the patchwork fusion of rusted metal that passes for a bar top.

Ignus

The Smoldering Corpse Bar is named for the perpetually burning mage named Ignus who hovers within. Once a pyromaniacal Wreaker who tried to reduce the Hive to ash, Ignus was imprisoned in flame as a sardonic punishment for his crimes, transforming him into a living portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Since then, he’s become a fiery mascot for the bar he attempted to destroy, suspended above its torrid taproom. If doused with a decanter of endless water, Ignus rouses from his stupor as a chaotic neutral, human mage.

Settling Tabs

The establishment has earned a reputation for reliable, albeit unremarkable, service. If the coin keeps flowing, so does the “bub”—a blanket term locals apply to cheap liquor. When a customer can’t settle their tab, Barkis asks for collateral until the debt is paid. His backroom is filled with belongings left behind by drinkers who never returned. Most of it is junk, but Barkis lets interested parties rummage through it in exchange for completing odd jobs or serving as temporary bouncers.

Lady’s Ward

Distinguished and elegant, the Lady’s Ward is home to the city’s movers and shakers. The regal edifices of the Lady’s Ward epitomize the wealth and influence of their inhabitants. Intrigue and treachery abound, blanketed behind the sumptuous veils of high society: masked balls, gambling houses, and private banquets. The Lady of Pain doesn’t reside in the ward that bears her name, but power does—the power to influence, administer, and evade the rule of law.

Despite its luxuries and breathtaking vistas, the Lady’s Ward is quieter than other wards, its solemn streets frequented by members of the Fraternity of Order, the Harmonium, and the Mercykillers. Immovable monuments to order, these factions’ imposing headquarters tower over the city blocks they occupy, surrounded by a smattering of smaller buildings that support their cycle of enforcement, adjudication, and punishment. Residents of other wards rarely visit the Lady’s Ward without official business.

Fortunes are won and lost in the gambling houses of the Lady’s Ward, where secret crime lords mingle with judges and off-duty guards. Greased palms lead to flimsy sentences and sudden pardons; such corruption goes ignored in the upper echelons of Sigil in favor of persecuting petty crimes elsewhere in the ward.

As if to balance its corruption, the Lady’s Ward contains over half of Sigil’s temples. Deities from every pantheon find worshipers in the City of Doors. No temples to the Lady of Pain exist in the ward; to construct one is an offense worthy of banishment to “the Mazes”.

A quote from Vrex Rexel, pedantic Harmonium officer

“It’s the Lady’s Ward, not the Ladies’ Ward!”

Sigil Lady's Ward Encounters

Lady’s Ward Factions

The following factions are headquartered in the Lady’s Ward:

• Doomguard. The Doomguard controls the Armory, overseeing the production and sale of weapons in Sigil. Independent smiths are free to craft and sell their own weapons, but most of the city’s weapons are produced and sold by Sinkers. When it comes to providing the quality and number of armaments required by organized forces and other factions in the Cage, the Doomguard is unmatched.
• Fraternity of Order. Consisting of judges, lawyers, and legislators, the Fraternity of Order abides by the letter of the law—and exploits it to further their interests. Dispassionate and impartial, Guvners run the city courts, ruling on everything from petty disputes in other wards to groundbreaking cases in the High Courts. They adjudicate, review, and study the rules of Sigil, maintaining order according to the law as they interpret it.
• Harmonium. A faction of rugged peacekeepers, the Harmonium occupies the Barracks and serves as the city watch. Noble do-gooders and vengeful chastisers alike join their ranks, eager to quash crime. Thousands of crimson-plated Harmonium officers patrol Sigil’s wards daily, vowing to keep their streets clean. However, the Hardheads’ uncompromising vision of order sometimes leads to wrongful arrests.
• Mercykillers. When the Fraternity of Order deems a citizen guilty of a crime, the Mercykillers carry out the punishment. Citizens give these emotionless executioners a wide berth, fearful of obstructing justice and becoming the next target. Though most of their work occurs in the “Prison”, members of the faction regularly mete out discipline in public for all to see.

Lady’s Ward Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in the Lady’s Ward.

Armory

The Doomguard is headquartered in the Armory, a foreboding stronghold at the ward’s border with the Lower Ward. Deliberately grown razorvine creeps along the structure’s bladed balconies and lower walls, deterring thieves who seek to steal the weapons within. Heavy metal gates bar its few windows, and a relief of a menacing horned skull—the faction’s symbol—hangs over its main entrance within. Day and night, the Armory’s chimneys belch smoke and flame.

Forge of Doom

A colossal forge dominates the first floor of the Armory, which is open to the public. Mercenaries, mongers, and other curious buyers gawk at industrious smithies accustomed to the forge’s unbearable temperatures. Azers, fire elementals, and chain devils number among the Armory’s blacksmiths, along with dwarves and other Doomguard smiths.

Aslan Ashfang, a lawful neutral efreeti merchant from the City of Brass, emerges from the forge’s coals to greet potential buyers. A clever and convincing salesman, Aslan brokers deals between the Doomguard and interested parties. The dapper efreeti knows every weapon in the Sinker catalog and its price, from delicate jeweled daggers to massive siege weapons. Items small enough to display—or their replicas if too precious or dangerous—are showcased in an exhibition hall just inside the Armory.

Doom Lords

Beyond the forge lie four heavily guarded chambers, each containing a portal to a fortress on the edge of one of the Inner Planes. Within these citadels, the four doom lords—high-ranking faction lieutenants with powers of entropy and destruction—observe the multiverse and its beauteous decay. From these citadels, members of the Doomguard launch expeditions to hunt or capture destructive monsters across the multiverse, testing their skills against terrifying creatures and deadly extremes.

Buying Armor and Weapons

The Armory sells every weapon, shield, and armor in the “Player’s Handbook” at normal cost. At the DM’s discretion, the Armory might have other armaments available for sale, such as +1 weapons for 300 gp apiece.

Barracks

Hushed streets surround the Barracks, a wide compound of cold granite at the opposite end of the Lady’s Ward from the Armory. Stoic and impenetrable, the lofty fortress houses the rank and file of the Harmonium, Sigil’s militant guards and enforcers. Taciturn sentries march along its spiked, gray-slate roof, gazing over a largely deserted precinct. Life this close to the Hardheads is a double-edged sword. While local businesses—of which there are few—enjoy on-demand security, their proprietors must be spotless in the eyes of the law or suffer crackdowns from overzealous disciplinarians in the faction, who enforce Factol Sarin’s orders without question.

Entering the Barracks

The Barracks are open to all enthusiastic peacekeepers, though Hardheads stop and interrogate anyone who ventures past the clasped stone hands over the stronghold’s arched entrance. Straitlaced recruiters pressure visitors without a clear faction allegiance to enlist in the Harmonium and reap its benefits.

Parade Grounds

Composed of four identical sections and the squat towers that join them, the Barracks surround a wide parade ground. The Harmonium shows its strength within the quad through drills, marches, and other ceremonial displays. Beyond the grounds lie classrooms and living quarters, along with the faction’s archives, which include current and past Harmonium patrol routes, active members and their ranks, and official arrest records.

Recruiting the Harmonium

With an official writ from Factol Sarin, the factol of an allied faction, or an influential figure in Sigil, one can gain temporary protection services or extra muscle in the form of a few reliable guards who stubbornly obey every city ordinance.

Fortune’s Wheel

Luck abounds at Fortune’s Wheel, an extravagant casino and favored hotspot in the Lady’s Ward. It’s run by Shemeshka (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), a vain and ambitious yugoloth crime lord of multiversal renown. Rarely spotted in the common areas of the gambling hall, the arcanaloth is the picture of wealth, power, and influence, always dressed to the nines and crowned with a spidery razorvine headdress. In Shemeshka’s eyes, the establishment’s profits pale in comparison to its true spoils: secrets gleaned by her web of spies, both those employed in the casino and others enacting her far-reaching schemes.

Dragon Bar

Like moths to a candle, risk takers gravitate to the buzzing marquee of Fortune’s Wheel. The polished revolving door of this recently renovated building opens into the historic Dragon Bar, a modest tavern named for the carved dragon head that watches over it. Beyond this reception area and its alert bouncers lies the casino proper.

Casino

Games of chance line the luxurious carpeted casino hall, which thrums with a chorus of shuffling cards, rattling dice, and whirring clockwork slot machines. These games take razorleaf gambling chips, golden tokens that bear a stylized razorvine emblem.

Every evening, performances grace an ornate, curtained stage, but the real star of the casino is its namesake: the fortune’s wheel, a three-tiered, standing roulette wheel where inheritances are squandered and made. Weapons and luck-altering magic are prohibited within the casino, but the staff enforces the policy only in the most blatant of violations.

Platinum Rooms

Known to few and hidden within the casino are the Platinum Rooms, a collection of demiplanar chambers where interplanar fat cats wager ancient artifacts, trapped souls, and the fates of entire worlds. Accessible only to bigwigs trusted with special portal keys, the Platinum Rooms feature a rogue’s gallery of some of the multiverse’s most dangerous players.

Fortune’s Wheel is further detailed in the adventure Turn of Fortune’s Wheel.

Heart’s Fire

Sparkling rays converge on the stained-glass windows of Heart’s Fire, a luminous temple devoted to gods of fire, truth, and light. Golden, wavy blades hover atop the house of worship like flames. Nicknamed the Sun of Sigil, it glows each day at dawn.

Recently, Heart’s Fire has become the subject of gossip throughout the Temple District. The temple’s former high priest, a deva named Ephemera, was called away on a divine errand. Before departing, the angel appointed a controversial replacement to guide the fane in their stead: Mihr, a lawful good horned devil who turned their back on the Nine Hells long ago. Kind and merciful, the new high priest hopes the congregation will see their redeemed nature, but some of the temple’s clergy refuse to accept Mihr as the true high priest.

High Courts

The scales of justice are balanced at the High Courts of Sigil, headquarters of the Fraternity of Order. The courthouse is a dignified edifice hewn from flawless, white marble with towers that rise from the structure’s bladed gables. Granite steps ascend the courthouse’s elevated entrance, above which hangs a triangular pediment. Etched within the architrave is the faction’s motto: “Knowledge is power.”

Though absolute authority in Sigil belongs to the Lady of Pain, most legal matters are settled in the city’s tribunals, often decided by a single, supposedly impartial magistrate appointed by the Guvners. Punishments are tailored to fit the crime, and advocates are strongly encouraged. Lawyers and orators, these civil servants include bards, faction agents, and devils with a knack for navigating the subtleties of the law.

While cheap advocates linger on the courthouse steps hoping to find work, their arguments are brittle. Brilliant barristers demand high retainers, but they’re worth every coin when the alternative is a visit from the Mercykillers. One talented attorney is “Sly” Nye (chaotic neutral, tiefling noble), who claims to have never lost a case. Sly has been known to waive their astronomical fee for adventurers who help gather evidence relevant to other cases. Of course, the accused are always free to represent themselves.

Courts

The rear tower consists primarily of lesser courts, which resound with procedural bickering and the rapping of gavels. More serious offenses are prosecuted in the Grand Court, a noble chamber darkened by severe judges and their righteous verdicts. Any of the following three judges might preside over a trial in the Grand Court:

Dadras, a planetar with a powdered wig and a fiery temper. The angel detests lies.

Factol Hashkar, leader of the Fraternity of Order.

Madam Rule, a scornful pit fiend known for her harsh interjections and screeching metal gavel.

Hall of Concordance

Elsewhere within the High Courts lies the Hall of Concordance, an embassy of law where contracts are forged under the unblinking eyes of the inevitables, constructs created by the modron deity Primus to bring order to dealings between planar folk. Inside, the Kolyarut, an engine of absolute order, ratifies contracts on sheets of solid gold, leaving their enforcement to the inexorable maruts (detailed in “Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse”) and truth-seeking components of itself, also dubbed kolyaruts (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”). Rule breakers who violate these sacred contracts are tracked down and banished to a teleportation circle in the hall.

Infinite Well

Ominous chants echo in the Infinite Well, a temple to the Abyss and its untold layers. The temple hovers high above the surrounding houses of worship, floating above a seemingly bottomless pit. Tarnished blades jut from the Infinite Well like metal branches on a blackened tree. Rather than the blue-green verdigris common throughout the city, blood trickles down the temple’s rusted spikes. The temple’s interior is a gloomy sanctuary of stained altars, menacing iron chandeliers, and sputtering black candles.

Because there are infinite layers to the Abyss, there are infinite demon lords among them to be venerated. As a result, the cultists of the temple are a disorganized mess, and daily sacrifices sourced from among the faithful cause their numbers to dwindle. Intent on improving their reputation and converting new members to their sinister fold, the fanatics of the Infinite Well don insincere smiles and prove unflinchingly positive as they evangelize in public.

Prison

A single grim blemish of gray stone and metal rises above Sigil’s resplendent courthouses. Headquarters of the Mercykillers, the Prison is a warning to wrongdoers of the full penalty of law. The Prison’s architecture is anathema to hope and light. During the dark and twilight hours, glaring searchlights affixed to the penitentiary’s barbed watchtowers scan the ward below for runaways, but all that escapes its walls are the wails of the prisoners within.

Cells

Engineered to contain all manner of planar convicts, the Prison’s cells vary by block. Fire elementals and arsonists are sealed in frigid cells, while giants are issued with magic collars that sap their might and reduce them to diminutive statures. Grudges fester in bleak cells, and fights regularly break out between inmates in mess halls and common areas.

Particularly dangerous criminals never leave their cells, which are suspended in high-security units that hang from the Prison’s exterior like inverted buttresses. Map 2.3 depicts a section of the Prison that houses one such criminal, the infamous portal saboteur known as the Grixitt (neutral, human spy).

Cellars

Mercykillers torment rebellious inmates in the Cellars, the Prison’s dark undercroft. Desperate scratches mar the dungeon’s blood-red chambers, where prisoners are dragged to but sometimes never return. When an inmate proves especially resilient or dangerous, the Mercykillers banish them to the Hole, a cylindrical cell block of isolated demiplanes suffused with antimagic.

Prison Inmates

Notorious criminals, interplanar outlaws, cosmic warlords, and other threats to the multiverse are incarcerated in the Prison. Examples of inmates appear in the Prison Inmates table.

Wardens

Sigil is a big city, and the wheels of justice turn slowly. Factol Nilesia employs a number of wardens to keep prisoners in check. Creatures in the Prison might encounter any of the following wardens:

Allarind the Thin, a sadistic adult blue dracolich who died in the Prison long ago.

Buel, a stoic warden archon (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) who has thwarted countless jailbreaks.

Gazzengar, a calculating, neutral mind flayer who isn’t afraid to crack a few skulls to keep inmates in line.

Olmulloz, a pasty shator demodand (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) accompanied by a pack of rabid hell hounds.

Lower Ward

Industrial smog and fumes blanket the Lower Ward, a noisy tangle of bellowing forges, magical refineries, and alchemical emissions. Cobblers, smiths, and smelters gravitate to the ward, along with anyone else with calloused hands or a passion for crafting. Locals are hardworking folk who can churn ingots from ore, press diamonds from coal, and turn a lump of nothing into something worth buying. Day in and day out, they wade through the ward’s dreary miasma to trade shifts at workshops that never stop.

The Lower Ward is the beating heart of Sigil—an engine of creation that refines raw materials from every corner of the multiverse, transmuting them through sweat, heat, and magic into the components that allow Sigil to flourish. Over the years, civic fixtures like the Armory and Mortuary, which used to reside in the ward, have been bitten off by the neighboring Lady’s and Hive Wards, respectively. Still, the Lower Ward remains a necessary industrial powerhouse in the City of Doors.

The Lower Ward gets its name from the proliferation of portals to the Lower Planes. Their insidious influence bleeds into the ward, choking residents with brimstone, smoke, and sulfuric ash. Statues and roofs erode in a few decades unless protected by magic or alchemical treatment, and locals often bear scars from exposure to these portals and the deadly realms beyond.

Sigil Lower Ward Encounters

Lower Ward Factions

The following factions are headquartered in the Lower Ward:

• Athar. From the ruins of the Shattered Temple, the Athar keep tabs on the temples and god worshipers of the Cage, ensuring none of them grow too powerful. Propaganda tracts undermining the gods’ divinity litter the broken streets near the Shattered Temple. Defiers sometimes seed these tracts with details of scandals to discredit clerics and other worshipers. The Athar accept custody of dangerous magic items, especially those created by other faiths, and they reward any who relinquish the relics.
• Mind’s Eye. The endless heat, smoke, and arcane embers of the Great Foundry shelter the Mind’s Eye. The leaders of manufacturing in Sigil, the Seekers express their desire to reshape the multiverse through their crafts, creating tools and materials that in turn mold the Cage.
• Ring Givers. An up-and-coming faction, the Ring Givers are still finding their place in Sigil. Having recently sold their previous headquarters, a sprawling palace in the affluent “Lady’s Ward”, this philanthropic faction now gathers in the Lower Ward, where it provides charity to industrious folk in communal spaces, factories, and warehouses.

Lower Ward Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in the Lower Ward.

Bones of the Night

Along the banks of the Ditch (detailed below), a fire-gutted building conceals a gaping hole into the ground with a single ladder leading down into darkness. Here lies the Bones of the Night, a cavern complex home to the Master of Bones: Lothar the Old (neutral, human priest). From the catacombs of “Undersigil” (detailed later in this chapter), Lothar gathers a macabre collection of skulls from various creatures, organizing them into a library of sorts. Ossuaries riddle the walls of his bizarre exhibit, their ledges richly decorated with grave goods paid to the departed.

The Master of Bones uses necromancy to commune with the skulls in his collection and draw on their shared knowledge. For a fee, Lothar can cast the speak with dead spell on any of his skulls, asking questions on the clients’ behalf. He also trades and purchases new skulls. His prices range from 1 gp for a person who knew a single valuable story to upward of 10,000 gp for the skull of a factol or the high priest of a dead god.

The library is well guarded. Lothar is a capable combatant in his own right and can animate a host of skulls in his collection as flameskulls. To combat larger threats, the Master of Bones relies on a ghoul-shaped stone golem that answers to his command.

The Ditch

The Ditch is Sigil’s only body of water, a reeking morass where locals cast their refuse. Its corrosive waters lie along the rough border between the Lower Ward and the Hive, a prime ground for dumping bodies. Creatures cast into the acrid lake wash up on its shore a few hours later completely unrecognizable, their physical features smoothed over like those of wax dolls held to a flame.

Locals whisper the Ditch is a backwater tributary of the River Styx, but more likely its toxic waters are the result of industrial runoff coupled with the corruption of the Lower Planes leaking from nearby portals. On rare occasions, a portal to the River Oceanus, a celestial waterway that runs through the Upper Planes, opens within the Ditch, causing it to run clean, silvery, and sweet. These short-lived occasions are cause for celebration among the folk of the Lower Ward, who spend the day bathing in the refreshing reservoir.

During the day, the banks of the Ditch are a gathering ground for trading guild workers, who ferry material from the Great Foundry to portals located within massive sewer pipes along its shores. When night falls, however, even these staunch souls are nowhere to be seen for fear of the Ditch Beast, a vicious monster that supposedly stalks the area.

Seat of the Rat King

Wererats frequent the Ditch, where they receive the orders from Tattershade, King of the Rats. His territory is arranged entirely for defense, a tangle of tunnels adjacent to the Ditch that are big enough only for rats and shifting shadows. Tattershade is a shadow demon that directs his wererat minions through wispy messages scrawled on passage walls. The King of the Rats spends his lonely hours obsessively counting the treasure the rats sift from the Ditch for him, from priceless baubles to worthless junk. Tattershade lives in fear of something, but no two stories agree on what. It could be the Master of Bones, a powerful devil, or the Lady herself.

Face of Gith

Patrons drink silently in the Face of Gith, a gloomy tavern frequented by githzerai. A faded, dispassionate githzerai face marks the establishment, a smooth, oblong building shaped from a slab of adamantine. Although anyone is allowed into the bar, patrons and proprietor alike are skeptical of outsiders and willing to draw steel to keep their space safe.

The tavern’s interior is subdued and dim. There are no rowdy drinking songs, and most conversations take place telepathically or in hushed tones. In the center of the main room hovers an amorphous blob of primordial chaos that shifts erratically. Taken from the roiling plane of Limbo, the glob endlessly changes from stone to fire, freezes into a fractalized diamond, melts into swirling clouds that smell strongly of lavender, and so on. Some psychic regulars exert their mental will over the chaotic glob, shaping it into objects, creatures, or sensory phenomena for the amusement of other patrons. Rumor has it that the blob can be shaped into a portal to Limbo but that the key constantly changes.

Ezmerath, a chaotic good githzerai uniter (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), owns and runs the Face of Gith. They have a good relationship with the Athar and are happy to call in a favor if anyone, especially god worshipers, disrupt their tavern. Ezmerath is also a secret member of the Sha’sal Khou, a faction of githyanki and githzerai who wish to unite their fractured people.

A quote from Saladryn, Factol of the Mind's Eye

“There is no nobler act than creation. Anyone can break something, and many do. It is easy to destroy. But when you choose to turn something that wasn’t into something that is–that is the stuff of gods.”

Great Foundry

The thrumming heart of industry in Sigil, the Great Foundry is the headquarters of the Mind’s Eye. The foundry’s a sprawling complex of workshops, warehouses, storage yards, and furnaces. Seekers work it tirelessly. By day, the foundry obscures the sky with smoke and steam, and by night, it illuminates entire city blocks with roaring fires.

The Mind’s Eye makes many of the tools and metalcrafts used throughout Sigil. The foundry’s most talented smiths are magical sculptors who require neither coal nor flame. They fashion strong yet delicate objects from minimal materials, shaping an ounce of ore into a lightweight yet trustworthy tool with a wave of their palms.

Gates

The Great Foundry’s two wrought-iron main gates are as tall as the neighboring buildings. The intimidating guards minding the gates embellish their armor with iron spikes and jagged decoration scavenged from the foundry’s scraps. Ogres, giants, and reformed devils in the Mind’s Eye, they prevent the tools of creation from falling into the hands of destructive forces. Beyond lies the main yard, a sooty, gravel expanse heaped with piles of rubble and raw ore.

Mithral Tower

At the center of the Great Foundry is the Mithral Tower, a metalworks that stands over ten stories tall. Huge, iron-barred windows flood its interior with light, and enormous doors allow wagons full of ore to roll right in. It’s unbearably hot, and the din of spouting furnaces and ringing anvils makes conversation difficult. Fiery-mouthed furnaces the size of barns yawn in every direction, and crucibles large enough to hold a fire giant brim with molten metal. Map 2.4 depicts one of the forges within the Mithral Tower.

Parted Veil

Nearly every faction in Sigil keeps a secret hoard of knowledge available only to its members. Kesto Brighteyes (chaotic good, gnome Athar null; see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), does his best to even out that imbalance. Kesto runs the Parted Veil, a bookstore on Forgotten Lane not far from the Shattered Temple. The shop contains a motley array of texts available for sale: histories, novels, atlases, dictionaries, maps, spellbooks, biographies, newspapers, and anything else printed or scribed.

A magic mouth spell over the front door of the Parted Veil welcomes visitors with short inspirational messages. Once inside, customers are greeted by a wondrous sight—the walls, ceilings, and floors are made of books. Shoppers tread across the spines of volumes underfoot as they peruse titles above and below. With no shelves or clear system of organization, the shop is a labyrinth of knowledge that only Kesto can navigate, but the shopkeep is always happy to help a customer find what they’re after.

Kesto is a venerable gnome with round spectacles and a wiry, unkempt beard. A proud member of the Athar, the open-minded Kesto aims to empower his customers through knowledge. He is accompanied by the gaunt-faced Sir Cleave, a friendly, lawful good bodak (see “Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse”; replace with a lawful good revenant if you don’t have that book). Sir Cleave eagerly assists customers, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes them.

Spells for Sale

Kesto maintains a vast collection of scrolls and spellbooks. He allows wizards to copy spells from them at the cost listed in the Spells for Sale table. Spells marked with an asterisk (*) appear in “chapter 1” of this book. He can have any of these scribed as a spell scroll for twice the listed cost for this service.

Shattered Temple

A nameless street leads through a razed district to the Shattered Temple, headquarters of the Athar. Skeletal pillars climb from the rubble to surround the broken, domed structure on all sides. Once a temple to Aoskar, a now-dead god of portals, the Athar have rebuilt the temple just enough to serve their needs while leaving the rest in shambles—a solemn reminder that even gods can die.

Within the Shattered Temple, the Athar collect information on the every faith in Sigil to publicly prove their falsity and lessen their influence. In heavily guarded vaults beneath the temple, Defiers house a staggering arsenal of magic items, weapons, and armor, ready to use if they come into open conflict with gods or their servants.

Forgotten God

The Shattered Temple was originally called the Great Temple of Doors. It was the heart of worship for Aoskar, whose name has been all but forgotten in the City of Doors. In life, Aoskar subtly spread his worship through every portal in the Cage. Aoskar foolishly sought to seize control of Sigil from the Lady of Pain, but now the god and his followers are dead, devastated along with the temple that once bore his name.

Inside the Shattered Temple, a portal to the Astral Plane has recently reawakened, leading to a gigantic, petrified corpse drifting through the silver void. Some who know of the deteriorating husk claim it’s what remains of Aoskar, while others assert the god lives still.

Luminous Arbor

A remarkable tree grows within the temple’s central sanctuary. The tree’s bark shines with the luster of bronze and gold, and its branches are laden with ruby-red fruits. This tree, the Luminous Arbor, gathers the captured magic released when the Athar carry out rites to destroy magic items created by priests of those they consider false gods. The divine energy concentrates within the tree and its fruit, which are the source of power for Athar priests of the Greater Unknown, an entity whose power is rumored to be beyond the so-called gods.

Ubiquitous Wayfarer

The Ubiquitous Wayfarer is a reputable three-story tavern whose taproom contains over two dozen portals to other parts of Sigil and beyond. The tavern sits in the Lower Ward, but some folks believe it’s in whatever ward they happen to live in. The Wayfarer is popular among planar explorers and adventurers who use its portals to get around the city. It offers a quick path across the city if one knows the right portals, though its proprietor, a gray-haired bartender named Riaen Blackhome (lawful neutral, human veteran), takes exception to people using her place as a shortcut without stopping for a drink.

Market Ward

Sigil boasts a market so vast it constitutes its own ward. Nestled between the bureaucratic Clerks’ Ward and the dignified Lady’s Ward, the Market Ward buzzes with business at all hours. Portals to trade cities across the planes lie scattered throughout its districts and the innumerable businesses among them.

The Market Ward was once two wards, the other being the Guildhall Ward. However, in a city dominated by ideological factions, trade guilds hold little sway, and most factions—except for the Free League and Society of Sensation—discourage members from joining guilds, believing such associations foster splitting loyalties.

The Market Ward is a largely middle-class ward, apart from a small percentage of rich entrepreneurs and magnates. Its most notable residents are titans of industry: long-lived moguls, merchant royalty, and aged wyrms who hoard the wealth of worlds. Their homes are spotless mansions dwarfed only by the regal headquarters of planes-spanning franchises and distinguished interplanar institutions.

Like any commercial hub, the Market Ward has its problems. Shopkeeps from every plane compete in its marketplaces, and petty quarrels between business owners can develop into violent, centuries-long feuds between planar entities. Some vendors stubbornly refuse traditional currencies, guffawing at the notion that gold, of all things, has any value at all—in the grand scheme of the multiverse, few minerals are as rare as their worth might suggest. They might accept favors or prefer to barter instead. Pickpockets and thieves flock to the ward in droves, keen to pilfer the pockets of heedless consumers distracted by eye-catching wares.

A quote from Digny Vots, Market Ward shopper

“Sure, Sigil’s got everything you could ever want–if you can find it! My advice? Hire a tout to do your shopping. Last time I visited the Great Bazaar, it took me so long to find my way out that my avocados went bad. What a mess.”

Sigil Market Ward Encounters

Market Ward Factions

The following factions are headquartered in the Market Ward:

• Free League. Many without a strong connection to Sigil’s ascendant factions join the Free League, an informal association of pragmatic citizens who keep their options open when it comes to the truths of the multiverse. Members of the Free League occupy a wide spectrum of roles in Sigil, but they tend toward autonomous ventures, acting as merchants, mercenaries, and even spies for other factions. Indeps keep to themselves and generally abstain from conflict, but they rally to defend their own when necessary.
• Transcendent Order. Headquartered in the Great Gymnasium, the Transcendent Order strives for harmony in all things. Members hone their bodies and minds through rigorous conditioning, and they regularly challenge others in the Market Ward to contests of artistic, athletic, or spiritual prowess. Because Ciphers tend to avoid making allies or enemies, they regularly offer their balanced perspectives to other factions as neutral advisors and mediators.

Market Ward Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in the Market Ward.

Bank of Abbathor Inc.

Dedicated to the dwarven god of greed, the Bank of Abbathor is one of the largest financial institutions in the multiverse, with branches in several of the Outer Planes and countless material worlds. The bank’s principal office is a monument to opulence and stability: a palatial building constructed from marble. Elite private security, the best that money can buy, protects the bank and its grounds at all hours.

Within, a princely statue of Abbathor oversees the main banking hall. Massive emeralds form his eyes, which glint with every transaction, no matter how small. The bank’s tellers are snarky imps, business-savvy dwarves, and xorn that delight in eating their pay. Leveraging a trusted network of official portals, the tellers process transactions throughout the multiverse. Modron analysts closely monitor exchange rates to ensure funds don’t disrupt the stability of the economies in which they are administered.

Bank Vaults

When creatures amass hoards too large to defend, they can store excess treasure in secure vaults beneath the Bank of Abbathor. The guarded rows of armored doors are pure theater, empty repositories designed to comfort investors and confuse would-be plunderers. Only the doors themselves matter, for the true vaults lie beyond the portals they contain. Accessible only by account owners, authorized bank personnel, or creatures in possession of the corresponding portal key, each vault door leads to a demiplanar dungeon that guards the riches deposited within.

Hoard of Directors

Ancient dragons, mighty devils, and immortal merchants make up the bank’s board of directors, who ensure the institution’s reach continues to widen. They seek power through profit, conquering worlds without armies of their own by bankrolling like-minded groups in conflicts across the multiverse.

Flame Pits

Creatures of every kind take a soak in the Flame Pits, a planar bathhouse whose pools swirl with bubbling acid, molten lava, and liquid shadow. Unicorns, bariaurs, and various Fiends get their hooves trimmed in grooming rooms, and galeb duhr sigh as they settle into boiling tubs of mud. Patrons dry off in front of warm vents tied to windy desert realms or the chilling gales of Pandemonium.

The baths are run by Laril Zazzkos, a githzerai uniter (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), and her staff of rough-scrubbing mephits. Abrasive as a wiry brush, the eagle-eyed githzerai spends her days berating patrons who fail to observe the bathhouse’s strict “no running” policy or warning those who get too close to the wrong tubs—an occasionally fatal mistake. At heart, Laril is a rebel. Many of the tubs in her bathhouse have false bottoms for harboring fugitives or smuggling contraband. At least one of her tubs hides a passage into the depths of “Undersigil” (detailed later in this chapter).

Gastrognome

Diners never know what to expect from the Gastrognome, an intimate, upscale eatery that looks like a giant metal olive. Distinguished and inventive, its proprietor, Celci Nugglebelly (chaotic good, gnome mage), is a worlds-class chef who never cooks the same dish twice. They cater to adventurous taste buds and deep appetites, challenging expectations about food and the forms it takes. A three-course dinner at the Gastrognome might consist of a gravity-defying salad cloud, a whispering Shadowfell steak topped with bioluminescent blight, and a deceptively simple chocolate tart that carries the sweet taste of revenge. The owner frequently hires adventurers to track down rare ingredients to delight and impress future diners.

Great Bazaar

The chief attraction of the ward is the Great Bazaar, a vast plaza of shops where anything and everything can be found. Boisterous throngs of shoppers crowd its bustling avenues at all hours, doing business with vendors from every corner of the multiverse.

The Great Bazaar is a cosmopolitan sampling of the planes and the goods they have to offer. Though more scandalous merchandise typically finds its way to the “Gatehouse Night Market” (see the ""Hive Ward"" section), the bazaar has anything a traveler could want, so long as they can find it in the open market’s constant commotion. Scents collide in the winding stalls: warm, right-angled bread loaves prepared fresh by modron bakers; spotted mushrooms hocked by bullywug grocers; and perfumed holy water sold by winged Celestials. Vibrant produce dangles from the leafy awnings of living plant stalls, and masterwork armors forged from rare metals bear insignias from blacksmiths on other worlds.

Free League Presence

The Free League congregates in the Great Bazaar. Although the Harmonium patrols the bazaar’s busy avenues, it’s the members of the Free League who capture thieves and decide whether to turn them over to justice. With no formal meetinghouse, members of the free-willed faction hold impromptu assemblies in cramped market tents or unused warehouses.

Shopping in the Bazaar

Characters can purchase any “adventuring gear” in the “Player’s Handbook” at normal cost in the Great Bazaar, though shrewd bargainers can secure their purchases for less. The Bazaar Shops table details a few vendors one might encounter in the bazaar.

Great Gymnasium

The Transcendent Order’s headquarters is the Great Gymnasium, a temple to body, mind, and spirit, hewed from marble and veined with gold. In addition to exercise fields and gymnastic equipment, the Great Gymnasium’s luxurious halls hold bountiful comforts: lemon-scented baths, refreshing saunas, and meditation rooms perfumed with rose. The facility is designed to eliminate distractions, promote mindfulness, and encourage self-improvement.

The Great Gymnasium is a mental and spiritual oasis, a place of peace and safety where occupants can forget their burdens. Visitors must surrender their weapons before entering the gymnasium, and spellcasting is allowed only in sanctioned areas. Sigil’s factions regard the Great Gymnasium as neutral ground, and numerous treaties have been penned within.

Training Grounds

The gymnasium’s training grounds welcome visitors to hone their strength, agility, and coordination. There, Factol Rhys conducts regular training sessions, where she pushes her students to the limit. Calm but fierce, she regularly spars with Transcendent Order members, encouraging them to act without thinking.

Map 2.5 depicts the Great Gymnasium and its training grounds.

A quote from Rhys, factol of the Transcendent Order

“Achieve understanding of self. Play music or dance. Paint or fight. Find your own way. And practice. Keep practicing until your body knows what to do. You’ve had years to learn the wrong way to do things, and it may take you years to learn the right way. The key is to act.”

Institute for Intellectual Excellence

The Institute for Intellectual Excellence is a prestigious planar academy. Renowned for the rigor of its curriculum and high expectations from faculty, the institute numbers among the best places to learn about the cosmos and its wonders. Professors are experts on subject matter that can be appreciated only in the City of Doors: portal theory, the prolonged effects of planar travel on physiology, and multiversal philosophy, just to name a few.

Enoll Eva, a septon modron (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”), is the institute’s dean. A distinguished authority on planar cosmology, mathematics, and wizardry, Enoll has made unmatched strides in the practical applications of algebra on magic.

Planar Energy Cooperative

Forked chrome spires hum atop the Planar Energy Cooperative, a cylindrical tower isolated from the commerce of the ward. Founded by a circle of archmages whose home worlds succumbed to destructive magic, the fortress serves as a seismograph for magical activity. Inside, mages monitor the flow of magic throughout the multiverse on an array of planar orreries, scanning them for arcane anomalies—hotspots, dead zones, and areas teeming with antimagic. The collective seeks to maintain a steady flow of magic across the cosmos and concentrate or divert it when necessary to ensure the survival of worlds.

In times of great planar unrest, the members of the Planar Energy Cooperative can combine their powers to siphon magic from entire worlds to dampen dangerous artifacts or prevent malicious spellcasters from unleashing catastrophic magic. Despite their influence, the mages are few, and their efforts require them to maintain intense concentration in the cooperative. As a result, they often assign worthy adventurers to deal with threats at their sources.

Undersigil

Chaos thrives beneath the streets of Sigil. Also known as the Realm Below, the snaking labyrinth of ancient tunnels binds long-standing city structures to subterranean criminal crossroads, flooded cisterns, and seemingly endless catacombs. Seasoned touts usually know of a few entrances to the Realm Below and can, for a fee, point eager explorers toward them, but few guides agree to accompany fools on their descent for cheap.

Monsters and unusual pests plague Undersigil and its inhabitants. Screams of terror echo in its deserted halls, muffled by the leathery wings of vargouilles—flapping, severed heads spawned from the Abyss—chasing their prey. Cranium rats scurry through the tunnels, telepathically relaying their findings to their hivemind. Alone, these spies are little more than barking nuisances, but in swarms their combined intelligence is an ever-present danger. Meanwhile restless souls rise from musty family crypts serve Undead monarchs and contend with the living. Undersigil’s forlorn archways become their next tombs, entangled in gnarled roots of razorvine. The wretched weed assumes their shapes and creeps to the surface as thorny razorvine blights (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”).

The Lady of Pain pays little attention to what goes down in Undersigil, though nothing in or under the City of Doors is beyond her reach. Dead factions, banished from the city above, cling to life in the darkness, searching the underground for secrets that could lead to their ascension.

Sigil Undersigil Encounters

Undersigil Locations

Presented here are some noteworthy sites in Undersigil.

Dead Nations

Bathed in leaden mist, the Dead Nations are an expanse of derelict necropolises and forgotten tombs, their inscriptions worn by decades of neglect. The treasures of these vacant sepulchers seem ripe for the taking, but here the dead are more organized than they might appear.

A decrepit monarch, the Silent King, presides over the Dead Nations and their undead populace, but his throne is also his prison. The Silent King’s throne bestows a mantle of authority on its occupant, but it demands a grim toll. Only the living can sit on the mirthless, high-backed chair, and only death can free them from its numbing grip. Ghouls, skeletons, and zombies pledge fealty to the Silent King and enforce his will in the Realm Below. They are bound to serve their ruler until either he’s killed or he wastes into oblivion—leaving his seat available for its next ruler.

Drowned Nations

Sigil’s sewers converge on the Drowned Nations, a flooded expanse of rank, lukewarm reservoirs and the swampy tunnels that connect them. An enormous drain linked to the Elemental Plane of Water rests in the turbid depths. It’s perpetually clogged with some amount of planar refuse, but sewage rarely backs up enough to flood well-to-do wards.

Kuo-toa, troglodytes, and other aquatic folk live in the Drowned Nations, as do land dwellers who navigate the sewers by boat. Denizens of the Plane of Water don’t take kindly to Sigil polluting their home. Grat the Glass-Jawed, a sahuagin baron whose gums are jammed with sharpened gems, periodically surfaces to skewer Undersigil’s residents from the back of his mutated shark, Ripper (a hunter shark with a walking speed of 30 feet). Others, like the aboleth Abadoom, carve out lairs in the pungent meres. Ancient and unknowing, Abadoom harbors some of Sigil’s darkest secrets.

The Loop

Even Undersigil has portals, and the worst of them dump their quarries into the Loop. This region is a graveyard for the lost: a closed, circular tunnel connected to dozens of one-way, hidden portals scattered throughout Undersigil. At first glance, the Loop appears no different from the tunnels that pour into it. However, after repeatedly passing the same doom-filled messages scrawled onto its walls, travelers often begin to panic.

The Loop isn’t beholden to the laws of time or space. At certain points along its mind-bending circumference, imprisoned creatures might spot their own backs or torchlight in the distance.

Rarely, through determination or sheer luck, creatures do escape the Loop. However, seconds spent in the Loop might equate to years outside, and some absconders emerge only to find they’ve been hurled into the distant past or future. Some members of long-dead factions in Undersigil know how to navigate the Loop, darting through it in desperate moments to trap threats and leave them to die.

Nowhere

When a faction falls apart or Sigil tolerates it no longer, its members can join the ranks of another faction, abandon the city entirely—or flee to Nowhere. The huddled welter of ramshackle tenements lies deep in the bowels of Undersigil, a doleful refuge for criminals and stubborn believers who refuse to renounce their allegiances. Within Nowhere’s dark warrens, criminals peddle seedy wares to dwindling factions, some consisting of just one member. Grungy alleys become impromptu forums as desperate factols hope to rekindle interest in outdated ideologies and poach each other’s members.

The following are just a few of the non-ascendant factions headquartered in Nowhere:

The Coterie of Cakes (Cakers) is a destitute band of rosy-cheeked bullies who assert the multiverse is a great, multilayered cake and that baked goods are its fundamental unit of trade.

The Revolutionary League (Anarchists) were once a popular faction that fell away to disorganization. This mishmash of misfits and outcasts vows to dismantle society.

The Undivided (Deniers) is a faction composed wholly of creatures native to Sigil. They believe those who pass through planar portals are destroyed and replaced with clones.

Warrens of Thought

The Warrens of Thought are a maze of dripping catacombs beneath the Hive. They are home to the largest cranium rat collective in Sigil: the Us. Occasionally called Many-as-One by its multitude of wererat thralls, the hive mind’s combined intellect rivals that of a god. If the Us was ever connected to an elder brain, its psychic link has long been severed. Left to their own devices, the cranium rats have evolved into a neural network that grows in influence with each passing day. Whenever a citizen relays a message through a cranium rat squeaker (see “Morte’s Planar Parade”) connected to the Us, the hive mind stores and analyzes that data. Their collective desires are a deeply troubling enigma.

Adventures in Sigil

With Sigil’s place at the center of the Outer Planes, any plot or threat from across the multiverse has a chance of finding its way to the City of Doors. Many inhabitants of the Cage also have planes-spanning ambitions, contributing to countless homegrown opportunities for adventure. Use this section to generate ideas for adventures stemming from Sigil’s unique locations and residents.

A quote from Erin Montgomery, factol of the Society of Sensation

“Living in Sigil, we’ve probably seen everything… but the beauty and terror of it is that the planes always make more.”

Adventure Hooks

Use the following table to launch adventures anywhere in Sigil.

Faction Missions

Use the plots on the Faction Missions table to help deepen the characters’ ties with any faction in Sigil.

Sigil Calamities

All manner of multiversal threats might unfold in Sigil. The Sigil Calamities table suggests plots for grand adventures in the City of Doors.

Encounters in Sigil

The following table present random encounters that might occur anywhere in Sigil. Creatures marked with an asterisk (*) appear in “Morte’s Planar Parade”, while the rest are described in the “Monster Manual”. Most creatures are initially indifferent to characters.

Sigil General Encounters