1. Locations

Sigil

World Axis

Opening Thoughts:

Ah, Sigil; the City of Doors, more important to the very concept of Planescape than the Great Wheel itself, and the face of D&D's approach to Cosmic Fantasy... for better or for worse.


With its existence first confirmed in a brief sidebar in the first 4e Dungeon Master's Guide, Sigil would actually be covered in two subsequent sourcebooks; the Manual of the Planes, and the DMG 2. Whilst a lot of details are repeated from the former to the latter, there are bits and pieces unique to each interpretation. So, this special review will examine the two versions side by side, to make it easier to compar.



What is Sigil?

First, some context. Sigil was created by TSR as the "core base" for their Planescape setting in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition. A magical city constructed in the shape of a torus, Sigil is linked to the entire multiverse by means of an enormous and frequently shifting array of portals, making it a very literal hub of the planes.


Styled as a cynical, high magic Dickensian London, complete with reusing 1800s British slang for its iconic "Cant" urban lingol, Sigil was mostly intended to be a way that players could be eased into the Weird Fantasy elements of Planescape - a "first step" before entering the planes themselves, which was kind of necessary seeing how ridiculously lethal many of them were.


Sigil's sole leader is a mysterious entity known as the Lady of Pain; a being with power greater than any god's who has total command over the city's portal network. She expresses little interest in the day-to-day minutia of government, and mostly makes her opinions known by delivering either of her two punishments - banishing someone into a labyrinthine demiplane or draping her shadow over them and reducing them to a slurry of shredded meat and soul-stuff that cannot be raised - to anyone she deigns to be too great of a threat to Sigil's continued stability. It generally takes a lot to actually cross her radar, however, so run-of-the-mill thieves, murderers and cultists are allowed to more or less run freely.


For the bulk of Planescape's run, Sigil was home to a collection of fifteen Factions - organizations centered around a particular philosophical worldview and which were competing to prove their view of reality the "true one" through conversion, debate, and open brawls. The individual quality of these Factions, sadly, was quite variable, but that's a topic for another Let's Read - maybe the Factol's Manifesto.


One of the last books printed for Planescape, if not the second-last after the adventure "Die, Vecna, Die!", was the adventure "Faction War", in which the Factions erupted into the most devastating outbreak of war that has ever struck Sigil - and this is a place that was once the site of a weeks-long pitched battle between warring armies of fiends. The end result was that the Lady of Pain gave all Factions a simple choice: Leave, Disband, or Die. And so they did. TSR presumably had plans to print a "Planescape: Revised" box-set, similarly to how they did with Dark Sun in the wake of the Prism Pentad novels, but the company went under and never had the chance to do so.


3rd edition, however, presented a Sigil set distinctly post-Faction War, when it was reintroduced in the Planar Handbook. And 4th edition carries on that tradition.



Manual of the Planes Coverage:

Sigil, City of Doors, is a five-page subchapter in the first chapter of the Manual of the Planes. It opens with a sidebar of the same style that is used for all official settlement breakdowns in 4e material; a population of 250,000 that contains every race (humanoid or monstrous) imaginable; the only true government is the Lady of Pain (quote: "Crime is common, but rebellion is unthinkable"); it houses an endless variety of inns and taverns; the Grand Bazaar houses goods from across the multiverse, although it's actally not the biggest of its kind (the City of Brass is called out as more extensive); and temples can be found to all the deities, benign and malign, but few claim any significant power in the city's affairs.


After this, we move on to the introductory flavor text. We are told that Sigil is its own unique plane, which exists outside of the World Axis and yet is intimately connected to it by means of its enormous portal network. It is a filthy, noisy city with smoke-choked alleyways and crowded streets constructed inside of a torus - a map of Sigil from the outside is provided on the third page of this chapter, and shows that this version takes the "inside of tube joined end to end" interpretation of a torus. This is actually not new; Sigil was shown in this style previously in 3rd edition's Planar Handbook, in contrast to the "inside face of a ring" style that I want to say was used for AD&D, but I can't prove. The map used in this book is not the same map that was used in the Planar Handbook, however.


From here, we start breaking the subchapter into topics, or sub-subchapters, whichever term you prefer.


Entering & Exiting Sigil:

Sigil is described as both the best-protected city in the multiverse and the worst-protected, for much the same reason. Its position outside of any known point in creation makes conventional invasion impossible, but the portals allow anyone who wants to enter Sigil to basically do so. Theoretically, any bounded space big enough for somebody to fit through could be a portal, but the vast majority of them need some kind of "Key" - a somatic, vocal, material or mental component to trigger the magic.


In addition to the key system, portals are, as a general rule, not stable; most portals are temporary by nature, and/or the precise locations they link up to can vary depending on different circumstances, usually shifting based on time. This keeps people from truly understanding, controlling and exploiting portals - in AD&D, it was actually established that trying to restrict access to portals or destroy them was one of the few ways to be guaranteed of getting the Lady of Pain's attention. And you don't want that.


This topic concludes by noting that portals are the only way in-or-out of Sigil; you cannot use any other means to escape or enter the place. It doesn't specific how this connects to the "teleport circle" phenomena, where permanent portals between places are artificially established to allow for easy travel between, ala Diablo. It does mention that this means powers that normally serve to summon or conjure creatures won't work in Sigil.



Architecture:

In summary, this topic establishes that Sigil's architectural is uniquely individualistic, and explains just why this phenomena is the case. As its introductory paragraph explains, in your normal city, architecture depends on three factors: building materials available, environment, and the dominant style and personality of the locals.


Sigil has no natural building materials. Sigil has an "earth" of a kind, which has the texture of hardpacked clay, but the stuff crumbles into useless dust when dug up, so you can't make anything with sod or mud. There's no native lumber, either. So everything on Sigil has to ultimately be built out stuff that was imported from some other world.


Likewise, Sigil's environment is just sort of... bland. It never gets extremely hot or extremely cold, it has no monsoons or tornadoes, and what does pass for weather just tends to make everything look gray and dingy. That's a direct quote, but the way, and I'm sorry, but I don't remember how this compares to Sigil in the Great Wheel, off the top of my head. But it does mean that Sigil builders focus far more on style over substance, since they don't have to worry about things like big storms ripping down their spindly towers.


Finally, because Sigil is a melting pot of races from all over, you'll find the most improbable and fantastic mixes and matches you can imagine. Dwarves and elves and orcs live side by side, with each building according to their own style. An Abyssal palace with a shrine to Pelor built of white marble in the alley nearby. The tendency for Sigilites to simply scavenge material from abandoned (or unfinished) buildings only exacerbates this trait.



Illumination:

Sigil has no natural sun or moon; instead, the sky mysterious darkens and brightens over a 24-hour period; the brightest hour is "Peak" (noonday sun in a mid-latitude city, barring the near-perpetual haze), and the darkest is "Antipeak". Effectively, there's 6 hours of bright light and 6 hours of darkness in a day, with twelve hours of murky twilight rounding out the cycle. Lanternbearers make good money in this place for a reason.



Laws & Society:

As it lampshades, Sigil is a naturally anarchistic place, but is kept from total chaos mostly by fear of the tremendous power of the Lady of Pain. Attempts to preserve order are left to the people themselves, and... well, they're not very good at it. Sigil's "police force" is an amateur citizen's group called the Sons of Mercy, who don't have any official power to enforce their capacity to make arrests or carry out sentences, resulting in a lack of respect from the locales and lack of efficiencyy in their job. The so-called Sigil Advisory Council is intended to be a diplomatic power-bloc to look after things, but they no real political power.



The Wards:

Ever since it was introduced, Sigil has been informally divided into six regions, known as the Wards, and the World Axis doesn't diverge from this model. We're given a brief description of all six wards, which I'll try and summarize.


The Lower Ward, which earns its moniker from its abundance of portals to the Elemental Chaos, is a hot and foul-smelling area that concentrates the artisanal residents of the city; the vast bulk of Sigil's forges, mills, warehouses, workshops and smithies are found here.


The Lady's Ward is the center of Sigil's aristocracy and religion; the wealthy and powerful cluster here, and most of the city's temples are likewise built here.


The Market Ward is the central hub of trade for Sigil itself. You can find anything here, from a dozen planes and a million worlds. Be warned that it can be hard to find just what you're looking for, and prices can vary wildly depending on external factors.


The Guildhall Ward is the center for Sigil's middle class - a status I believe it actually took over from the Clerk's Ward below in the transition from 2nd edition. This tends to house residential quarters for the business-owners from the Market Ward, as well as shops specializing in services rather than finished goods. It's also a hub for racial ghettos, with the cited examples being the elf grove of Rethevar and the githyanki commune of Gitriban.


The Clerk's Ward is the center of Sigil's bureaucrats, scribes, sages and scholars - a quiet place to get things done without a lot of attention. This has made it increasingly popular with far-thinking criminal organizations who want to "upscale" themselves and who've been moving here from the Lower Ward and the Hive. Likewise, the general policy of "respect each other's privacy" here encourages activities of an illicit nature. In what the book lampshades is quite weird and wouldn't happen in a city more organized than Sigil, the Clerk's Ward is also the home of the Civic Festhall, which is a combination of the best aspects of a concert hall, museum and tavern, whilst also simultaneously serving as the centerpiece of an artistic neighborhood that brings travelers from across the multiverse, all overseen by a group called the Society of Sensation - the second of the Factions to be mentioned here, after the Sons of Mercy.


Finally, we discuss The Hive, the chaotic, sprawling slum that lies between the Lower and Clerk's Wards that is home to the lowest of the low, the desperate and the deranged. It also described as a veritable microcosm of Sigil, with an abundance of taverns, inns, entertainment and services of admittedly questionable quality. In particular, the Night Market here is the biggest grey-and-black market in all of Sigil, and can compete with the Grand Bazaar of the Market Ward.



Faces of Sigil:

This is the last topic in this book's Sigil subchapter, and is the only unique one; prior to this point, all of the information in the 4e Manual of the Planes is actually a reprint of material originally printed in 3rd edition's Planar Handbook - the big difference is that the Laws & Society topic is missing a paragraph on the dabus from that book, and likewise it's missing the Planar Handbook's "History" topic.


The Faces of Sigil topic describes a small number of prominent Sigil residents in fairly extensive details. It takes its name from the original Faces of Sigil splatbook for AD&D, which was devoted to expanding the roster of notable Sigil NPCs.


Specifically, this topic looks at:

Alluvius Ruskin, a tiefling trader in portal keys who is actually a member of the long-vanished Incanterium sect (arcane magic supremacists transformed into undying magic-eaters).

Rule-of-Three, a shapeshifting fiendish information broker with a connection to the Blood War.

Shemeshka the Marauder, a powerful fiendish merchant and information broker.

Vocar the Disobedient, a one-eyed, one-handed crazy old man who claims to be a disgraced renegade former exarch of Vecna.



Closing Thoughts:

This is a pretty basic guide to Sigil; it's info to get you started and help you run a game there, but it's not exactly brimming with informative details beyond the bare-bones. And it's certainly not the entire selling point of the 4e Manual of the Planes, at least not if taken on its own and if you already have the 3e Planar Handbook! Still, for brand new DMs just getting into 4e and without any awareness of Planescape, this is a decent starter.


For reasons of brevity, and hoping this enhances the digestibility of my writing, I've decided to split this review in half; one for each source. So tune in next time as we discuss the DMG2's take on this topic!

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Sigil in the World Axis, Part 2

Opening Thoughts:

From a source that was 99% a reprint of material established in 3rd edition, it's time to look at something promises to be much more unique. Having been written after the Manual of the Planes, the DMG2 decided that Sigil needed more room to be discussed than could be squeezed into such a tightly stuffed splatbook.


Which is only fitting, since Sigil actually had two dedicated sourcebooks in 2nd edition; "In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil" tackled the demiplanar city's geography, whilst "Uncaged: Faces of Sigil" was a guide to notable or at least interesting NPCs residing there.



Dungeon Master's Guide 2 Coverage:

In the DMG 2, the subchapter on Sigil is part of Chapter 6 and spans from Page #186 to pge #203 - or to page #222, if you count the Typical Street & Sewer Encounters, the mini-chapter on Gate Towns (which I just realized I really should have discussed in-depth as part of my DMG review - I'll have to add that to my MotP Chapter 1 review) and the 12-page long adventure "A Conspiracy of Doors".


In a broad sense, it covers the same general topics as its precursor in the Manual of the Planes. However, this version goes into much greater details, once you get past the "Sigil Facts" sidebar that is a reprint from the previous source, albeit with the paragraph on the Sons of Mercy and the Sigil Advisory Council added to it as part of the Government & Defense segment.


Origin Stories:

Nobody actually knows where Sigil came from or what it's intended for, but because of its sheer importance, there are many, many theories, all compacted into one paragraph that I'll quote for you, as I don't think that I can do any better:

Some claim that Sigil is the linchpin that keeps all of existence from flying apart. Many myths and writings from this school of thought associate the city with the legendary proto-entities of old—the predecessors of the gods and primordials. Other scholars believe that the city is a map of all creation, that all that one needs to do to understand the secrets of the universe is to understand the twists and turns of Sigil. Some see the City of Doors as the easiest, most direct way to get from here to there and back again. And a select few see Sigil as the key to the ongoing battle for the hearts and souls of creation, the place where the literal war of philosophies plays out for good or ill.

The Impossible Place:

After the Origin Stories topic, each of the subsequent topics is divided up into multiple subtopics. This one starts talking about the... "geography", I suppose, of Sigil.


The first few paragraphs retread information provided in the Manual of the Planes - Sigil is a city taht exists on the inside of a gigantic, hollow ring that has no outer side, standing apart from the rest of the multiverse but linked to it by portals. There's a few little new details here, like on how gravity is always "down" towards the ground of Sigil regardless of where you are, and this makes flying through the zero-gravity "center" of Sigil possible but difficult, or the fact that Antipeak is strictly lightless (but the abundance of lights from all the buildings around you generally alleviates the darkness to some extent).


Then we get to the new subtopic of Sigil's weather, and that's when we start getting new information! Below is the entirety of the Weather entry, and whilst the wording is different, it does maintain the tradition from AD&D that Sigil has pretty crappy weather. Which is another of the little details that tie it to its Dickensian London roots.

If it isn’t raining when you arrive in Sigil, wait a couple of minutes. A light rain tends to be the usual weather in the City of Doors. The rain falls through the ever-present smoke from the multitude of fires, ranging from a nearly imperceptible mist to a constant drip of cold, greasy water. When it isn’t raining (a rarity), the streets fill with fog that can be as wispy as gossamer or so thick as to reduce visibility to a few feet. Even on the brightest days, when the rain stops falling and a breeze blows calmly through the streets, Sigil is cool. At night, when darkness falls, the streets can get uncomfortably cold. And then the rain starts again.

From here, we move on to the topic of flora and fauna. Nothing is actually native to Sigil, but it does have a semblance of an ecology made up of things that have been brought through portals and managed to find a niche. Flora-wise, this pretty much consists of the iconic razorvine, an aggressively fast-growing and probably Abyssal creeper-plant with razor-sharp fronds and stalks that has been heavily integrated into Sigil architecture... if only because they have little choice, as it would probably take over the city in a couple of months without constant pruning and care. As for fauna, it's mostly vermin - insects and rats and other creatures that infest the garbage heaps, dank sewers, and dark corners of the city. The worst regions, such as the Hive, are home to more monstrous vermin, predominantly giant, dire and cranium rats. The sewers are also known to be home to monsters of all descriptions, brought there by portals.


Finally, this topic closes with the subtopic of architecture. Whilst the language is new, it reiterates that Sigil is a hodgepodge of styles, as different races and cultures from different worlds and time periods have all left their stamp, with the process only exacerberated by the need to scavenge or import everything they can use - in fact, there's a thriving underground business in "stone piracy", or the theft of building supplies and even the actual structural material of existant buildings! Whilst implied in the Manual of the Planes, this section also explicitly states that different wards have different architectural styles based on their respective incomes.


I tell a lie; there's also the sidebar "Deeper Than You Think", which talks about the World Axis version of UnderSigil. It explains that this strange labyrinth of chambers and tunnels and sewers is actually a complex array of demiplanes, some interconnected and others independent - in fact, it's actually impossible to dig any real distance down into the chalky material that makes up Sigil's "ground". That said, almost all of UnderSigil's components - shop basements, burial chambers for wealthy families, forgotten dungeons, the sewers, etc - were erected in the distant past. The rituals permitting such dimensional excavations are not undertaken lightly in the modern age; those who are even capable of performing them are rare, the rituals are expensive, and of course there's always the risk that such a working will provoke Her Bladed Serenity, the Lady of Pain, so most err on the side of caution.



Portals:

This topic is all about elaborating in much greater detail on the precise makeup of portals. It clarifies where they can exist, discusses the existence of both permanently active and key-locked portals (the latter make up the majority, of course), establishes the existence of warding rituals to bar random portal formations (difficult and expensive), proclaims that most portals are two-way (but beware the one-way portal!) and elaborates on both gate keys and the three major types of portal.


These three portal types are:

Permanent: Always link the same two spots in the multiverse, typically one point in Sigil and one point somewhere else. They tend to link relatively safe and stable locations, such as gate-towns.

Temporary: Creates a link between two points that may or may not require a key, but will ultimately fade away. These are notoriously dangerous and frustrating.

Shifting: At least one end of this pair of portals moves through a cycle of established locations, though whether it's the Sigil end or the other end that shifts varies from portal to portal.


Gate keys tend to be neither too common nor too rare, though there are exceptions, and the precise key is often tied to the manifestation end in some way.



The Lady of Pain:

Here, we elaborate on what little is known about the Lady of Pain. Which isn't much. It does convey the flavor of who she is - powerful, enigmatic, and feared - quite well in my opinion, particularly with these two paragraphs:

The Lady of Pain never speaks. She never participates in council meetings or guild discussions or judicial inquiries. When she appears, she is seen drifting down the cobbled streets, her gown barely brushing the dusty surface as she passes by. Those familiar with the ways of Sigil know enough to move on during the Lady’s sporadic forays through the streets. Anyone who has the bad sense to try to interfere with her passage receives painful gashes from her penetrating gaze. Such appearances, rare and memorable though they might be, eventually end when the Lady passes through a wall or simply fades into nothingness, vanishing from sight without word or warning.

This segment is most special for its discussion of the Lady's Mazes and the Dabus, who went without any mention in the Manual of the Plane.


Mazes are small labyrinthine demiplanes that contain a single, well-hidden exit back to Sigil. They provide sustenance and keep their victim alive, but few ever escape.


The Dabus make up the largest portion of this segment. Present in Sigil since its debut, the dabus are pale-skinned humanoids with long, narrow bodies and features, elegant horns, and shocks of white hair, which move by levitating a few inches above the ground at all time. They are the caretakers of Sigil, responding to all of its needs for infrastructure maintenance - this means that the dabus are always visible to some degree, wherever you are; unclogging sewers, trimming razorvine, fixing cobblestones, tearing down or reinforcing buildings, etcetera.


Very little is known about them, but it does elaborate on what facts are known. This includes their perpetual silence (they communicate with gestures and sign language, or occasionally by producing an illusory rebus - a pictorial mixture of letters, numbers and symbols that translates into a proper message), that they seem to exist to keep Sigil functioning (but not to the extent of making it more than presentable), and that whilst they are not combative by nature, sometimes they do get into fights. Usually, this is when somebody is stupid enough to attack them, but they have also been known to appear in sizable numbers (the typical dabus "work crew" is just 3-5 strong) to quell riots, disperse crowds, or deal with the greatest threats to the stability of the city and the well-being of the Lady of Pain - but normal crimes and minor disturbances are beneath them.


As a result, this segment concludes with two Dabus statblocks; the Custodian (level 15 Artillery) and the Enforcer (level 18 Controller).


One noteworthy change to the dabus is this; at the end of the Faction War, the departure of the Fraternity of Order left the city's courts all but empty of judges, lawyers... pretty much everyone needed to actually run the place. So the dabus stepped up and took over the role of being Sigil's arbiters of justice (which led to an aesthetic decline in Sigil, because there were fewer of them doing their normal maintenance. This idea persisted into the 3e writeup of Sigil in the Planar Handbook, but is absent from the version here. Which, frankly, is kind of sensible, because judges who only speak in rebuses is kind of a disaster waiting to happen, and even the Faction War module acknowledged it.



Rules and Governance:

This section elaborates in detail on something that has been touched upon before now: Sigil is, to all practical purposes, an anarchy. The highest authority is the Lady of Pain and her Dabus minions, and they don't care about the mundane business of running Sigil - they collect no taxes, issue no proclamations, and . So long as you don't perform what Her Bladed Serenity considers "true" crimes (altering or interfering with portals, slaying dabus, attempting to destroy Sigil, attempting to start a rebellion, worshipping or challenging the Lady herself), then you can do whatever you like.


As a result, Sigil is described as feeling a lot like a wild frontier town, with an atmosphere similar to an armed true; conducting yoursef here requires remembering a few simple rules, the most prominent of which are summarizable as "Don't anger the Lady of Pain", "Always maintain your guard" and "Your safety is your concern". People generally protect themselves by having the strength of arms or sorcery to fight for themselves, or least looking like it, or having the cash to hire people who do. Ironically, the highly racially mixed nature of Sigil has made it surprisingly tolerant; pragmatism demands that traditional racial animosity be given the backseat here, so most denizens are content to adopt a somewhat cynical "live and let live" attitude, and likewise they generally police themselves.


This segment is the first to bring up the existence of the Factions, establishing them as philosophical fraternites that ran different parts of the city, but which were exiled after fighting a devastating civil war. It then moves onto examining in detail the four major "power blocs" within Sigil as it exists today:


The Sigil Advisory Council is a cabal of nine elected representatives from amongst Sigil's prominent and well-to-do citizenry, organized and led by a female tiefling named Rhys, the ex-factol (leader) of the Transcendent Order faction. Their goal is to work to maintain the peace in Sigil, and they are sincere... but they have little, if any, real authority, aside from maybe the fact that the Lady hasn't Mazed or flayed any of them yet. Not all that much is actually presented about them, save that they sometimes use their wealth to hire adventurers to deal with problems, and they even engage in humanitarian and charitable activities in the more upscale sections of the city. They sometimes cooperate with the Mutual Trade Association to push forth edicts and get things done.


The Sons of Mercy are a splinter from the Mercykillers faction, one devoted to justice and redemption. Fleshed out in more detail in Dragon #370's article on the Mercykillers, "Riven Justice", the Sons continue to run Sigil's prison as their predecessors did, but have also expanded to become Sigil's unofficial city watch, taking over the role of the now-missing and disgraced Harmonium. Unfortunately, having no "official" authority, their watch patrols must rely on force of arms or intimidation in any attempt to stop actual crimes they encounter - if they can't get the upper hand, they either flee or take a beating for their trouble.


The Mutual Trade Association is another self-started, self-regulated group, consisting of a loose collection of guild masters and prominent independent merchants who agreed to come together to protect their collective business interests they relate to Sigil. The Traders do not interefere with the day-to-day affairs of the individual businesses within their association - in fact, they usually don't even share business-related information. What they do is look for solutions to problems that plague them as a collective; crime waves, disrupted supply lines, taxes and tariffs, embattled trade routes, worker unrest... anything that threatens profit and industry will draw the attention of the Traders. Ironically, it's called out that this means the Association often enacts solutions to problems affecting Sigil before either the Sons of Mercy or the Sigil Advisory Council can get their acts together. The Association was founded by three major mercantile figures from Planescape's past; Shemeshka (ravaasta merchant and information broker), Zadara (storm giant entrepreneur) and Estavan (oni and head of the Planar Trade Consortium), who realized that the merchant class's jockeying for power and influence could attract the Lady's attention and agreed it was better to work together more or less than wind up Mazed or flayed.


Finally, this segment concludes by examining the other power players of Sigil in a single paragraph, explaining that Sigil is home to a wide number of low-key organizations. Armed merchant auxiliaries, neghborhood gangs, and privatized militia are all called out as some of the people influencing some measure of order on Sigil's natural chaos.



Sigil's Businesses & Services:

This segment has no sub-segments, but examines in detail just why Sigil is such a hub of business and services. It specifically calls out some of Sigil's more iconic features - touts, couriers, taverns, inns and markets - and goes into what they offer for the average person (or adventurer). It's solid info, but not really needing to be expanded upon, I think.


Connecting to this segment is a sidebar called "The Chant". This explains that Sigil may not actually be the mercantile center of the universe - that role actually goes to the City of Brass, although I must admit I'm not sure why - but it is the hub of information on the planes. News, rumors, gossip, facts; all of this information, collectively known as "The Chant", finds its way here to be bought and sold. Sigil is the place to find and buy things that can't be held: secrets, gateways, passwords, the true names of dead gods, how to wake a sleeping primordial, the answers to lost riddles. Nearly everything known or imagined can be found here - for a price. That said, buyer beware; no one has all the information, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying.



The Wards of Sigil:

As its title suggests, this segment breaks down the six wards of Sigil in much greater detail than the Manual of the Planes did. Whilst the jist of the information remains mostly the same, this book focuses on providing an extended list of notable places to visit in each Ward and generally breaking down reasons to visit them, so it's much more informative.


The Lady's Ward, as established before, is the home of the wealthy and powerful. It is the cleanest, quietest, most upscale area to find in the City of Doors. This region is home to the City Barracks, the Court, the Prison, and the Armory. It is described as being both majestic and cold, with a facade of gilding and whitewash hiding secret turbulence. To live here, you only need money, and there are more wealthy sinners than saints. Any given resident could be a crime lord, a tyrant, or a dark wizard, just hiding behind a veneer of respectability. Street crime is kept to a minimum here, thanks to patrols by both the Sons of Mercy (statblocks for Sons of Mercy Bashers (level 13 Soldiers) and Wizars (level 14 Artillery), and a sidebar on the typical patrol size and role, are included) and private militias - of course, these two groups sometimes battle it out with each other.


Other landmarks of note include the Temple District, which houses temples to all manner of gods both living and dead; the taverns that ring the Temple District (the one deemed worthy of note is the Silver Tankard, a celestial mead hall cosntructed in imitation of a similar establishment in Hestavar and run by an angel named Aratha); and the Gardens, the closest thing in Sigil to a park, which is defended by its own resident clan of Eladrin (the Bloodroots) and which abounds in portals to the Feywild. The Gardens consist of an outer ring of lush and well-tended botanical wonders surrounding an inner circle of wild vegetation, which shifts between a deciduous forest, a tropical jungle, a thorn forest, and a coniferous forest over three-month intervals, representing spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. Both the Silver Tankard and the Gardens are completely new to Sigil's lore.


The Market Ward, as established earlier, is the hub of commerce for Sigil as a whole, with every item imaginable located here - and more than a few things unimaginable. The Grand Bazaar fills the ward during the day, although there are many smaller marketplaces that operate during both day and night. Want an astral skiff? A demonic war engine? A safe house in the Elemental Chaos? You can get them here... but buyer beware. The area is also a center for gambling halls, inns and taverns. One area of note that is new to the World Axis depiction of Sigil is Copperman Way, which is home to the recently wealthy - mostly merchant lords, but also a handful of succesful adventurers. It also discusses that the bazaar tends to group similar types of merchandise into the same areas, and that the place abounds in pickpockets, cutpurses, con artists, hustlers, thieves and scoundrels of all descriptions.


A sidebar titled "Adventurer's Inns" notes that the Market Ward is a favorite destination for adventurers passing through Sigil, and as a result they tend to take advantage of the local inns and taverns as places to stay and recoup whilst they're in town. It lists four particularly prominent inns in the area favored by adventurers; the Golden Spout (run by a halfling Athar (though the term isn't used), and renown for its comforts); the Hand of Vecna (infamouse for the wildness of its clientele); the Battlement (extra-secure, and with its own demiplane private vault); and the Red Tabor (filthy, but dirt-cheap).


The Guildhall Ward was not, in AD&D, all that distinguishable from the Market Ward - in fact, it was admitted that recognition of its existence was preserved mostly due to tradition. Its primary purpose is serving as a source of homes and workshops for the people who sell in the Market Ward. In this depiction, however, the Guildhall Ward is on the rise; with the factions gone, the guilds are rising in prominence once again. The guilds monitor prices and wages throughout Sigil. Members meet to discuss business trends, exchange information, and promote employment. They offer training programs and apprenticeships, pool their resources to maintain work space and warehouses, and sometimes buy raw materials in bulk to share across the membership, depending on the businesses served by a particular guild. Notable guilds mentioned are the Order of Master Clerks and Scribes (which deals with copyists, record-keepers, and accountants), the Escort Guild (professional touts), the Council of Innkeepers, the Arcane Brotherhood (wizards and arcane scholars), and the Builders’ Fellowship (carpenters and stonecutters). There's also mention of a fledgling Adventurer's Guild, but it's not doing too well; most adventurers and freebooters see no point in paying fees to do the "work" that they do.


The Clerk's Ward is the hub of recordkeeping and bureaucracy in Sigil, but also home to its artistic side. Whereas Faction War claimed that the end of taxation with the flight of the disgraced Fated was a positive, claiming that the taxes were literally nothing but a way for the faction to enrich itself, this book takes a different and more realistic approach: no taxes being paid means nothing gets done. Admittedly, I have to wonder what "processes of government" Sigil even has, given its description as a place that is more or less anarchy. Still, the aforementioned Order of Master Clerks and Scribes have taken over the Hall of Records and now run a remanaged, far more transparent taxation system, which is much lower in cost and much easier to follow than the system the Fated exploited. Of course, some people still complain that the taxes are too high, but what else is new? Aside from these details, this section mostly focuses on elaborating on just what kind of work is done here, with a bit of information about the Civic Festhall and the local inns - the Clerk's Ward is a good place to hire bodyguards, mercenaries, adventurers, wizards and even thieves.


The Lower Ward is the center of the artisans and skilled laborers of Sigil. Portals to the Elemental Chaos abound, providing fuel and raw materials to turn into industry, all at the cost of creating a rather nasty atmosphere. Scalding steam and stinking smoke form a perpetual haze in this part of the area. In the Faction War module, it was stated that after the diaspora of the Believers of the Source, who ran the Great Foundry here, it was taken over by a cabal of bladelings, and that lore is preserved here. This area abounds in denizens of the Plane Below, including elementals and demons. It isn’t unusual to see archons working the forges and foundries, or to encounter barlguras or mariliths in the seedier taverns, or to discover a free-roaming elemental searching a dark alley or the ruins of an old workshop or warehouse.


Also discussed in this subsegment are two prominent locales that go all the way back to A Guide to Sigil; the Shattered Temple (of Aoskar, who isn't named here), the former home of the Athar faction, and the Bones of the Night. The Shattered Temple is now home to roaming undead, including a clan of vampires called the Stokril, which fuels rumors of one or more portals to that dismal plane. The Bones of Night hasn't changed, however, and is still home to Lothar; an arch-necromancer who collects skulls and uses them as the focus for necromantic divinations, which in turn he uses to earn payment as an information broker.


The Hive is Sigil's slums, home to the desperate, deranged, dismal and damned. A labyrinth of hovels, shanties and tents, the Hive combines decrepit tenements with pawnbrokers, moneylenders, gladiator pits, cheap taverns and slave markets. All of the classic locales of major note from AD&D are here; the Mortuary (the Dustmen are gone, but their name remains, now used for the non-philosophical Mortuary Guild, which has encompassed the body collectors); the Gatehouse (Sigil's insane asylum); the Night Market (the biggest grey to black market imaginable; if it's illicit, immoral or profane, you can get it here) and the Slags (the ravaged ruins of an area destroyed by warring fiendish armies, now haunted by the most desperate or depraved Hivers and Sigil's resident aberrations).


The Hive segment has a sub-segment dedicated to the Kadyx. This was a monster introduced back in A Guide to Sigil for AD&D, a warbeast left behind by the demonic and diabolic armies that leveled the Slags and which has been terrorizing the area ever since. In AD&D, the Kadyx was treated much like the Lady of Pain; an unstatted terror intended to be used to generate "atmosphere". To TSR's credit, they never explicitly said it was supposed to be invincible, but still, DMs had to do the work themselves if they wanted their party to stop it. Not here; this iteration of Sigil includes a full statblock for the Kadyx... of course, as a level 21 Solo Skirmisher, taking this demonic war drake on is easier said than done!



Faces of Sigil:

Our final section in this writeup of Sigil is a brief rundown of an assortment of notable NPCs in Sigil. Most of these are figures that will be familiar to those who knew Planescape in the past; Adamok Ebon, A'kin, Alluvius Ruskin, Arwyl Swan's Song, Autochon the Belllringer, and so forth. There are arguably one or two new faces here - there's an "independent investigator" named Balthazar Thames who I have no idea who he is, a disenchanted agent of Estavan's named Caravan, and Vocar the Disobedient from the Manual of the Planes.


None of these figures have really changed that much, so I don't really know that I need to elaborate here. I will provide a complete list of the NPCs covered in this section if people feel it's required.



Closing Thoughts:

And with that, we have completed our look at Sigil in the World Axis! This version is much more detailed than the previous, and gives you a much better run-down of Sigil if you're totally new to the place.


I will admit that there are some isses here in terms of internal consistency, at least from my end - Sigil has a government, and yet it doesn't? What IS the point of the Sigil Advisory Council? But that's not really WotC's fault, it's simply them trying to do what they can with the results of the Faction War.


To be honest... even though I didn't like most of the Factions, and thought the writing for them in general tended to be pretty bad (Planescape's Factions and Sigil were TSR trying to emulate the Old World of Darkness: I think that speaks for itself), I still miss them. This would have been a good opportunity to present a new face to Sigil; the Lady of Pain could have changed her mind, and new Factions could have filled the power gaps. Keep the stronger Factions who always made sense (Society of Sensation, Transcendant Order), fix the ones that could be fixed (Bleak Cabal; WHY is being a nihilist something that shortens your lifespan and causes you to constantly wrestle with insanity and depression?!), junk the remaining bad ones (Dustmen), elevate the new factions (Sons of Mercy, Sodkillers, Mind's Eye) and add new ones. Basically... 4e could have brought back the factions and made them WORK in a way it did with so many other poorly handled ideas from TSR. But that probably would have interfered with the page space they had alloted, so I guess I can see why they didn't. It's still a bummer, though.


In our next review, we will begin tackling the 4e Manual of the Planes. Hmm... there were a few plane-related articles in Dragon/Dungeon; should I at least list up the ones that might be relevant? I think a few of them were actually covered by me in other Let's Reads.



November 11th, 2022