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Originally posted by The Sage
Wood Elf Ranger, I would prefer that you roll for your own ability scores. The dice-rolling program that I had designed in VB is still not working correctly, and from my analysis of it's code, it has one to many bugs to be considered presentable.

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Originally posted by Sarta

Assuming that your info packet on Sigil contains few house modifications, I should be fine without it. I have 90 percent of the planescape stuff. What would be nice to know ahead of time is whether or not the campaign will be making use of the Great Wheel or the Tree of Life cosmology.

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Originally posted by Arivia
The Great Wheel-this stands for (all but two of ?) the Sage's campaigns-never minding that the 3e FR cosmology doesn't exactly allow for Sigil...

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Originally posted by Purple Dragon Knight

There's still a Realms portal going to Sigil... I read that somewhere... I'll try to find out where.

Roger Out!

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Originally posted by Wood Elf Ranger

You have an excellent point there Purple Dragon Knight. I guess percent HP would be fine you'll just have to double check it to make sure my math is right Perhaps we should have a vote on these things Sage?

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Originally posted by Purple Dragon Knight

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Originally posted by The Sage

Purple Dragon Knight, I'm looking over what you've presented so far. I have found one problem, although it can be easily fixed by something the Bookwyrm had shown me a while back. I'll get back to you on that one, privately.

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Hi Sage. Still waiting to hear from you on this subject. Let me know what befalls, as I cannot continue creating the character unless I know what was wrong in the concept in the first place.

Also, are we going for a point buy system or not? Bookwyrm and I seem to think that would be the best thing, what about you?

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It's a city shaped like the inside of a tire. If you look in the sky, you can see the rest of the streets and buildings curving up on all sides and stretching in an arc across the sky. It's incredibly densely populated, with most buildings many stories in height with shacks and lean-tos all built along it. The roads are mostly narrow and winding, often cut off from the sky completely or stretching through the skyway on bridges from building to building. There's one waterway, a moving avenue of filth and excrement called the Ditch - there are portals within it to various real rivers (even the upper-planar Oceanus) but they add fresh water only rarely, and for brief periods.

The portals are everywhere. Any enclosed frame - a doorway, a window, an arch, the region beneath a clothesline, an overpass, a bridge, a sewer grate, the mouth of a gargoyle, beneath a statue's legs, even in the nostrils of a titanic sleeping beast - can become a portal to somewhere else. It's actually dangerous to travel Sigil without a knowledgeable guide because you never know when something you have on you might act as a key that'll open a portal and shunt you into another dimension. The same problem might get you caught in Sigil from another plane - the people who end up in the city accidently are called the Keyless.

Keys are important. Anything can be a key - a thought, an emotion, an idea, an action, an object, a time of day - but each portal usually has only one key unique to it. There are chant-brokers who know about the keys to get you where you want to go, and this is a thriving business in the City of Doors. Without a key the portal is just an open space, and it only leads to where you'd expect it to leave - more Sigil. That's why Sigil is called the Cage, because there's no way to get out without a key to one of the locked doors. Some portals are permanent, some are temporary, and some shift from place to place. Some are two-way, while others are one-way. The same is true of the portals on the destination side.
Some keys work both ways, but sometimes you need a different key to get back.

Sigil's guardian is called the Lady of Pain. She's the most imprisoned person in the Cage, and most never see her at all. She appears only during times of upheaval when her authority is in question; she seems to exist solely for the purpose of making sure that everyone - gods, elementals, ghosts, wishes, kingdoms, constructs - everyone knows she's in charge. It's said to be her will that prevents gods from entering the Cage. The last one who tried, the greater god Aoskar, was somehow killed by the Lady's power. Or is that how it happened after all? Perhaps no one really knows, but it's not healthy to doubt the Lady of Pain. Most of the time, she leaves everyone alone to do whatever they want, and it's even possible to pretend she doesn't exist at all. That is, if she exists at all. Day to day laws are created by the Hall of Speakers, where all the factions meet. Laws are enforced by the Harmonium, tried by the Fraternity of Order, and lawbreakers are punished by the Mercykillers, known as the Red Death. That is, before the war erupted between the factions and caused the Harmonium to leave and the Mercykillers to split into two groups.

The servants of the Lady are floating, four-horned humanoids called dabus. They communicate using symbols and signs which float above their heads. They clear the streets of lower-planar vines and parasites, rebuild or tear down buildings, and never ever speak aloud.

Sigil is strange and ever-changing. The building you went to yesterday may be a few blocks away today, or it might not exist at all. Parts of the city are spun off into ethereal Mazes, other parts shift and groan with the attractive force of the portals. Cagers are always discovering new alleyways and neighborhoods they never realized existed before. Maybe they didn't.

The City of Doors is divided roughly into six wards: the Market Ward, the Guildhall Ward, Our Lady's Ward, the Hive Ward, the Lower Ward, and the Clerk's Ward. No one knows who the Clerk is, but his or her ward is filled with bookkeepers, musicians, and artists. The Lady's Ward is full of government types, weapon makers, and the aristocracy. The Lady of Pain doesn't live there, or anywhere that people know about. The Hive Ward is slums and mortuary, the Lower Ward is full of the lower, working classes (and portals to the Lower Planes), the Market Ward is what you'd think it was, and the Guildhall Ward is full of doctors and massage therapists and other service positions, and basket weavers, hatmakers, and other craftsfolk. There are no actual guilds anymore, the factions controlling the various businesses.

Censuses are notoriously unreliable, but there are over a million permanent inhabitants in Sigil. The Cage is over twenty miles long, and over five miles wide. It changes size to accomodate new visitors, though real estate is still very hard to come by.

Outside of Sigil's ring is absolute nothingness. No color, no light, no darkness, no sound or time or form or substance. Normally, you can't see all the nothing because light and clouds and smoke and dust and ash and lightning and mist and radiance from the Inner Planes fill up the sky through portals in the clouds and industrial exhaust - and maybe the dabus bring sunbeams in in buckets. The edges of Sigil's ring are filled with high buildings so it's not easy to jump off, but those who scale them can jump into the nothing and then no one knows what might happen. The ring of Sigil is one big portal, see, but anything might be the key to it, and it might lead anywhere - some think that those who jump into the nothing end up in some completely random plane, maybe one totally outside the known planescapes, or maybe some place of death and annihilation. If you don't happen to have a key that would trigger the big portal (and again it might be anything) you just end up falling forever toward the Outlands. Maybe they can teleport from there to some safe place, but maybe not. The point is that it shouldn't be practical for PCs to use jumping off Sigil as an easy escape.

No one's ever dug down through Sigil's streets and come out the other side. Beneath the streets are neighborhoods that have been buried by the dabus, forgotten sewer lines, underdark-like tunnels, hidden civilizations, and labyrinths where portals exist at such frequency that there's nothing else. You can keep going down forever, maybe, but you'll probably end up in another plane. Maybe eventually the city is nothing but big holographic runes and symbols continuously recreated by the dabus.

To sum up, imagine every city, real and fictional, that you've ever heard of. Put them in a wheel and spin it around so fast that it all gets mixed up together. Now put in an unlimited amount of doorways that lead to just about every world there is, and all the netherworlds and all the heavens and the realms of the elementals and spirits and unfamiliar things. Some decide to stay, because this city has a prosperous economy based on trade of goods exotic and common, of precious metals, poetry and philosophy, hearts and bodies and minds, death and magic, riddles and mysteries and souls. There isn't much open war because open war makes the frightening, bladed Lady of Pain swoop down and start killing indiscriminately, and no one knows what might stop her (except a long-dead wizard banished to a gemstone in Pandemonium much more than a hundred centuries ago). For whatever reason, the most common tech level is medieval to early Industrial age. Now imagine what the society might be like. That's Sigil.

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The factions, and a summary of their beliefs:

The Harmonium (or hardheads), who want peace and harmony, no matter the cost. They oversee law enforcement in Sigil.

The Fraternety of Order (the Guvners), who seek to find all the laws of the multiverse, in order to control it. The oversee the courts of Sigil.

The Mercykillers (the red death), who seek to punish the guilty, and demand that justice be the leading cause of the mulitverse. They run the prison.

The Sign of One (signers), who believe the multiverse is called into being by a single person, who they say is in their faction. They run the Hall of Speakers, where laws are made.

The Trancendent Order (cyphers), who say that action without thought is the finest state of being. They seek to become one with the multiverse. They often serve as peace-keepers and negotiators.

The Society of Sensation (sensates), who believe that the only way to know the multiverse is to experience it all. Experience is the only real way to learn, they say. They run the Civic Festhall, and are in charge of entertainment.

The Fated (the takers), who say that the multiverse belongs to those who take it. Having something, they say, is a sure way to tell that you were supposed to. They run the Hall of Records.

The Xaositects (chaosmen, oaxitects, soup), beauty XXoss is, sense nothing to sah. Truth and meaning can be found in the patternless multiverse. They don't run anything (fortunately).

The Dustmen (the dead), believe that life is a lesser state of being. After this existance, comes *true death*, where they can truly be 'alive'. To reach that state, one must discard all emotion. The run the Mortuary.

The Bleak Cabal (bleakers, madmen), believe that there is no meaning. Don't kid yourselves. Everthing just happens.
They run the Gatehouse, an asylum for the insane.

The Believers of the Source (godsmen), believe that everything springs from the same source. All life, all that there is. By improving yourself in this lifetime, you are born into a higher state in the next, until you surpass even the powers themselves and become one with the source. They run the Great Foundry.

The Free League (indeps) say that none of the factions has the right answer, and every berk should be free to find his or her own answer. So don't push your damned faction on me! They form a loose band whose headquarters lie in the grand Bazaar.

The Revolutionary League (anarchists) believe that all the factions, and indeed all governments and ruling bodies, are corrupt and self-serving. They seek to overthrow them all, so that the people can find their own meanings. They plan create a utopia when they've finally overthrown everything...if only they could agree on how the utopia should be run...
The are outlawed in Sigil.

The Athar (the lost) say that the so called gods, or powers, are frauds, and they leech belief from their hapless mortal followers. They believe that there may be a true god, but it certainly isn't one of the powers known. They seek to educate people about the evils of the powers and how their beliefs feed them. The have a headquarter in the Shattered Temple, the former temple of the dead god Asokar, whom the Lady destroyed.

And finally the Doomguard (sinkers) believe that everything decays in the end. In fact, it's *supposed* to decay, berk. Entropy is unstoppable, beautiful. So why fight it? Help it along, if anything.
The doomguard are a three-sided faction: those who wish to slow entropy down (but not stop it), those who wish to observe it's progress without interfering, and those who wish to speed it up!
The run the Armory.

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The major players:

The Powers - infinitely powerful, they created the heavens and the earth and everything in between. At least, that's what they claim. If their power is so unlimited, why do they need worshippers so desperately? Why do their rotting corpses occasionally turn up drifting in the Astral Plane? Why can't they enter the City of Doors? Why did they need to banish the titans and the Elder Elemental God? Why do bad things happen to good people?

The philosophies - since belief is power, groups of planewalkers often adhere zealously to a philosophy, and fight about it. Sometimes philosophies take the form of sects and factions, and sometimes they become cities - like Ecstasy or Tradegate - or even entities, like celestials and incarnates.

The celestials - Sometimes the servants of the good deities (aasimon, possibly asuras), sometimes not (asuras, archons, guardinal and eladrin), they oversee the defense of the upper planes and everything else that the powers can't be bothered with. Whether it's lawful or chaotic, self-sacrificing or advisory, the celestials know it all. Now, if only they could put up a unified front...

The fiends - Ever heard of the blood war? Well, it's a war of fiends. The horrific and evil tanar'ri and baatezu make up two of the three sides of this largest of all wars, the war that must not end - a war where each of the sides taking part could conquer the multiverse if it wasn't occupied with the other. The third side of the war is taken by yugoloths, as merceneries and general plotters-behind-the-scenes.

The petitioners - deceased mortal servants of the powers or simply deaders which have gone to their appropriate afterlife. They aren't very powerful physically, but they may represent the true strength of the powers.

The planars - various planar races are major string-pullers and actors in the cosmic game. Modrons, slaadi, genies (especially the efreeti and the djinn forces) night hags and pers. The list is endless.

The planewalkers - not to be ignored, these bloods have proven that a few good individuals can really make a difference in the big boys' game. Explorers and factioneers, merchants and warriors, wizards and scholars. The planewalker's are a special breed.

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Originally posted by Wood Elf Ranger

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Originally posted by The Sage
Wood Elf Ranger, I would prefer that you roll for your own ability scores. The dice-rolling program that I had designed in VB is still not working correctly, and from my analysis of it's code, it has one to many bugs to be considered presentable.

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I forgot Sage already decided we would roll for our stats. Is this still your decision Sage?

You have an excellent point there Purple Dragon Knight. I guess percent HP would be fine you'll just have to double check it to make sure my math is right Perhaps we should have a vote on these things Sage?

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Originally posted by The Sage

Sarta, there will be no house-modifications for this campaign. Everything that occurs in this PbEM has support in both FR tomes, and the various PS sourcebooks. I leave modifications for table-top games .

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Originally posted by The Sage

Sarta, there will be no house-modifications for this campaign. Everything that occurs in this PbEM has support in both FR tomes, and the various PS sourcebooks. I leave modifications for table-top games .

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Finally, since I know I have forgotten to mention something, does anyone know whether I have failed to address anything new posted in this scroll since the 29th?.

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Originally posted by Arivia
Oh, and Sage, a good thing to hand out might be a small piece or two on planar cant...

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Originally posted by Bookwyrm
What, you're not using the spell-gain modification? I don't really care about the rest, but you'd told me last year that bonus spells would apply to cantrips and orisons.

Well, it's not new since then, but you didn't say what the level of hit points were. I'm in favor of the 50% I used, but considering that there are two other options mentioned here, an answer would be helpful.

Also, I assume that the point-buy is with 32 points, right?

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Originally posted by The Sage

Yes, I was intending on sending out the newly crafted "planar-cant" dictionary, although since it mostly concerns setting flavor, it's not urgent and can probably wait until the last entries have been added.

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Originally posted by Bookwyrm

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Originally posted by The Sage

Yes, I was intending on sending out the newly crafted "planar-cant" dictionary, although since it mostly concerns setting flavor, it's not urgent and can probably wait until the last entries have been added.

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What, you don’t want to lann these berks how t’ move their bone-boxes when they’re bangin’ ’round the Cage? If they don’t mark the dark of it, they’ll be looking like just another buncha the Clueless that got hipped. Why, the cross-traders'll just consider them more gullys to be bobbed and peeled; at the very least, the Cagers’ll just consider them screein' outsiders if they can’t even wigwag right. If you don’t give them the chant, they’ll probably go barmy before they tumble to the dark of it all.

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Originally posted by Bookwyrm
What, you don’t want to lann these berks how t’ move their bone-boxes when they’re bangin’ ’round the Cage? If they don’t mark the dark of it, they’ll be looking like just another buncha the Clueless that got hipped. Why, the cross-traders'll just consider them more gullys to be bobbed and peeled; at the very least, the Cagers’ll just consider them screein' outsiders if they can’t even wigwag right. If you don’t give them the chant, they’ll probably go barmy before they tumble to the dark of it all.

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