<< PLANESCAPE >> How do you defeat the Lady of Pain?

Even if you can't outright kill the Lady of Pain in your game, there is another way to defeat her that should fit 100% canonically (is that a word?).

Make her irrelevant.

Why is Sigil so important? Because it is a relatively neutral ground with an immense number of portals where you can be somewhat safe from the gods and Blood War.

Make another place that can do the same and more and voila! You have the next planar uber-city and Sigil eventually becomes a vacant ghost town where a massively powerful Lady of Pain wanders empty streets.

Of course, I never said it would be easy or quick. It'd take lifetimes and probably wouldn't ever see fruition. But if someone could pull it off, you would "defeat" the Lady without ever worrying about being flayed.

Just don't go naming the city "Union". Someone tried that, but Sigil survived.

This is just a thought. Cosmology of a wheel and the Spire as the spoke.
Now take for a moment that each plane connected to the spoke gives some sort of energy balance.

To bring the Spire Down, the combined might of the Devils and Demons will need to find all the portals that lead to the Spire/Sigil and pretty much close it off from the rest of the planes.

Assume for a moment that they do succeed in stopping travel to the Spire/Sigil. The rest of the Planes (as the great wheel ) breaks up and slowly shifts away from the Spire (kinda like gravitational shift) until in the long run it'll take a lot to reconnect each plane to each other and to the Spire.

They don't need to OUST the Lady, they just ISOLATE her in her own HOME.

Just a random thought from an analogy of a wheel wth a spoke image.

Zjelani said:

Just don't go naming the city "Union". Someone tried that, but Sigil survived.

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*snicker* Not only survived but returned to take potshots at Union in all its EPICness. Nice one Ken.

Mention Union in some places and you can all but hear the scowls

As far as the idea of isolating The Lady goes, it's possible to disrupt and/or seal portals to Sigil. Typically its done by blocking or altering the bound space that forms the potal. People have done this, however it may be allowed to happen in some or all cases. And if you go sealing portals all over the planes that lead into Sigil I dare say your task will never end as more and more portals just begin to randomly appear to replace the ones you closed.

Also, if The Lady can indeed reach outside of Sigil your days might be numbered in that endevour. To say nothing of people living inside of Sigil or having a firm stake in the city that would disapprove of your actions, aka most of the Factions, a number of planar sects, many religions and their deities, the Planar Trade Consortium, etc.

But it is an interesting idea, and I can easily see people attempting it. (At least one petitioner from Ysgard now lives in Sigil and does this on a nightly basis more or less. All of this in revenge for the mazing of Factol Vartus Timlin over 1000 years previous that led to the destruction of his faction, the Expansionists)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all those people the Lady/Sigil mazed over the years are still alive and in limbo, correct?

What would happen if someone found a way to free them? What would happen if the Fiends and Demons found a way to free them?

Even better - what if the forces of Good found a way to free them, and decided that they were tired of tolerating Neutrality and Evil. What if the War in Heaven were actually initiated by the Light?

Wrath of the Swarm said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all those people the Lady/Sigil mazed over the years are still alive and in limbo, correct?

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Indeed they're presumably still there unless they found the one portal out to leave. Also, you don't age while in the mazes and food is provided to you. As far as suicide goes, presumably it isn't an option or otherwise it would be an easy way out to kill yourself and get ressurected outside once that happened. Perhaps you wake up again whole and still mazed, or your soul is trapped within the maze unable to migrate to the domain of your deity or plane of your alignment, or perhaps your petitioner reforms in the maze itself. Nobody knows.

Vartus Timlin, factol of the Expansionsts managed to escape his own maze (after killing the people who found his maze and entered it, intending to steal what was rumored to be an artifact level sword, 'Lightbringer' in his possession), fully 1000 years after he was initially mazed. He wasn't a day older than when he went in.

Now post Faction War, many of the old factols are now sitting in their own mazes in the Deep Ethereal, and presumably some of them might have rescue attempts mounted for them. Of course it took 1000 years for Timlin to be rescued, and his own people never managed to do so. So it may be easy to locate some mazes and enter them from the outside, or enter through the one portal that leads in and out, and horribly difficult to do so for other mazes.

But yes, theres a lot of powerful, arrogant, foolish and/or ignorant people locked away in their own mazes out there...

Possibly there are also scholars and sages who found clues regarding the Lady of Pain's true nature. If some of them got out, it could cause some very interesting problems.

Using the Epic Level Handbook and other sources, IMC I've decided that the Lady's a Paragon Fallen Solar level 90 cleric with wealth equal to a PC of that level (no, Sigil itself doesn't count... she doesn't own the city, she just guards it from pesky gods and 71st level sorcerers). She's considered to be on her home plane, because the chunk of land where Sigil now sits is made up of her plane of birth and various other "dead planes".

I never really felt the need to detail her stats further, except to say she'd be level 100 if it weren't for all those epic spells she made over the last several thousand years...

Squire James said:

Using the Epic Level Handbook and other sources, IMC I've decided that the Lady's a Paragon Fallen Solar level 90 cleric with wealth equal to a PC of that level (no, Sigil itself doesn't count... she doesn't own the city, she just guards it from pesky gods and 71st level sorcerers). She's considered to be on her home plane, because the chunk of land where Sigil now sits is made up of her plane of birth and various other "dead planes".

I never really felt the need to detail her stats further, except to say she'd be level 100 if it weren't for all those epic spells she made over the last several thousand years...

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Well, that's certainly your choice in your own campaign. If you don't mind me asking though, why did you feel it necessary to define The Lady both in terms of past history, species and character level?

How are you using Her in terms of your own game, as a typically expressionless enigma of a plot device or as an NPC that can be interacted with? I generally don't supply anything with stats beyond a name for them unless I feel that any PCs would ever actually fight them and not be obliterated in a single round without causing them harm in the slightest.

The Lady is defined as undefined.

Simple as that, your best shot at it is to take the heresy of Die Vecna, Die.

Aside from that, the Lady can be WHATEVER the DM wishes her to be for their campaign purposes. She can be a freaking ghost of a kid's lost teddybear for all we know.

To the rampant hyperbole about the basis of killing her, I just have to add this.

"SUCH IS THE WAY OF MANGO!"

Secondary.

I like Planescape because of the tone and theme.

Fun notes, Ao is specifically mentioned in the 2e Planescape box (The deity home location map thingy) and isn't any more a considerable threat than Corellon (who, being the god of Munchkin Elves, I still maintain has the best shot ).

BlackMoria's comments about planar siege weapons in Sigil is also a bit misleading. The Lady supposedly can close all the portals in the city, and there is a Planar Siege Weapon in the city already (Coaxmetal).

Also, to make note, the city seems (in parts) independant of the will of the Lady and a unique entity (going so far as killing Dabus), so it is a doubtful argument that she is, in fact, the city itself. There are also some fun tales of the previous god of portals who watched over Sigil before the Lady came (And whose worship is grounds for Mazing/Flaying).

Mazes are all 'infinitely unique' as well, so not too likly to find a means to free ALL the mazed individuals in one go. Interesting sidenote, there are some implications that there are in fact some Deities in the Lady's Mazes.

Only real canon of an immortal/dying in a maze I've seen occured in Planescape, with TNO (who simply reforms in the maze) and a Gray Hag (who gets Splatted Good from all I can tell).

[ Sidenote, the AD&D 2e logo as canon has actually resulted in a number of canonization contradictions occuring, primarily in FR however, without considering the 3e content. Further, Planewalker is allowed to use the Planescape logo, and thus claim the same level of canon as 2e PS products. ]

reiella said:

Also, to make note, the city seems (in parts) independant of the will of the Lady and a unique entity (going so far as killing Dabus), so it is a doubtful argument that she is, in fact, the city itself. There are also some fun tales of the previous god of portals who watched over Sigil before the Lady came (And whose worship is grounds for Mazing/Flaying).

Mazes are all 'infinitely unique' as well, so not too likly to find a means to free ALL the mazed individuals in one go. Interesting sidenote, there are some implications that there are in fact some Deities in the Lady's Mazes.

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Two things, for such is the way of the mango.

First of all, Aoskar did not predate The Lady of Pain within Sigil. Aoskar was simply a greedy, rapacious god of portals who got about as close as any other being to usurping The Lady's position. That is to say, he failed utterly after seemingly getting close. The manner of his death is extreme to say the least. He, a greater god, died along with his clergy and most of his worshippers both in and out of Sigil. Perhaps if it pertains to Sigil, the reach of The Lady can extend outside of Sigil. Of course She can already reach outside of Sigil to the Ethereal to create The Mazes. Unresolved questions certainly.

Aoskar may have been present inside Sigil when he died, perhaps purposefully allowed into Sigil, or perhaps before his fall more divine presence was allowed into The Cage. We don't know because history gets vague beyond around 700 years and worse the further back you go. I suspect that he was outside of Sigil when he was killed, but thats just my view.

The Lady has, for every mention of Sigil, been entwined with the city and has been alluded to existing at the creation of The City in the utter earliest days of the planes themselves. Of course sources that far back are at best hazy.


And secondly, where are the implications of deities locked inside the mazes? I didn't recall that ever appearing anywhere, but you've got me curious now.