A Planescape question

[Psion]

Finders' Bane?

I've never heard of it, and I was a Planescape fanatic before AD&D died its overdue death.

Can somebody fill me in here?

It's a novel.

And you know how I feel about treating novels as canon. Okay, well maybe you don't. But I think you get the point.

 

[Shemeska]

Finders' Bane?

I've never heard of it, and I was a Planescape fanatic before AD&D died its overdue death.

Can somebody fill me in here?

It was an FR novel. Finder effectively sheds his divinity, temporarily putting most of his power into proxies etc, and goes to Sigil, looking for something to do with an attempt by Bane to return to life IIRC. Finder manages to get into Sigil but the entire time he feels cold, observed, and uncomfortable, ie The Lady's attention.

 

[Alzrius]

Harbinger House made characters in the setting say How Can They Do that. Of course there were caveats and the principles were not violated.

DVD made players say How Can They Do That. And there were no caveats. It was just the author going "my big bad eeevil is really big and bad." Bad form. No points.

This is purely opinion. HH just happened to have there be an artifact in Sigil that just so happened to block the Lady's senses...and she just decided not to do anything about it. Oh yeah, no principle violations there.

DVD, on the other hand, explained quite masterfully how events were happening, making them plausible and believeable, unlike HH's lack of a background.

She did do something in Harbinger House, rather overt in booting a deity out of the city once it transcended mortality. FW the entire thing was orchestrated by The Lady, playing Darkwood like a fool, yet DVD is totally different from the other examples.

No kidding it's different. In the first two, she's kicking around mortals and newly-ascended demigods. DVD has the opponent being a greater deity backed by an even higher power. Suddenly the Lady-ex-machina can't come into play, and the results finally depend on the intervention of the PCs.

It's like comparing JAWS to 'Piranha 2: The Spawning'.

Piranha 2 was the greater movie by far.

A block or two wide path of leveled buildings from Mecha-Vecna walking to the Lower Ward. Green hail taking down buildings at random. Random eruptions of flame to incinerate people. Massive cagequakes taking down other buildings. Equivalent to the Faction War damage at least.

I dunno...FW had the Blood War taken to Sigil (the goristro in particular just smashed buildings), had out of control spheres of annihilation destroying things, the wyvern escaped and attacked people, and that's just what I recall.

It's a stretch, a really big stretch. And it's one of those assumptions you keep knocking me for.

I don't see how it's a stretch. DVD said the half-worlds become alternate Primes, and 3E has alternate Primes. Where's the ambiguity?

And outer planes merging/vanishing entirely/new ones appearing... hasn't happened.

According to the 3E Manual of the Planes, neither did FW.

 

[jones4590]

Shemeska, you seem to be the resident Planescape authority, and so I come to you. I havnt had a chance to read thru my newly bought mostly complete PLanescape collection... summer reading/family issues/PDF format is hard on teh eyes. So yeah,

Could you give me a synopsis of the FW, not the effects and result, but what went on, what preceipitated it, major playes and what they did and wanted out of it, etc. I'm /thinking about/going to run a Placescape campaign set before the Faction War, set up some long reaching meta plots and charecters and have them take part...

If you could give suggestions on hwo to run a PS campaign and any other tidbits you find useful... gracias

 

[Psion]

Shemeska, you seem to be the resident Planescape authority

No respect, I tell ya.

 

[Clueless]

None - not a bit of it.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

It's a novel.

And you know how I feel about treating novels as canon. Okay, well maybe you don't. But I think you get the point.

I think you may have remarked on this before. I agree.

 

[Dakkareth]

Could you give me a synopsis of the FW, not the effects and result, but what went on, what preceipitated it, major playes and what they did and wanted out of it, etc. I'm /thinking about/going to run a Placescape campaign set before the Faction War, set up some long reaching meta plots and charecters and have them take part...

[sblock]

Synopsis of the Faction War

Duke Rowan Darkwood of the Fated. The man's hubris got the most of him and took down the factions one by one. He instigated open war amongst the other factions while at the same time he managed to garner some measure of control over the Mercykillers.

Under the pretense of marraige, Alisohn Nilesia of the Red Death ordered her faction to follow Darkwood's orders like her own. After that happened Darkwood sold everyone's favorite barmy tiefling factol into fiendish slavery (they never did say just who she was sold to...) to get rid of her.

Darkwood's real obsession however was something known as the Labyrinth Stone. Uncounted thousands of years ago, an unknown mage came to Sigil opening claiming he would cast down The Lady of Pain. For several days this went on and The Lady did nothing. The unknown mage was on the verge of 'something' when The Lady appeared before him in the Ward of Masks (archaic name) and they both vanished.

Only some time later did any in Sigil know the victor when The Lady reappeared unscathed. Rumor held that she had bottled the mage inside a great black gem, called the Labyrinth Stone and cast it out into the planes.

Thousands of years later, another monstrously powerful mage named Shekelor, said to have been factol of the Incanterium at the time, (though that link to the Incantifers may be screed) announced his intention to leave Sigil, find the Labyrinth Stone that contained the trapped soul of that ancient mage who had challanged The Lady and some say nearly succeeded.

Shekelor vanished into the lower planes, most say Pandemonium. Most forgot about him, so did his own faction. But then he reappeared in Sigil through some previously unknown portal from Pandemonium, screaming in agony and glowing from the inside like his guts had been lit aflame.

He managed only to scream out, "THE SPIDERS!!!" and drop a handful of gems from his hands before he was incinerated by flames from the inside out, leaving nothing but ashes.

Rumors spoke much of what indeed happens to those who would claim to challange Her Serenity...

Darkwood knew of these incidents by his own research into Sigils misty past, looking for any clue into a weakness of The Lady. Then the Stone was brought to him and it all began...

Darkwood was able to make some mental connection to whomever was locked inside the stone. He felt a being of utterly immense power inside, but somehow a sense of fear at his touch. Perhaps the being had gone mad in its containment.

Darkwood with the Labyrinth Stone openly challanges The Lady in the streets of Sigil, and is instantly mazed. The stone falls from his grasp and is recovered by a street urchin and passes through numerous hands.

Darkwood's contingent Wish takes effect, but by some quirk of magic, or the Mazes, or more likely The Lady's Will he is released from the Mazes, but hurtled backwards in time.

Wandering the streets of Sigil in a daze, claiming to be Factol of the Fated he is taken away by the Bleak Cabal to the Gatehouse and locked into the Irrevocably and Criminally Insane Ward.

And there he stays for centuries, unaging and losing his sanity. Knowing the future however, he rants and rambles about future events that hold remarkably true. The Bleakers don't know what to do about him, and he eventually outlives them all and becomes known as The Oldest Barmy.

Deep in the gatehouse, methodically keeping track of the date on the stone walls and his own skin, he feels the approaching of the time when he was mazed. He feels the closeness of the Stone, and endlessly screams over and over again, "I feel it! It is happening again! It is happening again! I am the chosen one!"

As the Faction War unfolds, for the second time in Gifad's life, the name he was given during his years of confinement, he escapes the gatehouse and eventually recovers the Stone.

The other factols are all mazed, except for Rhys who prematurely left Sigil (feeling something ill approaching from the Cadance of the Planes), Sarin who was assassinated, and Hashkar who was killed near the end of the war.

Both Tanar'ri and Baatezu forces enter Sigil and fighting rages across the wards, and The Lady at first does nothing.

And then every single portal in Sigil seals itself. No escape, no entry, no water, and no air. The city can survive for no longer than a few weeks at most.

At the same time, a Yugoloth citadel build into the depths of Undersigil, and the massive dreamwalking artifact used to spy upon the residents of Sigil therein is destroyed. The Temple of Eternal Darkness it was called I believe.

And oh yes... A'kin the Arcanaloth, the friendly fiend is revealed to be the editor of the Factol's Manifesto.

Gifad with the Stone begins to trace the patterns of a gigantic rune of a spell, the Sigil spell, traced into the streets of the Market Ward / Ward of Masks by the wizard trapped into the Labyrinth Stone.

He finished the spell and reaches into the stone, instantly extinguishing the life of the mage trapped inside. A voice screams in agony and anger from within, "YOU FOOL!" as it dies to power the spell.

But before the final word can be uttered, The Lady appears and Gifad / Darkwood vanishes a second time, hurled once more by The Lady into the utter utter past.

He awakens, not remembering his name, or where he is or what he was. Only that a man known as Darkwood was responsible for his pain. Only knowing that in a city shaped like a great ring, a bladed woman mocks him.

He is sold into fiendish slavery, but does not break and eventually is sold to a mortal wizard. He begs of the wizard to teach him magic, and bemused the wizard does so.

He rises in power, learning magic from across the planes. Eating magic, breathing magic, working dweomers of such power that none before had seen such things. And he discovers a city, shaped like a ring atop an infinite spire.

And he travels there to find the woman he hates above all else. The one who was responsible for this Darkwood and his slights towards him.

He screams that he will see The Lady brought low, and then she appears, floating before him, serene and emotionless. The Dabus alongside her translates her words to the mage, "And now I bind you within a prison of your own making. Only you may release yourself, and then only from without."

And locks him within the black gleaming gem known hence as the Labyrinth Stone.

Back in the present:

The Lady reopens the portals and appears with a single Dabus to each newly elected factol of the factions of Sigil, and to the cell leaders of the anarchists to announce the following, "This city no longer tolerates your faction. Abandon it, or die." and vanishes.

Most factions leave sigil, or renounce their faction status, and all no longer hold official stations in the power structure of Sigil.

The Sigil Advisory Council is created, and the guilds of Sigil begin to fill the power vacuum along with powerful bloods like Jeremo the Natterer, Estevan the OgreMage, Zadara the Titan, and everyone's favorite Arcanaloth, Shemeska the Marauder the King of the Crosstrade.

And five years after the faction war, give or take a bit, PS3e picks up.

*bows down before the FW designers, Ray Vallese and Monte Cook*

[/sblock]

Here you go ...

 

[Evilhalfling]

Mmm,
thanks Shemeska and Psion, I always wondered what happened with the faction war -
I had a fair amount of the early PS stuff, but never played it. I dislike published worlds and meta plots in general, but that sounds like a great modual.

 

[Shemeska]

[sblock]
[/sblock]

Here you go ...

Dance my puppets! Dance!