(IC) DND 3.5 Enter Planescape

[OneCrappy DM]

Luke Cinders

You make your way through the Hive ward to the crooked sword four gold coins lighter than when you started the day. The place is a hovel clinging to the edge of Ragpicker’s Square, where the stink of refuse and desperation hangs thick. Its warped sign an actual bent sword nailed above the doorway creaks whenever the smog-winds shift. Drunks and down on their luck people slump against the walls, passing bottles and rumors in equal measure.

Entering in the the bubblers are drowning out their sorrows, some fresh primes are trying to speak to these locals to no avail, the man you are looking for has a table section in one of the corners near a back door. It's dwarf no doubt about it, Gredmark Ironfist, he has a ledger at the table he is writing in. Gredmark is glancing over the bar at what may very well be potential customers.

 

[OneCrappy DM]

Bimble

You spot a cloaked figure on the street, wrapped in deep violet robes that shimmer faintly. The figure is bending over a warped wooden door, sliding heavy iron bolts into place with the metallic scrape of someone used to warding themselves against thieves, vermin, and far worse things that stalk these alleys. The need to understand where you’ve landed pushes you forward. Roa pads beneath you with carefully. As you approach, the cloaked figure stiffens. Slowly, deliberately, it turns. The hood falls back just enough for the light to catch the pale, slick flesh beneath. Purplish gray skin stretched over an elongated, bulbous cranium. Four glistening tentacles hang from the creature’s face, writhing with subtle, hungry motion. Its eyes milky, lidless, ancient regard you without blinking.

An illithid. A mind flayer. A creature whose existence you may have only heard stories of to scare the populous.

You open your mouth to speak, but the creature responds before the words leave your lips. A voice blossoms inside your skull. Not a whisper. Not a thought. A presence that is smooth, cool, invasive, brushing against the edges of your mind.
“You have found yourself in Sigil. The city of doors, a place that is hard to leave without help.”
The sentence vibrates across your consciousness, resonant and absolute. No sound touches the air; the background noise seems to dull around you, swallowed by the psychic intrusion. The illithid tilts its head slightly, studying your reaction as though you were some curious insect that had wandered into its shadow.

 

[OneCrappy DM]

Wawaate

The children reveal themselves for what they are the moment you actually see them orphans, gutter snipe waifs with ribs showing and faces smeared with soot and city filth. Their clothes are a patchwork of rags and scavenged scraps, mismatched boots, threadbare cloaks, sleeves torn and sewn again until stitch marks outnumber fabric. And yet, despite the misery that stains everything in the area, they laugh. Real laughter. They tumble through the half melted snow as though it were treasure fallen from the heavens. One of them pauses long enough to squint up at you a sharp eyed girl no older than ten, her hair a wild tangle of copper curls. “Winter Court? Afterlife?” she snorts, flinging a snowball at a boy twice her size. “Cutter, if you were dead, some old bone-head would’ve peeled you clean by now.” The others howl with laughter, snow flying, bare feet slapping across the slush-slick cobblestones. Their joy is so incongruous with the decay around that it feels almost uncanny.

Then like a gust blowing out a candle the mood shifts. The laughter dies in an instant. The children vanish into cracks and shadows with the instinct of creatures who have learned far too young when to run. Ten figures step into view, spreading out with practiced ease. Thugs, natives by the look of them. Half starved but mean, armed with clubs, jagged knives, and rust bitten metal that still kills just fine. Their eyes flick over you with the dull hunger of people who measure strangers in coin, blood, or both. One steps forward, clearly the mouth of the bunch. His hair is shaved into uneven stripes.
“Well, look at this clueless,” gesturing at you with the tip of his blade. “You don’t know the chant? Jumpin’ out a window into our ward’ll cost you five jinx. Standard fee.” The others chuckle darkly behind him, forming a loose semicircle in the slush. Snow drips from their boots.

 

[OneCrappy DM]

Mr. Black

The ragpicker tilts his head when you approach, one rheumy eye catching the dim light that leaks between the shuttered hovels of the Hive. His fingers dart out the moment you reveal the morsel, snatching it with a speed that suggests long practice in surviving on scraps. He wolfs it down in two bites, then wipes his mouth with the back of a filthy sleeve. “Right, cutter,” he rasps, settling back on his haunches. “Here’s the chant.” His voice is a gravelly whisper, carrying just enough edge to cut through the din of distant arguments, clattering tin cups, and the present groan of shifting architecture. “In the Hive, keep yer eyes wide and yer face hard. Look soft or clueless, and some addle cove’ll have your jink before you know you’ve lost it. Everyone wants coin here everyone. Even the bashers who say they don’t.”
He scratches at a tangle of rags that might once have been a coat. “You see a bubbler totterin’ out’ve a flop house, give ’em room unless you’re keen to get puked on or stabbed, dependin’ on how their night’s gone.” A rickety cart rattles by, pulled by a gaunt pack beast and driven by someone who may not technically be alive. The ragpicker jerks his head toward it. “And if you’re unlucky enough to die here in the gutters? Well.” He gives a wet chuckle. “Maybe you’ll be fortunate enough to have the Dustmen haul your carcass to the Mortuary. They’re always lookin’ for the newly quiet.”
He leans closer, breath sour and warm. “Point is, berk: this is Sigil. Don’t look weak, don’t look lost, and don’t look like you got more jink than sense. Do that, and you might just last the night.”

Spoiler: OOC

Terms & Idioms:
Berk: an idiot of fool
Jink: Coins
Chant: News, gossip, info
Cutter: Someone who is sharp compliment
Addle Coved: Idiot
Basher: Thug
Bubbler: Drunk
Anthill: City, town, or the hive
Bally: Crazy
Bought the black diamond: To be ripped off
Blitz: Go through a portal quickly
Jumping out the Window: Blindly going through a portal

Factions:
Dustmen: They Clean up the streets of dead bodies and take them to the mortuary believing that they enter True death
Black Cabal: They don't believe in any true answer to the universe except that everyone should help each other as best they can They have a large place in the hive
Sign of the one: They believe they are the center of the multiverse and use people as such
Doom Guard: Police type force trying to stop anyone getting in the way of letting the multiverse die
Mercykillers: another guard like force
Fraternity of order: Bureaucrats

Spoiler: Rolls Required

Roll a perception check

The beggar goes on listing off a bunch of different terms and ideas and factions In great length

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Wawaate regarded this odd welcome curiously. He could only understand about half of what they had to say, but what was clear, for now, was that this was not the Winter Court, and that he was still alive.

But maybe not for long, if he's not careful. These new folk clearly did not respect manners... or cleanliness... so needed to be cowed to prevent a fight. He had to make things uncertain.

Calmly, he raised a hand outward, in a loose gesture towards the speaker. Rime started to form along his glove, spreading in a cold lattice across his outfit. "Jinx?"

Spoiler: OOC

Activating my Strength Devotion. For appearance's sake, I'm going to say that it causes objects I attack to freeze into a brittle state, and that's how I bypass hardness with my attacks. Now I have a natural attack, so I'm armed.

But no attack yet.

 

[OneCrappy DM]

Aril

You wake to the familiar sway of your hammock, its ropes creaking in quiet protest as the building settles. Sigil never truly sleeps, it just shifts its weight. The attic of the Leaky Tenement is thick with the smell of damp wood, old cooking grease, and yesterday’s smokeleaf. Cold drizzle streaks down the small, warped window, smearing the view of the street below into a blur of gray stone and crooked silhouettes. The Cage wears rain like a second skin, and today it clings. Morning will come slow, you can tell slow and sour, the kind that doesn’t hurry for anyone. You lie there a moment longer, listening. Footsteps on stairs that don’t quite line up. A muffled argument in three languages. The distant clang of a portal key slamming home. You’ve been waiting for chant, real chant, not the half truths traded for green and patience is a skill Sigil forces on you whether you like it or not.

Eventually, you climb down and make your way to the first floor. The foyer is a maze of bodies and bedrolls, backpackers sprawled wherever the floor allows planewalkers snoring beneath cloaks from a dozen worlds, a tiefling muttering in her sleep, someone glowing faintly and humming. You step carefully no one here takes kindly to being kicked awake. The mess hall bleeds into the foyer in a wash of dim lantern light and steam. That’s where you see her. The mud mephit who runs the Leaky Tenement, is perched behind the scarred front desk, wings twitching absently as she sorts through a stack of bent envelopes and mismatched coins. Her skin is caked with drying mud that never quite flakes off, and her smile wide, toothy, and entirely too cheerful for this hour splits her face when she spots you. "Aril dear,” she chirps, voice wet and bubbly, “someone left this bit of dark for you.”
She produces a small envelope from beneath the desk, its edges damp but intact, the seal unbroken. She tilts her head, eyes glinting with curiosity. “Didn’t say much. Just said you’d know.” She slides it across the desk toward you. This is it. The chant you’ve been waiting for.

Spoiler: For Aril's Eyes Only

Aye, Cutter we don't rattle our bone boxes. Here is the dark, some short wirry fellow in blue wizard robes has got some chant on the Isle of Black trees and how to get there. Now before you search the hive for this Berk, thought you might want to know Gredmark down at the Crooked Sword is paying for his whereabouts sort of a get what is yours and take what is yours.
Signed -DBC

 

[OneCrappy DM]

Wawaate

"Jinx, Jink, Coin! FIVE COINS Prime!"