[Planescape] Questions about Sigil

[JustKim]

There's some confusion about Aoskar and the Lady of Pain here.

First of all, Aoskar is in no way pre-Lady. Questionably canon novels aside, there is no record of anything pre-Lady. The Lady of Pain is Sigil and neither has ever existed without the other. Aoskar was a god of portals, and his influence extended into Sigil because it has always been a place of portals. What is now the Shattered Temple was a temple of Aoskar, which was destroyed when the Lady of Pain killed him. Yes, she killed Aoskar. The Athar use the Shattered Temple as their base because of the symbology behind a dead god, and the Signers had a long-running plot thread where a sect was attempting to believe Aoskar back into existance. There's no "some believe the Lady killed him," he is floating in the Astral dead as a doornail.

The Lady does float. She does not tolerate worship (being anti-deity) and her shadow has flayed those who revere her. It's suggested that her shadow flays anybody it falls on all willy-nilly, but I think that's just Sigilian urban legend. If she destroys everyone she floats over, then it would be idiotic to say that she certainly destroys adorers. That's like saying that a Mack truck kills any animal it hits because it really wants to kill raccoons.

As for the Spire being infinite with an observable end, think of it like this: how far would you have to climb to reach the moon? The sun? A distant star? You can see the end because it is there, but it is essentially unreachable.

 

[Ambrus]

There is no accurate time in Sigil; it's either Light or Dark.

There is actually a time-keeping system in place in the city. The Sigilian day is divided into the familiar twenty-four hour scheme with hours falling before and after Peak (noon) as well as before and after Antipeak (midnight).

Razorvine is the only plant that lives in any great abundance in Sigil. It rains in Sigil.

Although hardly common, the city does have a few trees and other plants growing in various locations, two of which are on the grounds behind the Gatehouse and around the Hall of Records. Razorvine however is everywhere.

 

[Jer]

Some say that The Lady is a swarm of intelligent squirrels who occasionally fill out a costume and float around the streets of Sigil from time to time.

But, really, most don't say this too loudly.

3) I read on Wikipedia that the late god of portals, Aoskar, once resided in Sigil. Is that correct? If so, did that predate the Lady's god-ban?

IIRC, that's false. Aoskar never resided in Sigil. He had a temple there, and it was his opinion that Sigil SHOULD have been his (since he was the God of Portals), but he didn't have the power to back up that opinion and the Lady killed him dead when his followers tried to open the way for him to come into Sigil. I think all of that is in the backstories of the NPCs in the book Uncaged: Faces of Sigil.

 

[Shemeska]

I saw one image of Sigil in a recent D&D book that showed a clear sky, white puffy clouds, and the builds wrapping over the sides of the ring. What bizzaro world Sigil is that one from?

The world of artistic license presumably. It was a well drawn image, and I used a scan of the page for my desktop background for a while, however the picture wasn't exactly accurate to the source it was trying to depict.

The lights/fires/smokestacks/etc across the ring at night that twinkle like stars through the haze was always one of the mental images of the city that I most appreciated.

Yes, and... Was Aoskar the god that resided in what is now called The Shattered Temple (it's been about 5 years since I GMed or read PS-related stuff, so keep that in mind)? If he is, then some people think that the Lady actually killed him when she destroyed his main temple.

The Shattered Temple (and the surrounding Shattered Temple District of the Lower Ward) was originally the high temple of Aoskar. What few records of the period remain indicate that when Fell was ordained as a high priest (and proxy) of Aoskar, the Lady obliterated the temple and much of the surrounding area, leaving only Fell alive (either as an example, or out of mercy for his former status as one of her servants, or perhaps as a curse because he'd have to live knowing he was responsible for the death of the god whose presence had momentarily filled him).

There was once a portal in the ruins of the temple, prior to the Faction War, that opened up into the Astral above the floating godisle formed from Aoskar's deific corpse.

Floats, and pity those that fall under her shadow or look at her as she floats by..

She won't actively kill people, and her shadow is only cast to do precisely that. On the rare occasions she appears and drifts along a street, people will look away or quickly go elsewhere out of fear, but unless you do something to her, or are otherwise breaking one of the whimsical rules of Sigil (don't worship the Lady, don't harm the city, etc) she won't so much as look at you. Of course, the average person isn't necessarily aware of this to any degree of absolute certainly. Her appearance is rare enough that it's not normal by any means for the populace to see her, and when she does appear to actively do something it's usually very quick and very brutal, so people are terrified of her at the same time they respect the (relative) peace that her presence provides to the City of Doors.

 

[Shemeska]

Lemme also point out that there is no recorded history that details any point in which Sigil existed without the Lady. When the fiends first stumbled upon Sigil's existance, the Lady of Pain was already there (and the fiends very quickly learned that the city was not to become another Blood War battlefield or method of transit in that conflict). An apocryphal book of githyanki history has a line that refers to a period of "when beings still existed who remembered a time before the building of then-bejeweled Sigil", but the accuracy is questionable and there's nothing else to back it up. As far as anyone knows, it might have already been there when the Outlands first emerged as a plane.

And one notion about Aoskar. I've always been fold of the speculative notion that Fell never betrayed the Lady, but he became Aoskar's proxy intentionally, in order to give Aoskar a foothold in Sigil. Fell might have opened the door for him and drawn a fraction of his power inside the city before Aoskar realized that it was both far too late to take it back, and he was doomed in the process because he'd made himself vulnerable to the Lady. If she's restricted to acting only inside Sigil (and we'll ignore some potential caveats for the moment), she might have had to lure Aoskar in before being able to kill him, and Fell's professed faith might have been a lure.

 

[Ambrus]

The world of artistic license presumably.

It's unfortunate that the few 3e images of Sigil have been fundamentally flawed, usually depicting the city in such a way that it appears to be a flat ring only a few hundred feet wide and floating in a cloud filled sky. Even back in 2e good citywide views of Sigil were rare and usually cropped too tightly to perceive the curving cityscape.

The lights/fires/smokestacks/etc across the ring at night that twinkle like stars through the haze was always one of the mental images of the city that I most appreciated.

I agree; it's simply a shame that no TSR/WotC artists ever tried to capture that image accurately. I've been stuck trying to imagine and describe it to my players for years. In my opinion the most accurate depiction of the city's curving landscape is to be found in the loading screen artwork of the Torment videogame. :\

 

[Oryan77]

There is actually a time-keeping system in place in the city.

I don't remember if I read this on mimir.net or an official PS book, but there is also a clock mounted on the top of a large building that shows the time of day. Half of it is black and the other half is white. I forget which building it's on though. I drew my own version of the clock (link in my sig and it's in the sigil calendar pdf). I'd probably be flayed though since it has an image of the LoP's head.

Although hardly common, the city does have a few trees and other plants growing in various locations

There's also a large tree that grows in the yard of the Green Mill in the Lower Ward.

 

[Ambrus]

I don't remember if I read this on mimir.net or an official PS book, but there is also a clock mounted on the top of a large building that shows the time of day. Half of it is black and the other half is white. I forget which building it's on though.

In 'In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil' there's a mention of their being a half-dozen clocktowers in some of the Lady's Ward squares, though no further mention is made of them except for Vlrc's clocktower in Monte Cook's Dead Gods adventure. Personally, I believe the City Court's tower should house a clockface (or four). The temple of Primus in the Temple District would be a good spot for another clockface as would the buildings in the Gear Row neighborhood (a modron ghetto). I've made those additions in my Sigil map.

I'd probably be flayed though since it has an image of the LoP's head.

The Lady doesn't seem to mind her face being depicted within the city; her likeness appears in some of the city's artwork in various PS books. As long as it isn't meant to be religious in nature, I guess she turns a blind eye to such things.

 

[Dragonbait]

Post deleted - Ambrus beat me to it.

 

[Clueless]

Didn't miss it, it's just not clear how that's reconciled with it being perceivable by beings whose vision does not extend to infinity. Is it basically some kind of optical illusion/spatial distortion effect where you can keep moving towards it forever but never seem to get any closer?

Planar paradox. And yeah - that's about right for the description of how it looks.