SIGIL, CITY OF DOORS Sigil is the bustling crossroads of the universe, full of portals leading to every known corner of the planes.
Population: Approximately 250,000. Representatives of nearly every race and monstrous kind can be found somewhere in the city.
Government and Defense: The only being in Sigil who wields any real authority is the mysterious Lady of Pain, the uncaring guardian and protector of the city. The touch of her gaze causes wounds to spout blood, and her smallest gesture can banish someone or something into an endless maze spawned in a pocket dimension. Her presence is said to prevent deities, demon princes, primordials, and beings of similar power from entering the City of Doors, and the fear of her is sufficient to keep a modicum of order in the streets. Crime is common, but rebellion is unthinkable.
Inns and Taverns: Sigil’s inns and taverns cater to diverse clientele. Efreets from the City of Brass can find flaming halls of sumptuous luxury. Devils can enjoy a night spent in unthinkable debauchery. A traveler might lodge in an inn whose interior is like a twilit fey grove or a sunless cavern, or eat in a place that’s virtually indistinguishable from Fallcrest’s Blue Moon Alehouse.
Supplies: The Grand Bazaar, located in the city’s Market Ward, is a huge square overflowing into side streets, alleyways, and even nearby taverns. It is filled with caravan tents and market stalls. It pales in comparison to the bazaars and markets of the City of Brass, but deals in commerce appropriate to the size of the city. Other marketplaces spring up in many places throughout the city. Most appear during the day, but some appear only at night.
Temples: Temples to all the deities—including evil gods whose shrines are rarely seen in civilized lands—can be found in the streets of Sigil. Most of them are small, and few claim any significant power in the city’s affairs.
Portals: A multitude of portals connect Sigil, the City of Doors to the rest of the multiverse. The enormous planar metropolis exists outside the ordered structure of existence. The city rises from the interior surface of an immense hollow ring that has no outer side. The residents consider Sigil to be the true center of the multiverse. Sigil is a city of juxtapositions. Some of its alleys are more smoke-filled
and some of its streets more crowded than the most pestilential village, while other avenues gleam with as many shining palatial manors as even the grandest terrestrial or Feywild crown city.
Seemingly numberless portals connect Sigil to other planes, but they usually are not specially marked, and no one but the Lady of Pain knows how many portals exist or where each one leads. Any bounded space big enough for somebody to walk or wriggle through—from a sewer entrance to a closet—could double as a portal to another plane. Each portal in Sigil is activated with a portal key, a specific object that has some affinity for whatever lies on the other side of the portal. The key can be a physical object, but it might be merely a word, a gesture, or the right
state of mind. Without the correct key, a portal is just a bounded space. Many of the city's natives are happy to sell keys to specific portals or at least sell the knowledge of a key's nature.
If a blood wants to leave or enter Sigil, he must use a portal. A berk can't use travel rituals to get in or out, and he can't call or summon creatures into or out of the city.
The Wards: Sigil is divided into six regions called wards. The wards aren’t official designations—no walls divide them from one another—but everyone knows the difference between one ward and the next, even if locals don’t agree on exactly where that difference begins and ends. Still, it’s important for visitors to know what’s where so that they don’t wander where they aren’t wanted. In some locales, walking into the wrong street might earn them a warning, but in others, it might get them a knife between the ribs.
Lower Ward: The Lower Ward is perhaps the most symbolic of the Cage as a whole. It gets its name from the large number of portals to the Elemental Chaos (often considered the “lower” part of the universe) found there. Forges and smithies throughout the ward draw fiery energy from the Elemental Chaos and release foul-smelling smoke that chokes the air of the ward. Despite the stench, it’s hard to avoid the Lower Ward, since most of the city’s artisans live and work there, and the place is full of forges, mills, warehouses, and workshops.
The Lady’s Ward: Going counterclockwise around the ring of Sigil, the next stop is The Lady’s
Ward (and yes, the locals can hear you capitalize all three of those words). The Lady of Pain doesn’t live here, but rich citizens and most of Sigil’s temples lie within this ward. The Lady’s Ward has power, wealth and majesty, and knows how to show it off.
Market Ward: In the Market Ward, everything is for sale. The wealth of Sigil may be concentrated in The Lady’s Ward, but it’s spent here, whether on goods, services, information, or reputation. The best place to buy anything is the Grand Bazaar, an immense plaza filled with shops, tents, and stalls offering wares from dozens of planes and strange worlds. Prices can vary wildly, from dirt cheap (for merchants with an unexpected overstock) to many times the normal value (for goods in sudden short supply, due to a faulty portal or a band of planar marauders).
Guildhall Ward: Many visitors can’t tell the difference between the Guildhall Ward and the Market Ward. Even some locals claim that only tradition separates them. Since guilds don’t play a particularly significant role in Sigil, one can guess that the name itself owes a lot to ancient tradition. Today, the Guildhall Ward serves as the domain of the middle class of Sigil. Many merchants who hawk their wares in the Market Ward during the day sleep in the Guildhall Ward at night, and many who deal in services (rather than selling finished goods) live in the Guildhall
Ward and work there as well. The Guildhall Ward also houses many racial neighborhoods, from the transplanted elf grove of Rethevar to the githyanki community of Gitriban.
Clerk’s Ward: The domain of bureaucrats, scribes, sages, and scholars, the Clerk’s Ward is a
quiet place to get things done without a lot of attention. Some criminal organizations looking to improve their lot move from the Lower Ward or the Hive into the Clerk’s Ward, and the fact that the locals here respect each other’s privacy encourages activities of an illicit nature. Of course, it wouldn’t be Sigil if everything made sense, so the Clerk’s Ward is also home to one of the flashiest places in the city—the Civic Festhall. Run by a group calling itself the Society of Sensation, the Festhall combines the best aspects of a concert hall, museum, and tavern while simultaneously serving as the centerpiece of an artistic neighborhood that brings travelers from across the multiverse. It’s the best place in Sigil to see or be seen.
The Hive: Many locals claim that the Hive isn’t a ward so much as it’s the lack of a ward. The name for the region between the Lower Ward and Clerk’s Ward and for the chaotic, sprawling slum in its center, the Hive teems with all kinds of scum. The lowest of the low dwell in the Hive: those who can’t afford (or don’t dare) to rub elbows with the more fortunate folks. The Hive is a microcosm of Sigil itself, encompassing everything that is needed in daily life: taverns and inns aplenty, entertainment, and services from pawnbrokers to sellswords. The quality may be questionable, but the prices can’t be beat. The Gatehouse Night Market offers nearly everything one could find in the Grand Bazaar (and a few things one couldn’t), though it’s best not to think too hard about where the goods came from.
Architecture: In most cities, the architecture depends on three factors: the building materials available, the environment, and the dominant style and personality of the locals. Sigil has none of those things, and its architecture demonstrates that fact amply. Sigil has no natural building materials. The “ground,” though hard and sturdy, isn’t stone, and it crumbles to dust when excavated. The place has no trees to turn into lumber. You can’t even dig up sod or mud to build a crude hut. Every piece of material in every building on every street is imported from
another plane. No two buildings are made from the same materials or designed the same way.
Sigil doesn’t have much of an environment to shape its architecture, either. It never gets extremely hot or extremely cold, it has no monsoons or tornados, and what does pass for weather just tends to make everything look gray and dingy. Thus, since the inhabitants don’t have to worry about their houses surviving the next big storm, they build whatever structures suit their fancy.
Finally, Sigil has no dominant style. The look of the city ref lects the fact that its residents come from everywhere. Dwarves build sturdy stone structures next to graceful elven villas. Down the street stands a faithful reproduction of an Abyssal palace, and tucked into a nearby alley is a white marble shrine to Pelor. On top of that, since it’s easier to scavenge than to import, half (or more) of the buildings in Sigil are ramshackle affairs thrown together from the parts of a dozen other constructions. The gorgeous darkwood facade of that tavern probably came from an old elven inn, and its stone fireplace was carried rock by rock from the ruins of a foundry twenty-three blocks away.
Illumination: Despite its lack of a sun or moon, Sigil enjoys days and nights much like any terrestrial city. In the early hours of the morning, the sky slowly brightens, reaching a peak of illumination as bright as the noonday sun in a mid-latitude city (tempered by the near-perpetual
haze). After peak, the illumination fades over the next several hours until darkness reigns, and then the whole cycle starts over. With no moon or stars, of course, “night” in Sigil isn’t like a typical country evening. If it’s clear, though, you can make out the flickers of torchlight and lanterns from the other side of the city high above. (Remember, the city’s built on the inside of a
ring, so the far side of town is directly overhead) - All told, over the course of 24 hours, Sigil has
about 6 hours of bright light and the same amount of darkness. The rest of the day is a murky twilight (dim light). Well-to-do travelers hire lanternbearers to accompany them through the streets during all but the brightest hours of the day, and a knowledgeable lanternbearer can be an effective guide as well as a handy source of illumination.
Laws and Society: Because of Sigil’s role as the melting pot of the planes, it’s easy to see how the city might seem like little more than a recipe for anarchy. How can a place where devils and demons rub shoulders with archons and efreets hope to maintain order? The only real answer is the Lady of Pain. This powerful and mysterious being moves calmly and silently through the streets of Sigil. With a mere glance, she can cause creatures to sprout wounds and bleed like a fountain. A person who manages to get on her bad side finds himself or herself banished to an extraplanar maze, where he or she will likely die of starvation (or even old age) searching for the single hidden exit. Somehow, the Lady also prevents deities and beings of similar power from entering the Cage, and even through its portals, so a coup isn’t an option.
The people of the city contribute to maintaining order, as far as they can. The closest thing Sigil has to a police force is a citizen group called the Sons of Mercy. Unfortunately, without any official power to make arrests or carry out sentences, the Sons of Mercy don’t garner much respect from the locals, and thus they aren’t terribly effective in limiting crime. Similarly, the so-called Sigil Advisory Council may have the city’s best interests at heart, but the group lacks real political power.
