Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Feb 03, 2004 17:08:40	Wow! When did this happen? I leave the planes for a few years and when I come back, the Mercykillers have broken in half, the Godsmen are nowhere to be found and this crazy guy keeps giving me his stuff and babbling that I join his cause. Can someone explain to me what is going on?!
#2 Shemeska_the_Marauder Feb 03, 2004 17:56:17	"Well, if you ask most anyone in Sigil they may whisper to you out of earshot of anyone else that 'I' had something to do with bringing the factions down." *arrogant grin* [drops back OOC] 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, 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. He awakens, not remembering his name, or where he is or what is 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. 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*