- a barmy on the streets of the Hive.
"The City is vast. Its alleyways, throroughfairs, tunnels, bridges, and canals are denser and more numerous than the pathways of a brain. No one can chart its reaches, nor reach its end. And yet it is insubstantial. It is defined by that which it reaches out to. Compared to the realms beyond its portals, it is merely a sketch in the air. It is nothing at all. "
- One of the Deconstructionists of Xaos, speaking of Sigil.
"The door is the flesh. The Door is the flesh. The Door is the Flesh. The Door is My Flesh..."
- A barmy on the streets of the Hive, shortly before disembowling himself with a goblin short sword.
"The city is a cancer on the multiverse. Each of its doors pierce and fragment reality. As each door opens, existence becomes thinner. Each door begets other doors, other portals on other worlds, other cities of portals. And so the plague spreads. As more doors open, the walls of the multiverse begin to disintegrate. When there are more doors than walls, the multiverse will collapse on itself. Sigil is devouring the planes, and it is so beautiful..."
- a Doomguard philosopher-aesthete, speaking of the city she was born in.
"She is one of the race known as Mercurials. They come from a higher reality than our own, one so vivid that to them we are but memories of fragments of dreams. They live on the pure energy of their god, who is to other gods as we are to the stories we tell. They are so potent they need only remove their skins once a century to let the divine light refresh them, and they take no other sustenance at any time. We, who strive to forge our own potentials, pattern ourselves off of her. We flay our own skins off in the hope that some of her light may shine in, nourishing our souls so they may bloom in new dimensions."
- A heretical Believer of the Source
They built the demiplane to host the souls of their dead, to keep them safe until they are needed again. They made it a place of crystal and ice so cold that neither soul nor memory could dissipate or become lost in the wild Planes beyond. They made the plane a puzzle-box of shining chill to keep their best and greatest hopes in one place until the danger arrives.
Then the danger finally came, and it wasn't what they thought it was at all. It wasn't interested in them, only in the souls themselves. It was the celestials, and no one thought it would be them. The angels called them jailers, misers, thieves. They took away the souls who were their guardians and they even took away the cold so they couldn't save anymore. They took winter away, and now they weep in the endless summertime, naked and afraid.
"The sewer nymphs are a far cry from the nature spirits you know, yet they have much the same mindset. It is only that it is befouled and stagnant water in urban centers whose beauty they defend. You think their idea of beauty must be very different from yours, but you are wrong. Once you've seen one, you'll never look at a gutter the same way again. I saw a nymph rise from the Ditch, and I thought I should die. When you've seen perfection, why should you look at anything ever again?"
- A blind barmy in the Lower Ward
"The city is a cancer on the multiverse. Each of its doors pierce and fragment reality. As each door opens, existence becomes thinner. Each door begets other doors, other portals on other worlds, other cities of portals. And so the plague spreads. As more doors open, the walls of the multiverse begin to disintegrate. When there are more doors than walls, the multiverse will collapse on itself. Sigil is devouring the planes, and it is so beautiful..."
- a Doomguard philosopher-aesthete, speaking of the city she was born in.
The only word I can suffice to say is: beautiful.
Just wow.
Sewer Nymphs? I think I need to write one into my campaign somehow...
Not as likely as the Ratatosk theory, but an intriguing one, nevertheless. The question then becomes, I suppose, Does she allows the cycle of the Four Doors to continue in order to check back on her skin? Or perhaps she has her own private portal or route to the realm of the Mercurials.
(Personally, I think it was sort of a cop-out to put the realm somewhere in the known planes. I'd just have the PCs never know where they were).
Movanic Devas are sent to judge. As celestial movants they observe the Material Plane with stern eyes and even judgment. To the movanics are granted the keys of life and death.
Norbert is a drinker of chaos in a land of songs. The songs hurt and harass his people, who live a precarious existence in the land made of music. He drives them out with dissonance from his songbook of broken tunes. Whenever he kills a song, he pins it in his book.
He is a priest for his people, their refuge and their solace. He brings them blessed respite from the constant, otherwise unremitting harmony. He brings them sweet chaos in stagnant orchestral order. He is a bard and a mage, skilled with manipulating the magic of song.
When need be, he stuns the songs with a sharp report from his double-barreled shotgun. The loud percussion shatters the harmony and causes them to bleed chaos, which he collects to refresh himself and his people. Without regular draughts of chaos, the harmony would drive them mad.
Norbert was 35 when he first discovered this. Already, his people were dying. They had thought that the land of music would be a paradise, an escape from the disharmonies of their home plane. The music wove them into itself, choking them and paralyzing them. More woke up dead every morning, their lungs filled solid with staves and clefs. Norbert called to his god for an augury, and he was told of an alien weapon that would help him protect his people from the hostile environment he had led them to several years before.
He stole the weapon from a squad of... things. Explorers, he thought, or mere salvagers and junk dealers. Squat, unpleasant creatures with flesh of a greenish hue. What they sought in the land of music he never discovered, as he cared nothing for learning their language, even with magic. But their weapon he needed, and when he fired it into the air the music died, and bled, and he collected its corpses in a book to use later.
He teaches the dead, mangled songs to his people, and they sing the corpses of music as protection, as a warning, and as a weapon. The broken notes drive the perfect ones away, and hurt them, and keep them safe. Every mutilated note helps create another body for the book of musical weapons.
But Norbert keeps his gun filled with the powder he bargains with the things for even now, for the cases in which dead songs aren't enough.
She is one of the race known as Mercurials
Not as likely as the Ratatosk theory, but an intriguing one, nevertheless.
Actually, I had in mind an actual mercurial leading (perhaps unwittingly) a cult of Godsmen, rather than this being a theory of the Lady of Pain. But I'm sure there are at least a few Cagers who think the Lady is a mercurial.
(Personally, I think it was sort of a cop-out to put the realm somewhere in the known planes. I'd just have the PCs never know where they were).
That might be more interesting. Although there are realms of lower reality in the known planes (the realm of dreams represents two lower levels of reality, both more insubstantial than the waking worlds), so it's not too terrible for there to be known higher ones. The Nightmare Lands boxed set made the higher realities seem more inaccessible, but I think the idea of adventures in such places is intriguing. Places where the PCs are but wisps of half-remembered stories compared to most of the inhabitants, where any influence must be subtle.
This may explain a lot about the quori of Eberron's dreaming lands of Dal Quor. As the only fully real creatures native to the dreaming, they are accustomed to having absolute dominion over all they have contact with. It's hard for them to conceive of others having rights or any validity. They aren't used to not being gods.