I am a newb to planescape and I would like a change of pace(i usually DM in ravenloft). But since I never played in planescape(ok I finished the game planescape torment but thats it!) I have couple of question and I need some advice:
-Does petitionner and non petitionner live in the same place(for example in the dwarven mountain are all dwarves petitionner or planar dwarves?)
-Where planar human,elves ect... live and come from?
-Does all petitionner evolve into something else after a while(angel,devil ect...)
-Are there some petitionner in sigil and if so how they look like?
-Are all npc(inn keeper,barman ect...) petitionner?
thank you for your answer
-Does petitionner and non petitionner live in the same place
Often they do, but they don't necessarily understand one another. Petitioners have been through an experience the living can't understand, and they're changed by it. They don't have the same drives the living have - as Terry Pratchett would say, they don't have any glands. They don't care about starting romantic relationships, having families, or having children. Their sole desire is to find union with their god or plane. As a result, their society tends to be seperate from that of the living, even in places where they live together.
In the Dwarven Mountain, however, I imagine that petitioners and living dwarves live much the same lifestyles, laboring in the name of their gods side by side.
-Where planar human,elves ect... live and come from?
They come from the Prime Material Plane, originally. They may be the descendents of adventurers who came to the Outer Planes on epic quests and decided to stay, their ancestors may have been abducted by fiends and brought to the Outer Planes as prisoners, or they may have come through accidently. Perhaps some found a portal and wandered through, and couldn't find their way back. There's a village of halflings in Limbo called Barnstable; the whole village just appeared in Limbo one day, ripped from the Prime by a whirlwind of chaos with no particular explanation. That sort of thing happens in Limbo.
Planars mostly live in towns, villages, cities, and homesteads they've built and managed to keep intact in the Outer Planes, a level of existence where mortals really aren't supposed to be. Sometimes they survive by making bargains with gods or other planar entities. Sometimes they survive by luck or talent or iron will. Planar cities are islands of mundanity in a sea of myth and strangeness, at least at first, but living in the Outer Planes changes you with time, making you as strange as the landscape around you. Planars become obsessed with philosophy and other planar forces, forming factions and power groups around concepts most Primes wouldn't even consider. Belief becomes a more valuable currency than gold. Eventually, as many generations pass, many of them become planetouched - tieflings, aasimar, genasi and the like. The planetouched may evolve into new planar races - bladelings, ruvoka, perhaps githzerai.
Many planars live in the realms of their gods, and can't bring themselves to leave.
-Does all petitionner evolve into something else after a while(angel,devil ect...)
Nope. Most of them eventually become one with the plane or god they serve. In the Lower Planes, most of them are eaten by more powerful fiends. Some evolve, though, in the way you suggest. It depends on their individual talent, will, luck, and what the more powerful planar beings require.
-Are there some petitionner in sigil and if so how they look like?
They can look like anything: animals, humans with herons' heads or the bodies of worms, shining globes of light, swirling abstract patterns of matter and energy, half-melted tormented humanoids, pale monstrous creatures crawling with maggots, or transluscent echoes of what they once were. They might also look just like ordinary people, with something different about them that's hard to detect: an obsession, a determination, an apathy, dead blank eyes, a subtle glow.
Normally petitioners will never willingly leave their realms, but circumstances can occur that drive them out: maybe their god dies, maybe they ended up in the wrong plane due to some cosmic accident and they're looking for their proper one, maybe they remember unfinished business from when they were alive.
A petitioner from Ysgard called the Grixxit is busy trying to destroy all of Sigil's portals in revenge for the death of her former faction, the Expansionists. She looks like a female human warrior.
Once a year, the Chinese god of the dead leaves his post to report to the Celestial Emperor. On that day, his subordinates often misfile where the dead are supposed to go, and many end up on the streets of Sigil.
A petitioner from Limbo works as a craftsman in Sigil. Her body slowly changes; he never looks like the same person twice.
Hashkar, the factol of the Fraternity of Order, is rumored to be a petitioner of the city of Sigil itself, which he may have worshipped when he was alive. He looks like an ordinary dwarf dressed in scholar's robes.
-Are all npc(inn keeper,barman ect...) petitionner?
Nope. Probably not even most of them. Petitioners usually keep to themselves, unless they believe that serving the living will help them acheive their goal of merging with their god or plane faster.