Source-of-Power, Godsman, never to be seen again
“I tell ya, cutter. Sigil and Mazes are the Lady’s testing ground. Ya ask why? Hah! Just look: one that figures out her probable origin or in some other way shows he’s better than the others goes to the Mazes. It’s all the test, leatherhead! Ya passed the first part, ya go to the next. The Lady throws a berk to the Mazes to see if one is strong enough to survive. If one proves well and finds a way out he becomes… well, I don’t know what but I’m sure it’s the way to the ascension. And I’m gonna try it.”
An Anarchist (the Cutter wouldn’t give her Name)
“It’s obvious, berk. Sigil’s a pocket dimension created by the Lady of Pain. And just like the city, all the factols are in her pockets too!”
Brandy, a Sensate who Named Herself after her Favourite Bub
“Listen, I don’t trust anything I can’t sense, cutter. And I sure as hells have never seen the top of the Spire from the streets of the Cage. Powers know, I’ve spent enough time looking. I don’t think it’s there, you know. And it’s not the sort of thing that’d be easy to miss, what with it being infinitely tall and all. You can’t see the Outlands neither. Though where Sigil’s hiding if it ain’t on the Spire, I don’t know!”
Animar Rexus, a Bleaker Psionicist-Surgeon
“On a clear day, the sight of sheer nothingness is terrifying to most Primes, and many Cagers too. Maybe it’s a good thing Sigil’s weather is so miserable; the place’d be uninhabitable if nothing stared you in the face every time you looked up. But then I’m used to facing nothing every day.”
Factol Hashkar of the Fraternity of Order
“It’s far from clear-cut that it’s actually Sigil on top of the Spire. If we can’t see the Spire from the Cage, then maybe the lump of rock on top of the Spire ain’t Sigil after all. This leads to the rather disturbing conclusion that no one is really certain where the greatest city of the Planes (outside of Mechanus) is located. It would appear that everyone knows how to get here, but nobody really knows where here is!”
Sine, one of the Highest Common Factors of the Mathematicians (who Obviously spends more Time reading obscure Tomes than is Healthy)
“Sigil is a place of ‘quantum instability’. This means its doors have a high chance of not leading to their other sides, but to a very different existence. Anyone who’s ever used a portal knows that Sigil’s doors lead to some unexpected places, all right! In fact, my calculations suggest that the entire city phases through the planes, connecting haphazardly (with a chaotic sort of pattern) to other planes. This correlates well with the observed phenomenon of portals. With a few more years of research, I’ll venture my formula for portal prediction should be around 50% accurate.”
“If one integrates with respect to Sigil over all space, then unity is obtained. This means it’s simultaneously both at the top of the Spire, and also everywhere in the multiverse at once! Thus, Sigil is not ‘somewhere’ but in an infinite range of possible places that express the fluctuating belief patterns of the multiverse. Therefore the Cage is impossible to reach without a portal (although there might also be ways around that…)”
Sir Twist, the Decay Knight
“Sigil’s up here ‘cos someone’s gotta keep a lookout against those lousy powers that want to speed up or slow down Entropy. The Multiverse is decaying fine, which is more than we can say if some fiend or great God controlled the cage. But what do you care? As long as in the short run someone dies, a house falls and a sword rusts, I’m happy. And there’s plenty of that in Sigil.”
Ruin deKaye, a spellslinging Sinker tielfing
“Listen up, leatherheads. If I knew Sigil’s dark, d’you really think the Lady’d let me live? You won’t catch me flappin’ my bone box on whatever dark you’re digging for here, so go speculate somewhere else. If you value your skin, you’ll blitz the nearest portal and never come back if y’do. What else can I say? What tiefling can put a name to their place of birth? Sigil’s home, and that’s all that counts.”
Oax, of the Xaositects
“no has dark Sigil. in It’s ^ park the chaos. The Lady thought it was a pie, and wanted to $ slice it one way, wanted differently it but slice to Aoskar. Boom! than Sillier @ Guvners. Want frog bub?”
“rules Chaos all.”
Samiel, Hand of Havoc Philosopher (in his more sane moments)
“Sigil is clearly a magical coil construct designed to capture energy for the Lady. Even a Clueless can see that. My whole theory can be found in my 500-page pamphlet, The Lies of The Cage. The Dark of Sigil is to keep the Lady powerful. Thus it is our mission: To destroy the whole burg before it is too late!”
Factor Gloriana the Third of the Godsmen
“Sigil itself is a Power, floating at the centre of the multiverse. The Lady is its proxy, so she’s pretty near advancement herself. She doesn’t want to attract the city’s wrath by posing as a Power before her time; that’s why she flays berks who worship her.”
Willor, a Harmonium Patrolman, explains his Problem with the Doomguard’s View of Sigil
“They say Sigil’s an ‘exploded singularity’ on top of the Spire. I guess it fits with their entropic view of the Multiverse, and what Sinker doesn’t like to see things explode, eh? They tidily sidestep the questions of what the singularity’s doing up there in the first place, or the treasonous question why the Lady was so careless as to let it explode. But then, they’re Sinkers, aren’t they? And when I get my hands on anyone spreading heresy like that they’re going to wish they’d been scragged by pit fiends instead…”
Kilkoll the Sceptical, Athar factotum
“The real reason the Powers don’t invade because they don’t know if the Lady is real or not. They can’t see inside the Cage any more than they can come in, and even their brainwashed proxies aren’t certain of the dark, else they’d try to get in here like a shot. Working together they might just be powerful enough to break down the doors (but that’d never happen; they’re far too arrogant to admit they need help). ‘Course, a real deity would only have to wave a finger and the Lady’s walls’d come crashing down. And still berks believe in the frauds!”
Folarmo the Brainstormer, a Signer
“Sigil’s the subconscious barmy dream of the Lady of Pain. It doesn’t make sense because dreams never do. It ain’t on the maps ’cause it’s not actually real. It’s her who imagines the multiverse, and Sigil’s just an afterthought. She doesn’t even realise it’s here; and that’s why we can slip in and out of the rest of her imagination through the portals. It’s her id which flays berks who worship her; she it don’t want her ego to grow and gain complete control of her mind.”
Factol Darius of the Sign of One, in her ‘Manifesto Memorial’
“…There is also evidence to suggest that the mazes are in fact created by the mass Will of the city ejecting undesirables, rather than the whim of the Lady. This theory is primarily held by those who believe the Lady is not so much a being in her own right, but the imaginations and dreams of Sigilians crystallised into a solid form…”
Zorn the Mottled, meeting with his Cell of Anarchists
“Listen, cutters. It’s more important that we act now than ever before. Why? The powers are planning their next move, that’s why! The dark is that they’re meeting in secret in Harbinger House and plotting the destruction of free will! What do you mean powers can’t get into the Cage? You and I know that’s just a bob spread around by their pawns the proxies. The only reason they don’t invade is ’cause they need Sigil where it is, at a neutral spot. Sure, they’ve got the base of the Spire to meet, berk – thing is, the rilmani watch ’em there, don’t they! No, they’ve got it all worked out good and proper. That’s why we’ve got to destroy Harbinger House and assassinate all the powers when they’re vulnerable! Hey, don’t all leave, you cowards!”
Bloody Sword, a Vigilante of the Mercykillers
“Those mazes, they ain’t created by the Lady of Pain. No, they’re made by some high-up Guvner when she wants to scrag someone who threatens the Fraternity’s power, but hasn’t actually committed a crime he can be tried for. Apparently, she knows this loophole in the multiverse that allows her to create mazes and cast her enemies inside. It don’t pay to get on her wrong side, cutter.”
Prill, a Half-Elf Cipher
“The Lady’s dance carries her throughout the Multiverse as she wishes, and Sigil’s a projection of her power and presence that follows her. The city’s location is always different, yet always the same; around the Lady. She doesn’t need to think about it any more than that, and neither do you, berk.”
Factol Rowan Darkwood of the Fated
“I reckon Sigil is the Lady’s Cage. The Powers really don’t want to get in. They’ve trapped her here so they can watch her like a monkey in a zoo. ‘Course, it could be the other way around; maybe the universe is a cage for all the other powers, and only Sigil is free. From Sigil the Lady looks in at the Powers like they’re the zoo animals.
“That’ll all change when I’m in charge…”
Bluff, a Hand of Havoc Sage
“Cutters most think that the Aoskar killed by Lady was usurp her when he tried to. No babble, you say? Very well, you’re paying. In fact, the real dark is this: Ten thousand years ago the Lady and Aoskar came to blows; exactly why isn’t remembered. In his fury, Aoskar tried to tip Sigil off the top of the Spire. The Cage wobbled, but it didn’t fall. In retribution the Lady burned Aoskar’s name from the Cage, shattered his temple and cast him adrift in the Astral. Taught him a right lesson, that!”
A Bleaker who doesn’t See the Point in a Name
“What? Sigil? It’s not supposed to make sense, berk! It just is!”
Velvin, a Mind’s Eye Vegetable-Seller
“Me. Sigil is me. I am It’s dream and It is mine. It is all of our dreams as we are all Its. We – me and the city – are imagining all you berks, just as you are imagining us. The Lady is the sum of our dreams, their most terrible and wonderful aspects made whole. We live in our selves, yet do not exist. Pleasant dreams.”
Xib the Bleaker (by Phill Howard)
“Sigil is the last bastion against the madness that consumes the rest of the Multiverse. Oh, it’s got more than its share of barmies as well, just look at the Gatehouse to prove that. What I’m rattlin’ my bone-box about is that the Cage is where the poor addled souls of the Great Ring come when they have nowhere else to go. Out of jink? Head to Sigil, there’s always jobs there. Homeland ravaged by fiends? Go to Sigil, there’s always plenty of kips up there. I know it’s true, cos after working in the soup kitchens of the Hive, and patrolling the Criminally and Irretrievably Insane wing of the Gatehouse, and after touring the Outlands after the Blood War spilled over into Tir Na Og, I’ve seen the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free… and the berks all head to Sigil.
“And they bring the madness of the planes with them.”
Jabbelabb, a titan Signer (by Geir Inge Hol)
“Sigil? Er… Kinda sorry about that one.
“I shouldn’t have thought of a doughnut in the first place.. Turned out to be a good idea, anyway!”
Elandar of the Pits, an Athar factotum
“The Cage is a Crystal Sphere, a Prime World in its own right. Listen, it makes sense: the prime’s connected with everywhere right? Magic works normally there, right? Just like Sigil. But in someway, the Cage’s sphere has been connected permanently with the Outlands. Perhaps it’s a prime world which entered into the Great Ring somehow; could’ve been dragged there by a barmy power or even the Lady herself…”
Source: Emannuel Reichert
Linklater, an Anarchist about to meet Keepers for the first time
“I’ve got a dark for you, cutter, and it’s a big one… Sigil is less than 1500 years old. Sure, there’s berks who’ll tell you different, but the planes they’ve came from are mostly even younger. All of history’s been invented by the Fraternity of Order to cement their power over us decent cutters! See, the chant is that a Guvner wizard once stumbled upon one of the Reality Keys — like spell keys, but far, far bigger — that the powers of creation used so they didn’t have to be kept down by their own rules, y’know. It let him “find” places that didn’t even exist before.
“We’ve positively correlated his activities with a surge in jink throughout the planes at the time. We got a mimir out at great personal expense that shows when he needed a way to get around, he “found” the Arcane and their spelljammers. When he needed safety from rival mages, he “found” the Spire and its magic-draining rings When he found his protection too inhibiting, he found a circular gate-array with a bladed guardian… hey! You said there weren’t going to be any Hardheads here! Tell them to take their sodding glasses off! Hey! What’re they up to…”
Source: Rip Van Wormer
Contributors
Ken Lipka, Colin McComb, Mike Jones, Jon Winter-Holt, Thomas O’Magann Jr., Monte Cook, Gianni Vacca, Randir o Ia, Christian Lautz, Gaute Lindkvist, Center of All, P Smith, Jeremy Warren, Dave Paul, Jeremie Choquette, James O’Rance, David Byrne, Emlyn Shannon, Draegarius, Phil Howard, Emannuel Reichert, Bartomiej Walczak and everyone else from the Planescape Mailing List who inspired speculation on Sigil’s nature (when I was bad at keeping records of who said what), as well as all the bloods on the most recent pieces whose names are listed next to their idea.