Session 10: The City of Doors, Part One

Game Date: Saturday, September 6th
In Game Dates: Lassday, Noctaver 17th – Godsday, Noctaver 18th, night (subjective)

The young girl with the gold key smiles at the adventurers. In what the party expects to be a pre-battle banter, Caspian jokingly asks the girl to give them the key. She bursts out laughing; no one in two thousand years has ever tried asking right off the bat before. She hands the key over to them, and steps aside from the door. The party heads through one last portal, and find themselves...

... on a small rock ledge overlooking the caldera of the volcano. At the end of the rock ledge, stairs spiral down the wall of the caldera to the floor. Above them is clear blue sky, they are at top of mountain! Near center of chamber is a large pool some fifty feet wide... it appears to be a bubbling pool of... hot mud. Here, where the earth reaches into the realm of air, and fire rises to meet the water, all four elements combine. This is the dwelling place of the Elemental Weirds. As the party approaches the pool, a whirlwind of air rises out of the mud, becoming a translucent female figure with deep blue eyes.

“Welcome to the dwelling place of the Elemental Weirds... we are the oracle you have sought. Be at ease, you have proven yourselves strong of heart, brave of deed, and quick of wit. We will not cheat you by answering your question in an unsatisfactory manner. In addition, You must phrase your question by beginning it with the words, “Oracle of Elements, I beseech you to answer me this:” Asking anything else will not use up your one question. However, we are not bound to answer any questions that are not phrased thusly.

Rowan pops the question, using the proper phraseology. The Weird of Air is silent for a moment. “A question indeed. Your answer shall be fourfold. The first answer concerns the road. You must travel to the city of doors. The Artificer's door is within, forgotten by all but a few, but it remains intact. Reaching it will not be easy, but it can be done. You will need the key to his door. A word not heard in millennia will open your way.”

She disappears into the pool, and in her place rises the top half of a beautiful woman, with eyes made of amethysts, and long hair streaked with silver and gold veins, the lower half of her body is a pillar of shifting earth. She tells them, “Be wary, for the path you shall walk is full of chains, and worse than chains. Guard what is dear to you, or risk your soul's treasure lost... Take care whose colors you wear... everyone is someone's slave... The key you must seek can be bought, but at a price you may not be willing to pay. But take the key by force, and the price will increase sharply.”

Then appears a female form wreathed in smoke and made of fire, lower half snakes away in a fiery trail. “Yet there is good as well as evil to be found in the city of doors. You will find allies in unlikely places if you do not allow yourselves to despair. The Mistress of Pain does not fear the wrath of any god, and even the gods may aid you if you can convince them.”

Lastly, a watery female for appears. She says, “I have little to tell you that my sisters have not. Only that the broken can be mended; and all souls strive.”

The party asks a few more questions of the oracle, who seems willing to converse for a while. The oracle even gives hints of the current location of the house of Bel: One in a prison of earth and iron, but a prison of his own making, one is with his master, and one is seeking, always seeking...

When the oracle will answer no more questions, the Weirds open a tunnel in the wall. After about a hundred yards the party comes to an exit out onto the base camp of the mountain where a surprised Kondor is waiting, flexing his muscles. They camp overnight, then proceed down to the small town the next morning.

Back in town, Kartharine seems ill, but shrugs off questions about her health, and quickly teleports everyone back to the Librarium.

Kartharine pays them 1500 gold each for the quest to reach the oracle, and then outlines the next stage of her assignment. Now that they know where the Last Artificer is, the party needs to find him and retrieve him, bringing him back to Kartharine as well. For this she will pay them each 10,000 gold... three up front and the other seven on completion of the quest.

So where and what is the City of Doors, the party asks. Kartharine explains:

“The City of Doors, called Sigil, floats atop the great spire at the center of a Plane called the Outlands. The Outlands is unique among the Outer Planes because it borders all other Outer Planes. As a result, it is the common ground for extraplanar creatures. Beings from infernal and celestial planes, as well as those of law and chaos, can be found here. In addition, deities of true neutrality and those associated with ideals such as scholarship or nature, like Vecna and Boccob, have their realms here.

The Outlands is an infinitely large wheel with a great spire rising from its center. Outlanders consider this towering cylindrical plinth as the heart of the Outer Planes and the axle around
which the Great Wheel is centered. This great plinth is clearly visible from anywhere in the plane; it rises above the clouds themselves and ascends into unreachable heavens. The plane is a broad region of varied terrain, with open prairies, towering mountains, and twisting, shallow rivers. Settlements throughout the area are inhabited by a variety of refugees and natives of the plane. But they are small flecks against the greater wildness of the Outlands.

Far from the spire, magic functions normally. At about 1,100 miles from the base of the spire, the impeded magic trait begins, impeding 9th-level spells unless the caster is extremely able. Closer to the base of the spire, spells of lower levels are also impeded. The limited magic trait starts to emerge at 900 miles away from the center of the plane, making 9th-level spells and spell-like effects unavailable. Closer to the center, more and more abilities cannot be used, and finally even deity-level powers are affected. The heart of the Outlands, and therefore the self-proclaimed center of the planes, Sigil is known as the City of Doors. Portals leading throughout the cosmos lace every district of the city. Situated atop the spire itself that rises above the surrounding plane, Sigil is a ring floating in space, with the city itself constructed along the inside of the band.

Sigil has a number of special traits, one of which is objective directional gravity. “Down” is toward the ring itself. Those who escape the ring suddenly find themselves in open air, often plummeting down the side of the spire. While magic is extremely limited near the spire, magic in the City of Sigil functions normally. Sigil has a huge number of portals, the sum total of which is unknown even to the inhabitants. Portals connect to every known Outer Plane and every Inner Plane. Portals also connect Sigil to other locations in the Outlands. Most of Sigil’s portals require command words or special keys in order to make them function.

Sigil is a trader’s city. Goods, merchandise, and information come to it from all across the planes. It does a brisk trade in information about the planes, in particular in the command words or keys required for the operation of particular portals. These portal keys are sought after, and usually travelers within the city are looking for a particular portal or a portal key to allow them to continue on their way. Sigil is controlled by a number of factions, all of which may be politely described as “philosophers with clubs.” These factions are categorized along the lines of traditional alignments, and they control different parts of the city and different services therein. The ultimate ruler of Sigil is an enigmatic being known as the Lady of Pain, a floating female humanoid with bladelike hair. The full extent of the Lady of Pain’s abilities is unknown, but it is widely assumed that her power equals or exceeds that of the deities.”

As the party digests this new information, Kartharine offers them three choices on getting them to Sigil. First, she can plane shift them to the Outlands. Where they would appear can be... erratic, given the suppressive morphic field of the Plane, but the spell would get them the closest to the spire: within a day or two's journey at the most, but most likely much less. Second, Kartharine can cast Gate to Outlands, but only into a portal town. This is safe (er), but puts you at the edge of the Plane's magic supressing field, 900 miles away from the spier. It would be at least a month's travel from the portal town to the spire, if they couldn't find a faster way to travel. Lastly, They could try and find a wizard with a Sigil key. These are the only way to plane shift into the city directly, all other methods of magical travel fail when attempting to get into the city. Kartharine doesn't have one (hey, there has to be SOMEthing she doesn't have...), but knows of who does, a wizard by the name of Mandure), up in the northern reaches of Duinseach. This will take the longest, at least a month of travel, and in the fell of winter at that. Mandure has a small tower fortress in Cardinia and keeps a small standing force, but isn't evil per se. Also, there's no guarantees Mandure still has the Sigil Key. On the up side, Mandure can be bought. The Wizards of the White Hand also have a Sigil Key, but trying to take it from them would be suicide.

Kartharine tells them that for this quest, time is not necessarily of the essence. With the book, there were others after it. No one knows of the continued existence of the Artificer, to the best of Kartharine's knowledge. Vaniri agents may still be on their trail, but it is unthinkable they would follow the party into the Outlands, even in the unlikely even that the Vaniri learned of the party's destination. Kartharine says with quiet certainty that the book is now safe here.

Deciding to go with the plane shift spell, the party shops for items that will be useful in areas where magic doesn't work. Once they have everything they think is reasonable, the party plane shifts. The feeling is intense, and only Rowan has ever felt anything like it before, when her soul was ripped from it's resting place and brought back to her body.

The party emerges into darkness and midair. Everyone falls perhaps twenty feet to the floor of a large stone cellar. A mass of soft, sticky yet crunchy stuff breaks their fall for the most part. These turn out to be eggs. Drider eggs. And sure enough, a bunch of driders and monstrous spiders swarm into the chamber moments later. Combat without magic is tricky, but the party overcomes their foes without becoming too seriously wounded.

They exit the cellar through a trap door that leads out into a dusty street that is mostly deserted. The air is stiflingly hot, with no breeze. Curiously, the sky is bright, but there is no visible sun. Eclipsing half the sky is the spire. It's close, but the thing is so huge it makes distance seem a bit tricky. Atmospheric distortion makes it seem as though the spire curves as it ascends into the heavens and is lost to view. Across the street is a cafe of sorts, and under the shade of an umbrella a male and a female sit, having a conversation. As the last of the party emerges from the trap door, the man gets up, bows to the woman, and leaves.

The woman looks toward the party. Aiden, who was eyeing the woman's form under her flowing blouse speculatively, does a double-take when he sees that the woman has the head of a tiger. The woman is drinking delicately from a teacup, apparently not bothered by the heat. The party recognizes her as a rakshasa, a race of powerful, shape-changing sorcerers

“LOOK OUT!” screams Althea. Lumi yelps as well. Everyone dives out of the way as a form comes hurtling down out of the sky and slams into the ground where the party was just standing with an explosion of dust. The body bounces a good thirty feet back into the air, then finally crashes to rest a few yards from the shaken party members.

The corpse is obviously dead. There doesn't appear to be an un-pulverized bone in his body. Dressed in strange clothing, the man has a large pouch affixed to belt, and a purse containing 200 gold. The pouch has about 11 keys of various sizes, shapes and colors. Some look like keys, others look like flat wafers made from some hard but flexible material, and painted strange colors.

The rakshasa, named Sehrix, laughs, but not mockingly. She gives them some free advice, and tells them to take the keys, but leave 13 gold on the body. It's a customary burial price. The keys, though, are worth small fortune in right hand, and worth large fortune in the wrong hands.

Sehrix gives them some basic information about how things are in Sigil. There are the factions controlling parts of the city, and their quest would probably be best started in either one of the neutral or law-aligned sectors. Aside from the merchants, there are the Lockmen, who specialize in the trade and lore of the keys, the Charons, the ferrymen who drive their strange craft from the city at the base of the spire up to Sigil, and the Gnostics, of which Sehrix is a member. She shows them the gnostic's symbol, an inverted triangle with an eye in the center. The gnostics trade information for information, using a complex system of valuation to determine what kind of information is worth what.

She tells then that the closest Charon outpost is about a half-days journey clockwise around the spire. The party finds the outpost, a large area with a few scattered warehouse-sized buildings, and a few men talking with each other. Near the men are several large, boxy metal platforms with steel skirts covering the undersides. Most have railings around the sides, and seats bolted to the platforms, and a podium at one side full of levers and buttons.

The party haggles with the men, and finally take the ferry of the Charon who offered the least amount. After everyone straps themselves into a seat, there is a roar, and the ferry shoots heavenward. After a ten-minute ride, they come within sight of the ring, the sheer size of which takes their breath away. The ferry lands them on a metal platform in an area that seems largely devoid of people. As the party heads down the ramp towards the nearest street, the mtal ramp drops away under their feet!

Everyone but Rowan falls, but the Ranger, with cat-like reflexes, twists in midair and manages to grab the edge. The ferryman, who had stopped abruptly before the trap was sprung. He rushes over to try and kick Rowan into the pit before she can climb out. He succeeds, but Rowan manages to pull him in as well.

The trap door snaps shut above them as they hit the cold hard floor 30 feet below. Immediately the room fills with a paralyzing gas that overcomes everyone but Rowan and Caspian. Barely able to keep on their feet, they stagger towards the metal door at the end of the room. In walk two men in masks that cover their heads carrying large clubs. Caspian overpowers one, and Rowan kills the other, but finally succumbs to the gas as she does.
Caspian makes it out of the chamber into the next room and shuts off the gas. He finds a lever that turns on fans that clear the room of the paralyzing agent, and slowly the party begins to recover. They tie up the driver and the surviving slaver.

In the far room with the gas controls, a third person walks in, demanding to know what's taking so long, when he sees the party has overpowered his partners. Before he can escape, Aiden kills him with a pair of scorching rays. They find from interrogating the ferryman that he was getting a percentage to take the occasional group to this platform, where they'd be gassed and wake up in one of the labor camps in the Outlands. He says they wouldn't have been killed, just made to work. It wasn't anything personal. The party debates how best to deal with the two. Ultimately, however, a furious Aiden takes the ferryman's head off with a stroke of his greatsword. Rowan dispatches the other bound slaver, and the party quickly set off into the city as the last glow in the sky fades into night...