I think my favorite story of the Lady of Pain is from Spoony (back from his "good ol' days") If you piss of the Lady of Pain enough, and you are unlucky enough that she(?) does not kill you outright, then she will "maze" you instead. It's what Runesmith describes at 3:17 - an infinite demiplane where you will stay forever, or until you have learnt your lesson, which can be for almost forever. It's not a hedge-maze but it can be, and if the Lady is feeling fair, she might just put an exit in there somewhere. You don't need to eat or drink there, you don't need to sleep, it's pretty much a forever prison. Anyway Spoony told a story of some guy, who really wanted to stick it to the Lady for some reason, and be the first who escaped a maze, probably since she doesn't have a statblock and thus untouchable. So he brought a Minotaur, because they "always know the way out of mazes". And he brought it with the sole purpose of 1.) Pissing of the Lady of Pain. 2.) Get mazed 3.) Get right out like "yo whatup?" Anyway, he succeeded and got "mazed", and he indeed knew where the exit is... at the end of an insanely long, featureless, blank, grey and dark hallway... which was the entire demiplane. Never piss off the Lady of Pain, kids. She might be neutral, but she does have a _sharp_ sense of humor.

TLDR: You can use either the si-jil or si-gull pronounciation. Essentially, Sigil was called si-jil by everyone except for Zeb Cook, who said si-gull during its development, and that was a simple mispronunciation. The writers thought this was funny and put in a story about some locals killing a visitor to the city because he pronounced it si-jil. So now, according to Zeb Cook, both ways of pronouncing it are the 'official' ways. Which I like since I feel like two sides fighting over how to say a word fits really well into planescape.

You forgot to mention that Lady of Pain may be a bunch of squirrels in the spiky robe.

One thing you forgot to mention is that the countless portals in Sigil are not always obvious. Literally any doorway in any building can secretly be a portal if certain conditions are met. Maybe it's saying a password, maybe it's having a pulse, maybe it's having a piece of jerky in their back pocket. So a shopkeep could walk into his broom closet, and accidentally portal into the Fire Plane because he was wearing a green shirt.

The City of Doors: where you go when you’re in a Jam

I can’t believe he hadn’t played PlaneScape Torment until now!!

Rent too high, city ignored

I like AJ's description of the Lady as part of a triad of over-gods. AO represents lawfulness (creation), Tharizdun represents chaos (entropy) and the Lady represents neutrality (stability). I ran a planescape game and my lore for Sigil was that is was the last remnant of a previous universe. A demi-plane that is out of phase with the rest of the universe. That is why it can only be accesses thru portals.

Ah the ultimate sandbox with infinite random options to choose from and stuff to do. I hope your dm is really good at describing things and making random stuff work. Also I love how the lady of pain is basically the only being in D&D without a stat block. Its just, "If she looks at you, this will happen, if you get her attention this will happen. Saves dont exists here, no munchkinry matters, the only outcome is Pain."

It is worth mentioning, the number of portals in sigil is equal to the number of enclosed spaces. Every arch, every door, every fireplace, every place where there is a piece of cloth hanging over the road and the donut itself is all connected to portals. You just need the correct key to open them. The key could be not knowing something specific, knowing something specific, knowing something general, having the correct item, having trash, feeling something general or specific... etc. I have a trap that i want to use in a future Sigil game. A guy waits for the party, creates a giant startling illusion and the party has to roll for whether or not it surprises them or they manage to keep control. If they are surprised by what is going on, then the portal they are standing in opens and transports them into an encounter on another plane.

Holy shit he hasn't played planescape: torment. Yeah you're in for a wild ride, buddy.

Sigil really is the ultimate city of adventure. I'm glad it's getting some decent attention in 5e. Also glad that people are playing Planescape Torment! It's my favorite CRPG, just because it's so well written. And there's a lot to think about, in it. Even has some good comedy, especially if you have Morte, Nordom, Anna, and Grace in your party; they've all got great random banter.

One of my DMs before they ghosted us had us start in Sigil. We destroyed half the city by session 2 because the fire Genasi in our party set fire to a bottle of the strongest alcohol in existence.

Planescape Torment launched at a pivotal moment in my life and left a lasting impression that still influences my personal philosophy and my fictional writing to this day. I actually pre-ordered the game, way back when. Probably the first time I ever did that. I'm so old now.

Zoro would perhaps be the worse guide or guard in sigil. He could literally kill anything but couldn't remain within your line of sight even if he wanted too, like he'd just straight up vanish behind anything that would break your line of sight. Zoro is so perpetually confused, he'd even be confused how he even got lost.

Also, I like the theory from the 3e Demonimicon that AO, the Lady of Pain and Tharizdun have some sort of connection as the three Overgods that are fundamental to the Multiverse itself

If you look close enough, there are some similarities between Sigil and Ravnica, things you can borrow from both Wards and Precints, from Factions and Guilds. And also from Ankh-Morpork, from the Discworld series. I remember the Ditch everytime Pratchett describes the river, and CMT Dibbler certainly would find himself at home in Sigil too.

If you really want your brain to melt, get hold of the old 2E Planescape books and have a read-through. There's just this amazing combination of silliness, utter insanity, and awesomeness.

Vecna came closest to defeating the Lady of Pain. He stole the divinity of the demigod Iuz and combined it with his own, which allowed him to become a Greater God, but he delayed his apotheosis and travelled to Sigil so that he could bypass the "no gods" rule and become a Greater God there, which in theory could make him the God of Sigil and the most powerful being in the multiverse. Of course, some pesky adventurers defeated him before that could happen, but he made it out alive before the Lady of Pain could end him (and she actually tried to). There is also a theory that the Lady is actually a prisoner and she's magically compelled to punish anyone who worships her out of fear that if enough people did so, she would be able to break free of her chains.

Glad to see someone else who thinks Sigil and all its accompaning lore is just...the coolest thing ever.

I love that Torment got a mention, it's the game that made me fall in love with Sigil, long before i even knew about D&D 😅

Planescape is the best DnD setting, imo. It has so much lore, I could write a book bigger than all three 5e Planescape books combined

I love that Zoro was the 'guide' to help find the portal back. For those wondering, Zoro would get lost in an empty corridor without doors or windows

Aoskar didn't try to kill the Lady, he just tried to the over as the God of portals and take over Sigil. The lady killed him with a thought Vecna DID try to kill her when he was amped by a more ancient evil, and she defeated him. She can cause every portal in the city of doors to just stop working. Unlike other gods, she has never had stats published because you can not beat her. There is literally a rule at WotC to never give her stats. Just thinking about fighting her is dangerous. If she wants you dead, you die, it doesn't matter who you are. If Asmodeus and Demogorgon decided to team up and kill her, they'd die. If Chronus broke free of his dream and tried killing her, he'd die. To paraphrase Apocalypse, she is as far beyond the gods as they are beyond mortals. When she sends you to The Mazes, it's not like where squidward went, it's more like the Backrooms. You turn a corner in your home, and suddenly the hall is a lot longer than it was yesterday. You turn around, but the room you just left is gone, replaced with more hallways. Everybody's Maze is different, they don't connect, and you can never leave.

*last session my character asking about the lady of pain showing interest and desire to get all close to the lady of pain all squeeze like* "The worst thing a being could ever do is draw attention of the lady of pain or worse, worship her!" *Gulp*

Sigil and Planescape in general was my favorite Campaign Setting ever I have all the old 2nd ed D&D supplements and modules for it. One of them talked about how there were other factions not mentioned in the main book for it. My favorite of them was the "Opposers". Their entire philosophy was to simply oppose whatever it was that the consensus was for. It had a quote with it that described the Faction as "Because Black is White unless its white in which case it's black, unless you say its black then its white". At least I thinks that's how the quote went.

When I was running Strixhaven, my party wanted to do something different for the summer break between semesters, so I let them visit Sigil (where one PC's parents lived and worked as interplaner diplomats) and ran a murder mystery while ripping off characters from so many goddamn books because this is the one place where it actually makes sense for the party to meet characters from everything from Star Wars to Looney Tunes to Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

I absolutely adore Sigil. In my lore, the Dabus are insectoid creatures and are related to the Thri-kreen, who also can't communicate with words and have to draw pictures and stuff. And also, the locals call it "Si-jill" but tell non-locals it's "si-gull" so anyone who actually calls it si-gull is revealed to be an out of town bumpkin who everyone makes fun of. The place is probably one of my favorite locations in all of D&D.

Glad to see you’re giving Torment a go, it’s a brilliant game. I recommend that everyone gives it a go if have a decent level of patience for long dialogue, I really recommend it. It explores this city and its cool themes so well. It has a remastered version on Steam & GoG so it’s no hassle to get running.

Always nice to see people talking about Planscape Torment, such a trip man.

The Terrasque running into The Lady of Pain would probably be the funniest encounter ever

I always theorized that The Lady of Pain was an exiled dark power from Ravenloft. It's the only other place anywhere in D&D where gods cannot get in. So what if she left Ravenloft and took custody of her own place?

Man Planescape: Torment is one of my favorite games; played one or two ttgames in the setting, easily my favorite.

(Edit:) oh good, he mentioned it ❤ Planescape: Torment is an excellent (though dated) CRPG, if you're interested in a digital visit to Sigil (and other parts of the planes) and a great story, as well as a boatload of great writing, give it a shot.

Love the Mindflayer casually cooking up food at a stall. Some of the most vile and horrid beings in the universe. But that one...they found their true calling. Theyre doing what they love. They dont need the Elder Brain now.

So Sigil is my favourite city in DnD and has been for like 20 years. I used to use it to end campaigns since Sigil is built from the abandoned parts of other plains of existence. I had a labyrinth that the lady opened up once every century. The first (insert number of party members) who reached the centre won a gift and a favour from the lady. And yes I used a glyph generator to have her servants explain details and people sometimes got them wrong. These can be short campaigns (I usually make them at least 2 but I've had some run 5-6 sessions) and every door they enter shifts realms. So you could be wandering a slice of the Abyss and then end up in the fire realm. These were less story-driven and more murder hobo/puzzles. and sometimes I put a time limit and I've had parties lose. Stuck to wander the labyrinth until they die or find an exit. One player took his character's win into his own DMing and created a "lost library" he'd asked for all magical books as a favour and that was too much even for the Lady, but she gave him a book telling him the location of all magical books. So he used that and an amulet of planar teleportation to build up a huge floating library that after he died kinda started shifting planes randomly. It was cool to hear him so excited about it.

One of the D&D cookbooks, Heroes' Feast: Flavors of the Multiverse actually has an entire section of recipes purportedly from Sigil, including my favorite, Silverfruit Pie!

Loved the video!! That was an extremely good explanation for where Sigil is, just another quality vid

Wow, I just got so many inspirations for my next Adventure! Thank you very much, this pace is great!

As random as it sounds, I've always wanted a donut-shaped world in a setting specifically because you could look straight up and see other parts of the world. The ultimate conclusion of this being that you could travel straight up to make it halfway across the world.

Yo, I was just reading about it! Also, check a guide on how to speedrun becoming a Mage in Planescape: Torment. The game is balanced more towards that role, and most of the cool story elements are hidden there.

Oh my gawd! I've played Torment a lot of times. Fantastic game and truly the one, where having high inteligence and wisdom make You awesome, especially further in game. Masterpiece.

Torment came out way after Baldur’s Gate and it was considered more advanced. Definitely a must play back then.

Ahhh good ol’ Planescape aka D&D:Rifts. Best setting in the game and where my old group would “crossover” our Rifts characters to D&D stats and play over there for a spell. We had an incredible couple of sessions where our characters were doing their best to keep a certain Splugorth Lord of Atlantis from creating an alliance with Asmodeus to assist in the Bloodwar and then conquer the multiverse. How fun. CS troops raiding a Drow cavern and Sunaj Assassins keeping a Githyanki war party from taking one of their secret outposts in a pocket dimension. From Center to Sigil,so much fun.

Oh sweet I recently thought of planescape torment again and was wondering what you'd think of the setting and the goofy rebus chaps.

I had a campaign called Siege on sigil, the idea was that a powerful entity found a way to suppress the lady of pain and launched a mass attack on the city in an attempt to take control so that they can have access to all the multiverse

This is exactly what I needed to finish a character I was building, thanks!

I'm honestly kind of shocked it took Runesmith until this video to find out about Torment

This is great. You explain things very well

Runesmith you're the best keep it up

Good Video. Nice. Keep up the high quality.

yeeeaahhh I love this place im so glad it got covered, the dabus fascinate me

I made a character who was born here. He grew up being the Sigil equivalent of an apprentice dock master. He ended up stowing away on a Githyanki Astral Skiff and hijacking it to go on all kinds of wacky Sci Fi adventures in the Astral Plane.

I know there might not be much lore, but I would kill for you to do a video on the Giff.

1:45 - not "the forgotten realms universe", the multiverse as a whole, including the Earth

was just watching a video by Josephd about this, and fell in love with the lore.

Fun facts about Sigil that I was hoping Runesmith would bring up. First, the events of Die, Vecna, Die!, one of the last 2e modules, has Vecna almost usurp control of Sigil from the Lady of Pain. In his brief stint of semi-control, he permanently altered the multiverse, explaining the rules changes from 2e to 3e. 2nd, if the Lady's shadow falls on you, you are flayed alive and your soul is obliterated. There was exactly one exception to this. A little girl walked into the Lady's shadow and had an actual, full on conversation with her before skipping off into the crowd. No one knows what they talked about. 3rd, the Lady is bound to the city itself. If she ever leaves or assumes her true form, the multiverse would be destroyed.

I love your videos! Epic and funny job on this one. I have been thinking I recently watched a show and it had the main character digging through trash to find discarded magic potions, magic items, and just trash. So has anyone run into the idea for D&D of what happens to the magic item trash?

I think ogling the Lady's cans might count as worship. . .

Oh, to hear someone whoes just discovered Planescape Torment for the first tike 😊

I'm currently running a western fantasy campaign and am only really planning to go to level 8ish(if we even get that far lol) and I now have the idea to send them to sigil one way or another if by the end they want to continue with their characters lol

Love the video, haven't been to Sigil since guiding a nameless scar covered man to his ultimate fate. Good times.

This just reminds me: I can't wait for the new Vecna: Eve of Ruin book to come out! The blurb on the back describes how the adventure takes you to different settings not just including the Forgotten Realms, but also Planescape, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft and even Greyhawk! I suspect Planescape in particular plays a big role due to the multiverse-hopping nature of the adventure.

I’m imagining the Lady of Pain being like that one anime where a girl sees ghosts but she has to pretend that she doesn’t or else they’ll kill her.

I mean honestly… I love all 3rd party content but the ghostfire gaming creators is all you fucking need. You guys all crush it. 😍

I’m running this on Fridays :)

Aw I've been wanting to cover this book for awhile! (But haven't finished reading the whole book yet @_@)

I kind of need you to do a recap of Torment now. :P

It's core design was "philosophy with clubs" - and both the "social group" and "weapon" meaning of the word club. Each faction is based around a fairly well thought out philosophical position. My favourite, the Bleak Cabal, are nihilists who have come to feel that everything is meaningless - glory, honour, morality, all of it. So they run charities. Because if everything is meaningless only an absolute idiot would make life worse. It's also kind of terrible to run using D&D. It's workable, in a "if all you have is a hammer, all problems are nails" way, but the system just wasn't designed with a setting where your landlady might be a beholder, and the local bartender's a lich. Fate, apocalypse or other narratively- focused systems that care more about flavour work fantastically well.

Planescape could be one of the only games where you can complete the entire game without fighting the bosses. just talk and convince them. Or let them kill themselves, or let others do it. Also the true sociopath route is really f'd up

Brought my characters here about a month ago. They're still trekking through the Wards and having a good time. They just beat an empyrean at the Bottle and Jug who was the reigning pitfighting champ and now they're going to find a portal to limbo where they can ask the githzerai to help their homeworld that was invaded by illithid. Good times. Also, I am playing Planescape now too. Would love a video on that.

That really updated my journal

if it goes on sale i will look into purchasing planescape, looks interesting.

Calling ahead to stores, is just good advice in general. Even for your local convince store. If you're a regular chances are they might listen if you're looking for something special.

Fun fact, appereantly it si said in some parts of the Lore that The Lady of Pain is Daughter of Io the God of all dragonkind and father of Bahamut and Tiamat, and it's not weird this theory considering that Io is one of the strongest Gods and in general entities of all time with Ao, Annam and Tharizdun and those four Gods that I just have mention (Io, Ao, Annam and Tharizdun) are far more powerful than the Lady of pain. P.S. To be fair the Lady of Pain is just as strong as a normal God, but she has an insane natural power over sigil, that's what makes her that powerful, her power over Sigil.

If I ever run a session in the Sigil, one of my shopkeepers is gonna be a dragon who is selling stuff from his hoard because he has way too much stuff that isn’t money, and only wants gold.

Man, i bought this set, i love it. Unfortunately im a terrible dm and don't ever expect to use it

I need a complete campaign in this place right now!

2:48 - I knew something was up when he just referred to them as "stupid insufferable a-holes". They're a faction that's great for acclimating newcomers to the city and its environment, but clearly he only cared about how some people in-setting see them as greedy and have a "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap" kind of mentality (even though that's literally the adventurer's mindset by nature).

Really gonna need a sigil sitcom in the vein of Seinfeld.

Gave me the perfect idea for a large sci-fi city hub that Imma create now for a game I won't get to run any time soon. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’m so glad someone brought Mordheim to D&D. Good job, Dungeon Dudes. Also isn’t “G” in Sigil like in “Giant”? Not like “Gear” I’m pretty sure. Edit: Someone actually explains it nicely in the comments.

I can vouch for drakkenhiem. My group and I are having a blast with it.

At first I read the title in the image of this video as "City of Dogs - The Most Interesting City I've Ever Read About". And now i really need runesmith to make that title into a video.

Nice job

@5:23 That reminds me, you can find a few guys from the Dark Sun setting, right? Any plans to cover its word of Athas?

As a Spoony Bard once said, “Thou shall not fuck with The Lady of Pain.”

Now just imagine playing Torment 20 or so years back, with no knowledge about DnD, having no idea of what's going on in this crazy place, with these crazy companions game offers... Ah, the day I understood I'm a bit crazy...

man I wanna play planescape torment now (I love sensates I just wanna go around places being like man I'm just here to experience stuff :) )

Another absolute banger

I'm kind of amused that Runesmith did a video on Sigil before playing Planescape Torment. That said, if you haven't started your playthrough: WISDOM IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT STAT. While there are no wisdom-based classes available to the PC (He can't be a Cleric due to Plot-related reasons, and there are no Druids in the game), Wisdom dictates how much experience you gain and it has the most ability checks. :V

I don't know if you guys ever watched top gear or the grand tour but there is a store in China that is a drive through door store. I imagine that's what Sigil is like

I based the capital city of one of my nations on sigil. Mainly in the way that every kind of creature lived there and everybody did business with everybody else with no issues. I like that concept.

There is only one place you can't, normally, get to via a portal from Sigil...unless it decides to let you. World Serpent Inn has opened to link there every once in a while, but it normally means bad things are happening in Sigil since that thing is odd.

I always felt like the designers saw Labyrinth and thought they would turn it into a campaign setting.

I planned a really cool murder mystery in sigil and had loads planned Ans thennnn half my play group can't play so never mind rip

The lady of pain is literally just a proxy for the dm. Can technically do anything, but just keeps the universe spinning instead. Unless provoked.

You should try City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet, and also The Saint of Bright Doors. Very interesting books!

I feel like two things deserve a mention about the lady of pain: 1. She probably wasnt always the ruler of Sigil. 2. She almost got overthrown once. Not by that god. He got mazed, still is there probably. Could be a cool plothook.

The fated are cool. They are D&D objectivists. Darkwood is probably the best faction leader by far.