Sigil was once the City of Doors; now it is truly a cage. Over a thousand years ago, I felt an earthquake for the first time in my existence. The shaking collapsed buildings on their inhabitants, opened up pits in the bedrock to nothingness, and cracked open the torus of our city. Pieces of buildings and city and other people rained down upon us like meteors. What the earthquake itself did not demolish, this collapse finished off.
Many did not survive. More died over time, buried under rubble we could not clear, because all of the city was rubble. Now we nest like rats in what remains; we stay where the ruination is least, and dare not venture too far because of the dangers, or the memories. We live under a dark sky, and we live in the luminescence particular to Sigil.
It must be sapient nature to cling to cults; many of Sigil’s factions remain, despite the destruction, despite the passage of time. The Dustmen and the Bleak Cabal’s numbers swelled after the catastrophe. Even as others despaired of any reason to continue on, the Bleakers increased their efforts to provide aid to the hopeless, and the Dead provided aid in processing and overcoming the deaths and damage. Of course, the Doomguard delighted in the fall of the city. Some of them, even now, tear down the city gardens and break our scavenged materials and destroy our wards.
Most factions remain, but the Takers have fizzled out; at least, they are no longer an official faction. No one takes taxes anymore; I suppose that, at least, is one benefit to the “apocallapse.” The Harmonium were decimated by both the earthquake that obliterated the city barracks, and undesirables who took the opportunity to surprise them in the chaos. Few officially remain, and most local law must be meted out by citizens who take it upon themselves to impose their own law: probably Heartless who, robbed of their tax scheme, have gone for more direct means, or the Mercykillers—but they have their own problems.
The only way out of the city seems to be down into the roiling darkness exposed by the earthquake. Beneath our ruined city, chaos fumes and festers. No one knows why Sigil-that-was now, somehow, shares a border with the Abyss. Now, the Abyss wells up toward us, and Lolth and her minions cavort and slaver for our ultimate destruction. Her cohorts ever seek entrance into the city; even with the wards and spells in place to keep them down, the Mercykillers are hard-pressed to fend them off. The place brims with wild magic. It mutates and seems to invalidate our new protections almost the moment we create them. Why would anyone bring people here, from down there? What good can come of these children? And who will repair my shop, in the city of disrepair?
My weariness at this damaged world is like the light of Sigil: unending. We are not even maintaining. We are, all of us, fading. Sigil is nothing without its portals. Without trade.
Without its Lady.
— Samarkand, Warforged Mage
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