The Lady of Pain (D&D...)

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I was going to post the following on a Planescape site a while back, but chose not to. I decided it would be nice to throw it into the mix here instead:

Hey, I'm new here, don't have much to do besides pitch some ideas I came up with a while back. The greater part of you probably know a decent amount more about the Planescape setting than I do and can put down (or compliment...) this as you see fit... Which is the reason for posting it in the first place. Note that I'm not going by anything much better than haphazard recollection as to the established (past or updated) mythos in writing this stuff, so it would be worth it to take that into account as you judge.

I remember reading that there's not supposed to be any explanation for the Lady of Pain, but damn it, I'm not one to accept the unexplained, just like that. Yet coming up with a description of this entity's true nature that does justice to the sublimity of her position in the relevant cosmos is quite the seemingly impossible task. How to resolve this tension? Well, that's what I hope I've gone some ways towards doing. It works for myself, anyway.

The Outer Planes are generated by beliefs, right? And the powers derive their... power... from the faith of their believers? (I know that something like this is correct.) Simultaneously, the True Words have the power to reshape reality, even just being words, and there's suspicion that the Lady talks (or would talk) in this True language. Now Sigil is connected to everything, is at the heart of everything. (Note: a geometrical condition that could account for Sigil's visible but unreachable location at the apex of the infinite Spire is the asymptotic condition--I think an asymptote works like this, anyway.)

Suppose that once upon a time, there were no Outer Planes. There was just an undifferentiated mass of alignment-based matter and energy shifting "outside" the prime material/inner regions of the multiverse. Then suppose some primers (right term?) discovered the True Words, discovered a way to turn beliefs into facts. They built a city-sized machine for this purpose and devoted some of their number to its upkeep, and through the mind of one special one of them they proceeded to transform the raw essence of the Outer Planes into the domains we know now--the Abyss, Mount Celestia, etc. This special individual would take it upon herself(!) to absorb the convictions of primers or those newly-dwelling in the Outer Planes and yield as output concrete representations of metaphysical good and evil, and even divine might. Because the machine she works with is tied to every plane, has gateways to every plane, she is connected to the faith of anyone and everyone in existence. Because she is the (indirect) source of all Outer planar power, she can override any member of any pantheon, even to the point of destroying them instantly by her thoughts, etc. And now the reason for magic, etc. failing at the Spire is (somehow) to be explained as a conduit or something for the forces this person uses in wielding Sigil for the generation of the Outer multiverse... The primers who settled in the transcendent metropolis would, of course, be the dabus. And their most celebrated colleague in the project of constructing the world of belief would be the Lady of Pain. (The only way to fit this name with her role in my idea is to say that it somehow is metaphorical for the pain of bearing children, her children being the Outer Planes.)

Suppose for some reason that Sigil was in danger. I actually came up with a campaign dealing with a potential danger to it, namely an exiled dabus or whatever from the time when the City of Doors was first built who rebelled against the project and sought to foil it. Let's call him the Lord of Joy (for poetry's sake, say?), who escapes or is released (owing to reasons having implicitly to do with another story I came up with--but that's for another time) from his distant prison and begins convincing people that the City will fall from the sky at x time, whose conviction then leads to Sigil's self-annihilation by having its own belief-to-fact engine turned against itself (once the number of those panicking about day x reaches critical mass). The 12(?) cities surrounding the Spire, however, exist for a reason: as a failsafe in case the original City of Doors is unmade. Half the relevant campaign, then, would have to do with Sigil's being gone and your characters being charged with doing whatever needs to be done to merge those 12 cities into a new Sigil and thereby saving the world of belief; the catch would be that most or all of those have slipped into the (decaying) plane they're most aligned with, and you'd have to go about pulling those back into the Outlands. Of course the final battle would be with the Lord of Joy; the resolution would be the dabus rebuilding Sigil and everyone watching it cascade into the Outlands sky, with a sort of The Neverending Story resurrection thing going down then as crumbling, disintegrating planes are repaired in some magical shockwave from the City of Doors' ascent of the Spire.

Throttle away...

[Xar]

That's an interesting concept, especially if you have your players trek through the crumbling planes and let them see the effects of Sigil's loss on worlds which were powered by belief.

Incidentally there are at least two possible in-game explanations for the Lady of Pain: the book "Pages of Pain" implies she is the daughter of Poseidon and her current position is something she didn't seek out (though it doesn't explain how she became what she is today, or why she's associated with Sigil), while the Die Vecna Die adventure suggests she may be a primeval entity akin to the Serpent which bestowed upon Vecna mighty secrets of magic which no one else knew.

[Avatar]

Thanks Xar. At least somebody knows what that was about.

Hey Mighara, we have a whole RPG sub-forum if you're into that. And Acropolis is looking for players...

--A

[Loredoctor]

Planescape, and Dark Sun, are two brilliant D&D settings.