City of Sigil

Our gaming group decided that a D&D 3.5e game set in the city of Sigil, of Planescape fame, would be the next logical step. In chasing that ever elusive high, our PCs were tending to get freakier with each succeeding campaign – our previous Eberron campaign featured warforged, orc, bugbear, and other bizarro characters. How can you get weirder? Pretty much only in the planes. So a troll, a trumpet archon, two bladelings, a red dragon, a fire genasi, a medusa, and a paladin walk into a bar…

My Character

I played Dakani Night Scream, the bladeling rogue/swordsage. This was our group’s first time using the Book of Nine Swords and it was a very positive experience! And can I note that having DR 5 is a happy thing.

Session Summaries

City of Sigil – Session 1, in which the party meets for the first time and slays a cult of Takhisis in the city of angels (and demons!). Dakani really did make the captured tiefling confess to being a pygmy marmoset before he let him go; that’s not a joke.

City of Sigil – Session 2, in which the heroes fight a mess of draconians. At least we didn’t have to sing that Goldmoon and Riverwind song. And why is a dragon relying on a first level party to retrieve her stolen eggs anyway? Apparently she doesn’t want them back too badly!

City of Sigil – Session 3, in which a bunch of undead declare their need for slaughter. We respond.

City of Sigil – Session 4, in which, not for the last time, the PCs make use of their prime location to scamper out of a dungeon and buy just the right thing at Sigil’s open air magic item bazaars and 24 hour temples. (Get it? Prime location? Mmmwah-hah-haaaa!)

City of Sigil – Session 5, in which Mister Porter of the Bureau of Timekeepers hires the party to protect some papers from Xaositechs.

City of Sigil – Session 6, in which Dakani and Tarusk have a vision of the bladelings’ progenitor, and people start escaping from the Lady’s Maze, spreading sorcerous chaos in the streets.

City of Sigil – Session 7, in which the intrepid adventurers start to tamper with the Maze and get a dead god’s hand.

City of Sigil – Session 8, in which Dakani misses the adventure; the PCs just grind grind grind in the same dungeon.

City of Sigil – Session 9, in which the party continues the grind, and kills a hag Pact Lord. But the paladin gets abducted by a phase spider! And a pixie joins the party, oh joy.

City of Sigil – Session 10, in which the party leaves the dungeon to retrieve the one hoo-man member of their group. And we go to some swamp pocket dimension.

City of Sigil – Session 11, in which a fully mirror-imaged party takes out a beholder in two rounds, but then get turned by some stupid undead priest. And Dakani’s brother Tarusk dies!

City of Sigil – Session 12, in which the party resumes the grind. A “spellscale” joins us in Tarusk’s place. TARUSK!!!!!

City of Sigil – Session 13, in which… OK, yeah, more grind in the big Maze dungeon.

City of Sigil – Session 14, in which the group delves deep into the Baneheart and flees iron golems. And the entire party nearly gets trapped in an extradimensional prison forever. And we get a Voltron!

City of Sigil – Session 15, in which the heroes have to control Voltron while they’re being attacked themselves. And Dakani’s prevented from freeing the Blade Lords to war upon the gods. Finally done with that dungeon! And some weirdo named “Rule of Three” hires us to… Oh, it’s complicated.

City of Sigil – Session 16, in which we go to the Beastlands and Rimetheras to gather allegedly boss demon slaying weapons. I say “allegedly” because whoever designed the weapons was criminally retarded. “Let’s make a anti-demon sword out of… mithril!” Apparently we’re going to the Demonweb.

City of Sigil – Session 17, in which the group is ambushed by yugoloths in Sigil and go to the Demonweb Pits, where ridiculous fungus bats kick their asses. Oh, and Dakani has vicious and painful bathroom sex with the marilith who owns the Styx Oarsman. Our sensitive session scribe skipped over the details but let’s just say DR was required.

City of Sigil – Session 18 (.doc), in which two handmaidens of Lolth make a sandwich out of Dakani. It’s not as hot as it sounds. And then we visit the Abyss!

City of Sigil – Session 19 (.doc), in which we slaughter a bunch of gods, much to our surprise. Aren’t we just tenth level? And the campaign ends.

Commentary

Paul, our GM, made liberal use of free downloadable adventures from wizards.com in this campaign. And finished it off with the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.

The Good:

• The Book of Nine Swords stuff was fresh, new, and cool. We all enjoyed its addition.
• The Sigil setting meant we could freely exert the full power of all our D&D books – get any spell, any item, take any class, be any race, even campaign specific stuff. That’s not something for every campaign but every once in a while it’s nice to let loose with both barrels.

The Bad:

• Expedition to the Demonweb Pits was weak. Not a worthy successor to the original. Nearly slaughtered by fungus bats and then killing a bunch of gods at level 10?  I make a declaration of shenanigans upon the whole thing.
• I had a big problem during the primary story arc about the Bladelords. In the very beginning, one appeared to me and Tarusk in a dream, claimed that they were the progenitors of the bladelings, the Lady of Pain was a rebel Bladelord, and told us we should free them to overthrow the gods. Great hook. But there was no reason why I *shouldn’t* follow through with it. We got to the end, and as far as Dakani was concerned (especially as Tarusk had died), freeing the Bladelords sounded like a pretty good deal. Being in Sigil gives you a certain amount of contempt for the gods, and they sure had never done anything for Dakani. What ended up happening is that when we were there with the dead god’s hand and the portal that would spit up the Bladelords upon application of said hand, the rest of the party said “No!” We basically had to metagame that Dakani didn’t go for it anyway – and the guy who can turn invisible and go anywhere could likely have pulled it off. I didn’t like having to compromise my character’s motivations at that point – it’d be different if the DM had given me anything (over six months) to cling to as an in-character reason for why to not free them. Ah well, at least I convinced the party not to destroy the hand but leave it in the Maze for some later intrepid band of deicides to find.