Does Sigil have sewers? (Planescape)

[Zaydos]

I'm starting a planescape game and I've been looking through the books for how Sigil deals with its waste. Does it have sewers, do they use portals, do the dabus and Lady of Pain just magic it away? I've found a reference to the Great Bazaar smelling like sewage, and to wererats in the underground portions of Sigil, but not sewers themselves.

[Erik Vale]

I'm starting a planescape game and I've been looking through the books for how Sigil deals with its waste. Does it have sewers, do they use portals, do the dabus and Lady of Pain just magic it away? I've found a reference to the Great Bazaar smelling like sewage, and to wererats in the underground portions of Sigil, but not sewers themselves.

The NWN2 Server I play on Based on Sigil uses sewers. Not sure about it cannonically though..

[Beleriphon]

I'm starting a planescape game and I've been looking through the books for how Sigil deals with its waste. Does it have sewers, do they use portals, do the dabus and Lady of Pain just magic it away? I've found a reference to the Great Bazaar smelling like sewage, and to wererats in the underground portions of Sigil, but not sewers themselves.

Sigil has underground portions that function as sewers, although as far as I can recall it doesn't purpose built sewers like one would expect in Rome circa 150 CE.

Planescape: Torment certainly has areas that are basically sewers, and there is some ditch/stream deal in Sigil somewhere that waste gets tossed into, and that ditch/stream eventually empties into some elemental plane or another so there's that.

[Tebryn]

And that children is how the Elemental Plane of Ooze was born.

[potatocubed]

Alright, time for me to deploy my Planescape Knowledge (tm).

The torus that Sigil is built on is stone-like but crumbles easily when struck, making it a) useless for building things out of and b) relatively easy to dig through with a decent set of mining tools.

This gives rise to Undersigil, a warren of interconnected caves and tunnels which I know relatively little about - just that they're there, and they often function like sewers in other fantasy settings, both as a way of carting away sewage and as a lair for nasty things. Some are done up like the sewers in Planescape: Torment, some look like regular caves... you can find pretty much anything down there.

On a larger scale, all waste in Sigil has to leave through a portal eventually. If you're in a sewer in Undersigil it's because there's a dumping portal down there somewhere. Probably.

Side note: Similarly, food, water and air all have to come in through portals - Sigil is utterly dependent on its portals for life.

[Cirrylius]

The Dabus have utility tunnels that honeycomb the city, and provide access to the elemental air and water portals that provide... uh, air and water. The Hive has sewage ditches that give rise to shifting one-way ooze portals. I feel like there was a single throwaway reference to Sigil's sewers in the 2nd ed. sourcebooks, but I can't swear to it. In any case, sewers would make sense; the size and frequency of them would depend on the affluence of the Ward they serve, and the total number of portals available for waste.

[DigoDragon]

Side note: Similarly, food, water and air all have to come in through portals - Sigil is utterly dependent on its portals for life.

I was reading this last part in a Cave Johnson voice. :smallbiggrin:


From what I recall of Sigil's layout, would it also be feasable to have waste ejected from the torus into the Outlands below it? Or is this a case of "equivilent exchange" where matter brought into Sigil from portals (food and water) means an equal amount of matter needs to be sent out by portals (waste)?
Just a thought.

[Beleriphon]

I was reading this last part in a Cave Johnson voice. :smallbiggrin:


From what I recall of Sigil's layout, would it also be feasable to have waste ejected from the torus into the Outlands below it? Or is this a case of "equivilent exchange" where matter brought into Sigil from portals (food and water) means an equal amount of matter needs to be sent out by portals (waste)?
Just a thought.

You can't drop anything of of the torus into the Outlands. It is infinitely high above the Outlands, and interesting things happen to the expectations of physics (such as they exist in the Planes) on the outside of the ring.

[Particle_Man]

Cthulhuesque sewer monsters for the win. :smallcool:!

[The Glyphstone]

Where else would the cranium rats live?

[LongVin]

Yep. So there is some horrid plane where the waste of thousands indiscrimantely dumps into. Those poor, poor inhabitants.

[Giggling Ghast]

Yep. So there is some horrid plane where the waste of thousands indiscrimantely dumps into. Those poor, poor inhabitants.

What if it's a plane inhabited entirely by otyugh?

[Doorhandle]

I do belive that everyone on this thread has just discovered the elemental plane of filth.

[DigoDragon]

You can't drop anything of of the torus into the Outlands. It is infinitely high above the Outlands, and interesting things happen to the expectations of physics (such as they exist in the Planes) on the outside of the ring.

The fact which always bugged me considering you can see it from the base of the mountain. :smallamused:

Though in my current D&D game I worked it out that Sigil is actually a ring station in geosyncronus orbit. "Infinite height" in this case now means no one could non-portally reach it without a rocket. So it might as well be infinitely high.
Annnnnnd I guess throwing trash out of Sigil would put it into orbit whereas it gets lost and is never seen again so that's pretty infinite from the other side too...

Eh, it works for my campaign. Just gotta draw the vacation ads now :smallbiggrin:

[LongVin]

What if it's a plane inhabited entirely by otyugh?

That would just be too convenient.

[Cirrylius]

That would just be too convenient.

:smallwink:As opposed to a planar metropolis that allows you to get from anywhere to anywhere at the speed of plot?



From what I recall of Sigil's layout, would it also be feasable to have waste ejected from the torus into the Outlands below it?

You... could. But Sigilians tend to get... tweaky when it comes to discussing leaving the city without a portal. Y'see, Sigil's only floating high above the spire from the outside. From the inside, it gets weirder; if you actually approach the edge of the torus, you'll notice there are no exits, and none of the buildings on the edge have windows, because the edge of the torus abuts against a vast, empty, illimitable blackness. A small number of people have gone out into this null-space, to explore, or been thrown off, or on at least one occasion, on a bet. There are stories that one or two of them made their way back to the city, years later, having claimed they were dumped into a random plane after going out into the dark.

Most Sigilians don't even know about it, but the ones that do have a healthy superstitious aversion to noncontinuous planar geometry, so knocking a hole in a wall on the edge of the torus and using it as a garbage chute would probably have a negative backlash. To say nothing of what the Lady could do to you once the Dabus found out.