Masters of Planescape, I have a question!

[boxfox]

Assuming that Ravel Puzzlewell is correct, and she is a prisoner, what would happen if you managed to release the Lady of Pain from Sigil?

[neonchameleon]

Assuming that Ravel Puzzlewell is correct, and she is a prisoner, what would happen if you managed to release the Lady of Pain from Sigil?

The Lady of Pain has no stats. She's beyond that. She can take down Gods - but her motivations are intentionally obscure. She's a walking plot device to keep Sigil deity-neutral.

Assuming Ravel Puzzelwell is correct, what would happen depends on her motivations - which are deliberately obscure.

[Alleran]

Assuming that Ravel Puzzlewell is correct, and she is a prisoner, what would happen if you managed to release the Lady of Pain from Sigil?
Unknown. It depends on what the Lady's motives and desires are.

Of course, as she's six giant squirrels with a headdress, a robe and a ring of levitation, maybe she'll go and find some nuts to eat?

[137beth]

Unknown. It depends on what the Lady's motives and desires are.

Of course, as she's six giant squirrels with a headdress, a robe and a ring of levitation, maybe she'll go and find some nuts to eat?

Are you sure those are squirrels? They look like chipmunks!

[Lord Haart]

Your party, which is clearly epic-level if it managed to release her, will be contacted by the forces that are interested in her being imprisoned (which will be either the forces that had imprisoned her or, more probably, the assorted deities realising that a deity-killing thingy's on the loose) to be heavily admonished and forcibly tasked with putting her back (since you were epic enough to do the stupid thing in the first place, and besides, you're the PCs). In the meanwhile, the DM will probably showcase Bad Things happening because of you.

[Blackjackg]

I got bored of browsing through my books looking for official citations, so assume this is just off the top of my head.

Assuming Ravel is right, which is a big assumption, if the Lady of Pain left Sigil, the whole place would go to hell very quickly. I'd start with the Mazes emptying the very instant she went. All the berks the Lady thought were too dangerous or too unruly to let roam free are suddenly freed at once. Then the invasions start.

Remember the City of Portals is of unbelievable strategic value to anyone who can keep control of it, and it's only the power of the Lady that kept powers out and prevented the Blood War from spilling in. Within days of the Lady's disappearance, if not hours, fiend generals would start marching their armies into Sigil to try and capture as much of the city as possible before their enemies do. Not long after that, you'd start to see powers entering the fray. Maybe not all of them, but certainly any who are in perpetual war (like the Orcish, Elvish and Drow pantheons), as well as those like the Faerunian pantheon who are always looking for new ways to interfere directly in the lives of mortals. By the time the matter is settled, Sigil would have been mostly leveled, and nearly every mortal in the city would have been killed... of course, all the savvy cutters would have seen this coming and kipped out the moment the Lady disappeared.

As for the Lady herself? She probably ceased to exist in the form we recognize as soon as she was free from the Cage. It's possible she just stopped existing entirely-- that would likely be preferable to her existence as the Lady of Pain. The novel Pages of Pain (spoilers!)
suggested that she was a demigod before she was made the Lady of Pain and that her overwhelming power came from her connection with Sigil, so perhaps if that connection was broken, she would return to her previous life. Maybe she becomes something else entirely... a Vestige? Something new?

Anyway, that's how I would write it. Ultimately, the Lady was created to be enigmatic. Her nature and motivations are mostly left up to the DM.

[NichG]

You have to keep in mind that the Lady of Pain basically imprisoned Ravel for trying to free her. Given Ravel's psyche, its likely she read the Lady's situation as being imprisoned the same way that a person's blood is imprisoned by their flesh. There's no indication that the Lady necessarily wants to leave - after all, she is able to act outside Sigil (based on what happened to Aoskar and his worshippers), she just does not do so for whatever reason.

One interesting connection that I rarely see explored is the relationship between the Dabus and the Phirblas, which are creatures almost identical to Dabus who are native to the Ethereal.

[Brookshw]

Remember that there is little known regarding her serenity and ravel is a dubious source at best. Is the lady a prisoner? Who's cage is it? We simply don't know.

I ran across a theory once that I'll repeat here. Planescape established the rule of three for the planes. We know who two of the serpents are (Jazirian and Ahriman/Asmodeus ) but based upon the rule of three we're missing one. With one being evil, and the other good, who do we know that's the most neutral being in the planes, has their own demisomethingwhateverplane that coils in on itself like a serpent biting it's own tail, with powers equal or superior to the two serpents......

[BWR]

Remember that there is little known regarding her serenity and ravel is a dubious source at best. Is the lady a prisoner? Who's cage is it? We simply don't know.

I ran across a theory once that I'll repeat here. Planescape established the rule of three for the planes. We know who two of the serpents are (Jazirian and Ahriman/Asmodeus ) but based upon the rule of three we're missing one. With one being evil, and the other good, who do we know that's the most neutral being in the planes, has their own demisomethingwhateverplane that coils in on itself like a serpent biting it's own tail, with powers equal or superior to the two serpents......

Jazirian and Ahriman weren't Planescape. They came in A Guide to Hell, which was published after the death of PS, and pretty much went against previously established PS lore, like giving a name and face and history to the Lord of the Ninth. You're also forgetting the Unity of Rings and Center of All, and just becaue lots of things happen in threes doesn't mean all things happen in threes.

Personally, I think of the Lady, the actual physical body of Her, more as a manifestation of Sigil itself. You can't free her from Sigil any more than you can free an avatar from its god. Well, maybe you could (and wouldn't that make for a fun story), but I doubt anything good would come of it.

Heavy speculation time, most of which are probably ideas others have come up with and I've just forgotten:
1. If the Lady is Sigil, freeing her would cause Sigil to disappear. She might metaphorically unravel and the Multiverse would fall apart. Since the Planes seem to work off the idea of the Energy planes lying at the center and successive planes building outwards, the Outlands must in some weird way be the outermost, despite being on the same level as the rest of the Great Ring, so to speak. Sigil is the top and the knot on the whole Multiversal ballon. Remove that and the 'air' that keeps the multiversal shape would escape and everything would fall in on itself. Tharizdun is freed, time and space have no meaning, the Far Realm becomes the Near Realm, Iä! Iä! Cthulhu ftaghn, or whatever you please.

2. Sigil has the greatest concentration of connections to the planes. If the Lady were to remove Sigil from its place in the center of all, reality quakes like you wouldn't believe would occur. Anywhere She goes would struggle with the influx of portals and try to become the new balance point. Say She opened up shop in the Abyss: now Chaotic Evil tries to be the center of everything, which includes philosophically and ethically. The incompatibleness is immense and things get very very weird until reality sorts itself out. Perhaps Sigil would naturally reoccur in the Outlands at some point. Perhaps the Spire falls and crashes through the planes into the Abyss, breaking apart the boundaries and making the Outlands and the Abyss one, perhaps the Abyss eventually slides into the places once taken by the Outlands, the Outlands evaporates and gets absorbed by other planes, and the rest of the Great Ring readjusts itself with one fewer plane.

3. Perhaps Sigil and the Lady just are the ultimate keepers of Balance, and moving to another place would taint that, giving the dominant philosophy of whatever Outer plane they go to an unbeatable power - at will portals to any place they please. Going to the Prime is right out because they already think too highly of themselves. Going to the Ethereal is messy - so many different worlds and probabilities - soon you'll have all sorts of realities bleeding into eachother in ways you don't want to think about - if you thought Tovag Baragu and ether gaps were bad you ain't seen nothing yet. End up on one of the Energy planes and that energy will start bleeding through to the rest of the Multiverse. Serious imbalance - either everything eventually (could take millions of years for all we know) dies and becomes undead, or everyone spontaneously combusts even as they can't die of disease or damage - have you seen Torchwood: Miracle Day? Think that on a Multiversal scale.

4. All portals, gates, conduits, etc. are in some way there because of Sigil. Opening the Cage sets these free and they can't be used by anyone. Planar pathways like Olympus, the Styx, the Infinite Staircase, etc. are still functional, but all spells become inoperable, or so difficult they may as well not exist. Planar travel becomes very difficult, economies laid waste, new travel routes found and each plane becomes far more isolated than it was. Lack of travel further shores up the walls between planes, making things increasingly harder. Perhaps the Multiverse will start drifting apart now that the Cage that held it in place is gone.

[NichG]

I tend to not actually associate the Lady with balance or other alignment-ish forces. Its pretty clear that whatever she is, she works differently than the other inhabitants of the Outer Planes - rather than depending on belief as a source of power, one of the few things she actively pursues is the termination or imprisonment of those who worship her. The Planes are a big place, so I don't think its necessary to e.g. make the Lady the lynchpin for everything.

One of my favorite takes on the Lady is that she's actually a Far Realms entity. She's an anomaly, a grain of sand caught in the body of the multiverse, and following the oyster analogy Sigil is the pearl that the multiverse has formed around her to keep her relatively isolated. Therefore belief is poisonous to her, as it's a force by which the multiverse attempts to give her a specific nature and define her. Whenever someone worships her, they make her a little less 'else'.

[boxfox]

So...don't do it....check.

That said, how would you do it? :smallamused:

[Eldan]

The same way you do everything big in Planescape. Found a sect who believes that this is the right thing.

[afroakuma]

You know I have a thread for this, right? :smalltongue:

Anyway, even if Ravel is correct, have you considered the possibility that the Lady is her own prisoner?

[boxfox]

No, I hadn't considered that.

What I see is a being who kills religion, which appeals to me. She kills people who worship her, kills deities when she can, etc.

Seems to me that if she got free, she may decide to kill every god...ever. This also appeals to me.

[neonchameleon]

No, I hadn't considered that.

What I see is a being who kills religion, which appeals to me. She kills people who worship her, kills deities when she can, etc.

Seems to me that if she got free, she may decide to kill every god...ever. This also appeals to me.

As long as she smashes the Wall of the Faithless.

[Eldan]

No, I hadn't considered that.

What I see is a being who kills religion, which appeals to me. She kills people who worship her, kills deities when she can, etc.

Seems to me that if she got free, she may decide to kill every god...ever. This also appeals to me.

She doesn't kill deities when she can. For thousands of years, she was absolutely fine with the gods. Some even more or less lived in Sigil. Aoskar was a one-time event and not without provocation. Since then, she only barred the gods from Sigil, she never showed any inclination to kill any others. We aren't even sure if she could. Plus, she has nothing against religion, as long as you don't worship her. Sigil is full of temples and prophets.

[boxfox]

She doesn't kill deities when she can. For thousands of years, she was absolutely fine with the gods. Some even more or less lived in Sigil. Aoskar was a one-time event and not without provocation. Since then, she only barred the gods from Sigil, she never showed any inclination to kill any others. We aren't even sure if she could. Plus, she has nothing against religion, as long as you don't worship her. Sigil is full of temples and prophets.

:( Party pooper.

[Eldan]

And the wonderful thing is: there's nothing stopping you from claiming that the Lady always wanted to kill the gods, but couldn't, before she was released.