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  1. - Top - End - #31
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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    Sigil specifically has no sun, just diffuse light, as far as I remember from 2E. As a consequence, it's also impossible to keep plants alive in the city without significant amounts of druidic magic and most animals don't do so well, too. (There's Cranium rats that take out most other vermin, and apart from that, there's some weird donkey with tentacles that's used as a draft animal (horses don't make it long) and a mutated carion-feeding raven.)
    I vaguely recall that it also makes it incredibly difficult to actually see anything in Sigil. There is mist and fog throughout the city that the lantern lights just dont penetrate very well, so if you look up you see a fog bank rather than the rest of the city.
    “Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    I want to know where the rest of that river towards the top right is



    That's how I interpreted this passage from 3e Manual of the Planes:

    One notable aspect of the mutable nature of distance is that once a traveler gets outside the ring of portal towns, another portal town is never more than a few weeks away. No matter where travelers are beyond the ring of portal towns, the nearest town is 4d8×10 miles away. A traveler can effectively travel two thousand miles outward from the spire, then turn around to find a portal town only 4d8×10 miles away.

    IIRC it was similar but different in 2e and EVERYTHING beyond the inner rings was 3d6 days travel away from a gate town and the gate towns could only be traversed in order
    Hmmm. That would kinda suck if you left your village 10,000 miles away the gate town to make a quick trip to market to sell some chickens.

    OTOH it'd be a great way to live in isolation. Anyone that left for (gate) town would never be coming back.

  3. - Top - End - #33
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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Hmmm. That would kinda suck if you left your village 10,000 miles away the gate town to make a quick trip to market to sell some chickens.

    OTOH it'd be a great way to live in isolation. Anyone that left for (gate) town would never be coming back.
    Passages you are replying to don't explicitly say so, but I've never heard about anyone using that rule (some eschew it entirely) where it didn't cut both ways, so if you are actually moving towards something you can reach it in less time that you need to walk\fly\slither 320 miles. 2000 miles in one direction, 4d8×10 miles in the other is intended mostly to create another aspect of weirdness, not to turn portal towns into inescapable traps.

  4. - Top - End - #34
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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    I vaguely recall that it also makes it incredibly difficult to actually see anything in Sigil. There is mist and fog throughout the city that the lantern lights just dont penetrate very well, so if you look up you see a fog bank rather than the rest of the city.
    In general yes, plus smog around the factories and foundries, however, I've also seen several description of the other side of the city looking like a band of stars across the sky, with all the lights.
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  5. - Top - End - #35
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    d6 Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saint-Just View Post
    Passages you are replying to don't explicitly say so, but I've never heard about anyone using that rule (some eschew it entirely) where it didn't cut both ways, so if you are actually moving towards something you can reach it in less time that you need to walk\fly\slither 320 miles. 2000 miles in one direction, 4d8×10 miles in the other is intended mostly to create another aspect of weirdness, not to turn portal towns into inescapable traps.
    They wouldn't be inescapable, all you'd have to do is stay inside of them. But if the rule solely applied to the gate towns past them, it would make the area even far beyond them livable ... as long as you never traveled to a gate town.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    They wouldn't be inescapable, all you'd have to do is stay inside of them. But if the rule solely applied to the gate towns past them, it would make the area even far beyond them livable ... as long as you never traveled to a gate town.
    Define "livable", because i dont think being totally cut off from the outside world and all its resources really qualifies.
    “Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Define "livable", because i dont think being totally cut off from the outside world and all its resources really qualifies.
    The way it reads to me, everywhere past (outside the circumference of) the gate towns takes the same time to get to based on distance as anywhere else normal in the multiverse. But the second you head to a gate town, the trip is super short.

    That'd be just as livable as anywhere else, provided you didn't make a trip to a gate town without thinking about the fact first that it might take a lot longer to get back.

    OTOH if no matter how far you go out, you can't get more than a certain distance beyond the gate towns ... that just sets an outer limit to how far away from them you can plop down and live.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    The way it reads to me, everywhere past (outside the circumference of) the gate towns takes the same time to get to based on distance as anywhere else normal in the multiverse. But the second you head to a gate town, the trip is super short.
    That's how I read it too.

    That'd be just as livable as anywhere else, provided you didn't make a trip to a gate town without thinking about the fact first that it might take a lot longer to get back.
    However, consider my first post in this thread.

    Quote Originally Posted by Millstone85 View Post
    There is apparently a place called the Hinterlands. I am not sure if it is official or fanmade.

    From what I gather, it shares themes with the Far Realm. If moving toward the Spire is "neutralward" and toward the gate-towns is "alignmentward", as you said, then moving past the gate-towns would be "ineffableward" as all sort of strange concepts manifest in the landscape.

    It also has a rubberband effect. The walk back to the gate-towns is always a short one, no matter how deep you traveled into the Hinterlands.
    The farther out you travel, the more hostile the environment might become.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    That is an interesting take on the Spire. My only question is, what do the denizens of Sigil see when they look up towards the middle of the ring? Do they see the outlands as an axle that passes through the ring of Sigil?
    I thought, when inhabitants of Sigil look up on a rare, clear day, they just saw more Sigil. I thought Sigil was shaped like a giant ring where the band is hollow. The city is located inside the band. There is no way out other than through a portal.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Trafalgar View Post
    I thought, when inhabitants of Sigil look up on a rare, clear day, they just saw more Sigil. I thought Sigil was shaped like a giant ring where the band is hollow. The city is located inside the band. There is no way out other than through a portal.
    The thread goes over the shape of Sigil (with some good image). It seems to be on the inside of a torus BUT has a band in the middle cut out so they can see from inside the torus to outside the torus but inside the ring.

    Quote Originally Posted by Millstone85 View Post
    Spoiler
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    But in 2E the torus was filled with layers.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    https://preview.redd.it/bk2xwabx3bv41.png?width=1188&format=png&auto=webp& af9e5ec5


    Normally if you look out you would just see Sigil on the far side, but this thread had speculation and theories about the spire. So I was wondering if that speculation meant the spire would now pass through Sigil's ring rather than stopping short of Sigils ring.
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2020-10-25 at 11:55 AM.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    The thread goes over the shape of Sigil (with some good image). It seems to be on the inside of a torus BUT has a band in the middle cut out so they can see from inside the torus to outside the torus but inside the ring.



    Normally if you look out you would just see Sigil on the far side, but this thread had speculation and theories about the spire. So I was wondering if that speculation meant the spire would now pass through Sigil's ring rather than stopping short of Sigils ring.
    That particular image is the only time I’ve seen it portrayed that way. The Planescape box set image I linked before is how I have always pictured it.

    Planescape specifies that you can see the spire’s top out one side if you look up and to one side of Sigil’s streets. Apparently, Sigilites even use this for helping with directions in Sigil, with one direction being “Spireward” and the other being “Antispireward.”

    I don’t have specific citations for that, though, so I could be misremembering.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    That particular image is the only time I’ve seen it portrayed that way. The Planescape box set image I linked before is how I have always pictured it.

    Planescape specifies that you can see the spire’s top out one side if you look up and to one side of Sigil’s streets. Apparently, Sigilites even use this for helping with directions in Sigil, with one direction being “Spireward” and the other being “Antispireward.”

    I don’t have specific citations for that, though, so I could be misremembering.
    I amended the summary post.

    Honestly the "look up and to one side" applies to both models. However "Spireward" is more useful as a direction when it is not a synonym with "down". The more hollow model has 3 directions (clockwise/anticlockwise around the ring, spireward/antispireward towards the cut / center of the ring, and down/up towards/away from the shell of the torus). The more filled model has 3 directions (clockwise/anticlockwise, towards/away from the center of the ring, up/down the layers).
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2020-10-25 at 12:09 PM.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    I amended the summary post.

    Honestly the "look up and to one side" applies to both models. However "Spireward" is more useful as a direction when it is not a synonym with "down". The more hollow model has 3 directions (clockwise/anticlockwise around the ring, spireward/antispireward towards the cut / center of the ring, and down/up towards/away from the shell of the torus). The more filled model has 3 directions (clockwise/anticlockwise, towards/away from the center of the ring, up/down the layers).
    Hm.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    Normally if you look out you would just see Sigil on the far side, but this thread had speculation and theories about the spire. So I was wondering if that speculation meant the spire would now pass through Sigil's ring rather than stopping short of Sigils ring.
    Right, with the speculation about the Spire... I think Sigil would still be at its top. The fact that there is no top to an infinite spire is a paradox, which is intentional. (It's akin to answering "Can the god of strength and rocks make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" with "yes," and then answering, "Can the god of strength and rocks lift the rock that's so heavy he can't lift it?" with "yes.")

    I'm not sure I follow you on the multiple directions with the "hollow tube" version, though.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I'm not sure I follow you on the multiple directions with the "hollow tube" version, though.
    If the two versions were bisecting a torus and having it on the flat surface, and hollowing out a torus and having it on the inner surface, the edges of the torus arent really spireward. Theyre rimward.

    Same number of directions though.
    1) around the length of the torus.
    2) from the center of the city to the edge of the city
    3) up/down from any given position in the city

    The last one is dramatically different depending on. How flat or hollowed out the torus is.

    The impression I get of the 2e one is its slight hollowed put. Not just perfectly bisected along the length, and the city on a "flat" ring surface. Whereas a "tire" would be very hollowed out. And the 5e pic is an extreme "tire", with the edges almost touching.
    Last edited by Tanarii; 2020-10-25 at 01:31 PM.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    If the two versions were bisecting a torus and having it on the flat surface, and hollowing out a torus and having it on the inner surface, the edges of the torus arent really spireward. Theyre rimward.

    Same number of directions though.
    1) around the length of the torus.
    2) from the center of the city to the edge of the city
    3) up/down from any given position in the city

    The last one is dramatically different depending on. How flat or hollowed out the torus is.

    The impression I get of the 2e one is its slight hollowed put. Not just perfectly bisected along the length, and the city on a "flat" ring surface. Whereas a "tire" would be very hollowed out. And the 5e pic is an extreme "tire", with the edges almost touching.
    That's a bit clearer, thanks.

    "Spireward" and "antispireward" would be, on the "bisected torus" model with Sigil "on top" of the spire, be "down" and "up" if you're looking at it from the perspective of looking at the spire from the side. I'm explaining this poorly.

    Code:
    O
    |
    If the line is the spire and the O is sigil, ...no, that doesn't work, either, because that looks like Sigil is sitting on its side rather than with the spire pointing through the center of the torus.

    I'll see if I can do some artwork and share it later.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    Right, with the speculation about the Spire... I think Sigil would still be at its top. The fact that there is no top to an infinite spire is a paradox, which is intentional. (It's akin to answering "Can the god of strength and rocks make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" with "yes," and then answering, "Can the god of strength and rocks lift the rock that's so heavy he can't lift it?" with "yes.")
    You can ignore that section of my post. We had already gone over it. Someone new to the thread had a question. I answered it with some thread history.

    Quote Originally Posted by Segev View Post
    I'm not sure I follow you on the multiple directions with the "hollow tube" version, though.
    I explained it poorly. Here is another attempt.

    Take a rectangle. It has length, width, and thickness.
    Spoiler: Rectangle map of Sigil
    Show


    Coil the rectangle so its width is almost a circle. You now have a "almost cylinder". Now it still has length (forward / backward) and thickness (up / down). However the width (left / right) has curved. What used to be left is now "spireward" and what used to be right is now named "antispireward". Why those names? That will make sense later.

    Coil the "almost cylinder so its length forms a circle. Now you have the "almost torus" that we see in the torus model. Notice the "almost circle" creates a cylindrical cut in the middle of the torus. Now since the length is a circle, forward/backward get replaced with clockwise/anticlockwise.

    In this configuration if you walk spireward you will end up at the cut. If you look down you will see the spire. If you instead walk antispireward, you will also end up at the cut. But when at the cut in the antispireward direction the spire would be above you instead of below you.


    Most of my experience with Sigil has been from Planescape:Torment. So I don't know how much depth Sigil has, but it had some. Probably 2 underground floors minimum?
    Last edited by OldTrees1; 2020-10-25 at 03:58 PM.

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    You can ignore that section of my post. We had already gone over it. Someone new to the thread had a question. I answered it with some thread history.


    I explained it poorly. Here is another attempt.

    Take a rectangle. It has length, width, and thickness.
    Spoiler: Rectangle map of Sigil
    Show


    Coil the rectangle so its width is almost a circle. You now have a "almost cylinder". Now it still has length (forward / backward) and thickness (up / down). However the width (left / right) has curved. What used to be left is now "spireward" and what used to be right is now named "antispireward". Why those names? That will make sense later.

    Coil the "almost cylinder so its length forms a circle. Now you have the "almost torus" that we see in the torus model. Notice the "almost circle" creates a cylindrical cut in the middle of the torus. Now since the length is a circle, forward/backward get replaced with clockwise/anticlockwise.

    In this configuration if you walk spireward you will end up at the cut. If you look down you will see the spire. If you instead walk antispireward, you will also end up at the cut. But when at the cut in the antispireward direction the spire would be above you instead of below you.


    Most of my experience with Sigil has been from Planescape:Torment. So I don't know how much depth Sigil has, but it had some. Probably 2 underground floors minimum?
    Okay, that makes more sense. Thanks!

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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post

    Most of my experience with Sigil has been from Planescape:Torment. So I don't know how much depth Sigil has, but it had some. Probably 2 underground floors minimum?
    In the old box sets, where Sigil was mostly a massive stone torus with a city only on one side, as opposed to the hollow tube it seems to be these days, it was said that Undersigil - the underground parts - where considerably larger than the above grounds city, but mostly empty, because there was no way for the air to circulate, so it was pretty much totally hostile to most life, except psionic rats, some fungi and the undead.
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    Default Re: Planescape, the Outlands, and the Spire: a conceptual design experiment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    Personally ive always had a bit of trouble with the idea that a plane can have fixed geographic features and also be infinite. The idea that the planes could be infinite in only some areas had genuinely not occurred to me, and i find that i like it as an explanation.
    I think a big part of Planescape is paradox, two contradictory things existing simultaneously is the norm

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