The Chronicles of the Silver Rose Company

Once upon a time, there was an impossible city. This city sat at the top of an infinite spire, at the center of the infinite Outer Planes. It was known by many names: The Cage, The City of Doors, Portalheim, Crossroads, The Ring, The City of Dreams, The City of Fog. Its proper name was Sigil.

Sigil was not laid out on ground like most other cities. It was ring shaped. If you walked in one direction you would arrive back at your starting place in about eight hours time. There was no native soil, no quarries of stone. Underneath its streets were endless catacombs reaching down and down to places no sane sentient would go. The buildings were made of imported materials, for Sigil was a city dedicated to importing. The city was the nexus of a million portals: Some steady for Millenia, some as brief as a sigh. It was said you could travel anywhere in Creation from Sigil if you knew the proper place, time, and key.

Sigil had no sun, no moon, no stars. What it usually had was rain and fog. You could tell how long a cutter had lived there by the quality of their cloak and boots. There was light, and it would let things grow after a fashion, but it was weak, and it faded quickly. The city dwelt in a near-constant twilight.

An impossible city needed an impossible ruler. Thus the Lady of Pain claimed suzerainty over the Cage. Few saw her, few wanted to. Her word was law, and she could send anyone to the Mazes who defied her laws. Her very shadow would cut you like a knife should it fall upon you. Her minions the Dabus maintained the city: sweeping sidewalks, pruning the ever-growing Abyssal razorthorn, patching cobblestones. These strange servitors were silent, only conversing by a series of bright pictograms that appeared over their horned heads.

The city was divided into Wards: The Lady's Ward, The Lower Ward, The Guildhall Ward, The Hive, The Market Ward, and The Clerk's Ward. These wards were further divided into districts, which were then further divided into neighborhoods. The scale of the city was staggering: Some ten million sentients lived here by some accounts.

In The Market Ward sat the biggest open-air market in all the planes: The Great Bazaar. A huge district in its own right, almost 2/3 of the Market Ward's area, it was bigger than many Prime cities. It was the home turf of the Indep faction, a loose affiliation of liberty-minded cutters who valued trade above all else. Fortunes were made and lost daily among the canvas-topped stalls.