Lady of Pain

She is ancient, and has destroyed and outlived gods themselves

-Made for the "Planewalker's Codex", a Planescape Fanzine with Issue #1, planned to be out on January 1st 2012.-
_{I was just noted that it is accepted and will probably be used in Issue #2}

Info: The Lady is sometimes seen as a floating, robed, giant-sized woman with a mantle of blades around her expressionless face. She has never been heard to speak aloud, although she may communicate through her servants, the dabus. She can cause her victims to sprout wounds with a glance, and her shadow can flay the flesh from their bones.

Her obvious objective is maintaining the balance within Sigil, by throwing defilers and denizens who anger her into one of her magical mazes. Often, she will only interfere when the very balance and stability of Sigil is threatened.

The Lady is an entity of inscrutable motives, and often those who cross her path, even if accidentally, are flayed to death or teleported to one of her Mazes (an almost inescapable pocket universe in the Ethereal Plane). Rumor has it that even greater deities have fallen before the Lady, and she was able to kill the otherwise immortal Nameless One. The Shattered Temple in Sigil was a major temple of Aoskar, the god of portals, who attempted to bring the city under his control. After his power had reached a certain point, she killed him with a thought, shattering the grand temple and throwing his priests into the Mazes of her making. The ruined temple eventually became the headquarters of the Athar. The vast majority of Sigil's denizens dread her apparitions, and avoid mentioning her name aloud for fear of drawing her attention.

The Lady has the power to control each and every portal in Sigil, opening and barring them at will. The dabus, her servants, maintain the city, forever fixing and patching its streets. For all her power, she apparently refuses to be worshipped as a goddess, and anyone brave (or careless) enough to worship her has met a grisly demise in the shadow of her blades.

No one knows how the Lady came to be or what her true purpose is. Hellbound: The Blood War suggests she might be a renegade demon lord or Lord of the Nine. In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil assures us she has been ruler of Sigil for as long as the city has existed, though she might predate the city's creation. It seems she did not have her current ability to create Mazes 10,000 years ago, however.

The closest the Lady of Pain ever came to being overthrown was by Vecna, as one of the final steps in his plan to reshape the multiverse and make himself supreme. (wikipedia)

The city of doors is one of the more interesting locations in the dungeons and dragons world.

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