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Deep
beneath the streets of the Lady's Ward broods my
Cellar of Dark Secrets. It's a grim place, full of
the memories of deeds best forgotten. The black marble
floor it cracked and pitted, and the rusty iron smell of
ancient blood hangs heavy in the air. The rumble you can
hear is from the bowels of Sigil herself; we are close to
the dabus down here. Mind your head on those cobwebs,
cutter; some of them are alive, I think. And don't wander
down here on your own. There's a hungry retriever
on the prowl somewhere; I never was able to catch the
sod.
The
chant goes that this expansive cellar was once used by a
faction called the Blade of No Return. These
cutters had a philosophy rather like a sinister breeding
of Dustmen and Signer ideals; some say that the Blade was
formed by a Dustman visionary who pulled a bunch of
like-minded sods from the faction and created his own
splinter group. Anyhap, the Blade believed that it was
their duty to bring about the end of the multiverse. To
do this, they had to kill every living creature in it.
They reckoned, with nothing alive to observe the
multiverse, it'd just fold up and end. They said they'd
be the last ones alive, and end it all in a glorious
suicide by leaping off the Spire together. Gloriously
insane, if you ask me.
Well,
the chant also goes that they used this here cellar as a
base of operations, headquarters in the Cage, execution
chamber, and the portals that're scattered around here
support this. The Cellar of Dark Tales is connected to
several Lower Planes, the Negative Quasi-Elementals and
the Negative Energy Plane itself. If the half-barmy
explorer Kristias Fireflight is to be believed, there's a
portal to the Plane of Fumes down here too. Well,
I suppose it'd explain the funny smell...
Anyway,
the faction met its own sticky end in the cull the Lady
of Pain imposed some six hundred years back...the Blade
of No Return were one of the unlucky factions that simply
dried up. Good thing, probably. They were as barmy and
evil a bunch of berks I've ever known.
I
have two exhibits down here at present. The first exposes
chant on the Soul Cage, a long-rumoured twin of Sigil
herself, gathered from touts and bloods the Great Ring
over. Secondly, there's a huge oil painting on the wall
there, several copies of old tomes you can browse,
and an essay on Baatific History recorded in that rather
fierce-looking mimir. Careful; he's been known to
bite!
Travellers
in the city of Sigil often ask why it's called 'the
Cage'. The friendlier locals whisper to them of the Lady
of Pain's Mazes, and the way she herself seems confined
to the streets. Is the merry birdcage a prison for her,
or one she herself has constructed? Everyone has their
own pet theories on that. But one thing not many bashers
know about is a particularly strange effect the Lady's
portals have on the burg. Nothing gets in or out of the
Cage except by her doorways (unless you fancy jumping off
the edge of the ring, that is). So where do the spirits
of the dead go? Good question, berk. Much research has
gone into this topic over many years, mostly by the
Guvners, of course.
I've paid a lot of garnish to glean
a few of the rumours, hearsay and (probably) outright
lies from touts and other bloods whose 'special interest'
lies in this domain. Most were unwilling to talk, at
first. I soon persuaded 'em. How? That's my dark,
berk!
 
Of
course, Sigil ain't the only place with a history best
forgotten. Everyone's always curious about the fiends
(call it a morbid fascination with danger, perhaps), and
I'm no exception. When I discovered a tasty scrap of
paper in a dead mage's library (don't ask me how he died,
the Hardheads never proved a thing) my imagination
appetite for more darks was wetted. The following mimir
recording is my lecture on the subject. It spans a great
sweep of the history of Baator, and explains a lot that's
previously been a mystery. If you believe it, of
course...
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