Sigil is the City of Doors, the nexus of the cosmos where all planar connections meet, reachable only through portals.
This name refers to different versions of the city in 2 worlds; the versions are not merged.
| Type | Place (planar city) |
| Other names | City of Doors, the Wheel, Axis Mundi, City without Gods or Kings |
| Worlds | Antiterra, Vala |
| Spanish entry | Sigil |
In Antiterra
The city
A giant spine rises at the center of the cosmos; on top of it, floating above the center of the Outer Lands, is a “donut”: Sigil. Neither the spine nor the center of the Outer Lands has magic, yet “right at the center of where there should be no magic is all the magic”. Sigil is the only place holding every planar connection. It cannot be reached on foot: whoever jumps off the edge or vanishes from the city dies or dissolves.
The main boulevard holds a fair, shops and a magic-goods district, lit like “a church… and something dark, too”. Dragons walk the streets, but demons are rare. Claude Plat sometimes wears “lenses like those of Sigil”. The city is the fashion capital of the multiverse.
Doors, keys and seals
Portals open with keys, and a key can be anything, even a coin. The other way is the sigil sigilórico (“sigilic sigil”: codes, seals, patterns), which opens passage and, as a spell, carries the caster to known places. Inside the ring, teleportation works freely. The word names both the city and the portal-making marks.
Access comes and goes: “there are times when it is active and times when it is not”. Shogtot “can take them near Sigil”. Gods cannot enter; it is the only place in the cosmos barred to them.
History
Before Greece fell to darkness, Eliseo “went to Sigil, to found Sigil”. The city then sank, by an unrecorded hand. In Flor’s time it was “still a lump of earth that had to be remade”, closed for over a thousand years — perhaps two or three thousand in Earth time.
Thirteen years ago the Regulators reactivated it and its portals, and it was saved from the plague. Ariel has his own bond with Sigil: he was summoned there and can be invoked through it. Of two inhabitants it is said only that “two of them left us”.
With the portals, “they raised Paris so that it would have inhabitants”; raising and populating Paris was given one to two weeks until Sigil is ready.
Some work on the Invisible Cities with Sigil as the goal: when all are known, Sigil will be made, because “sigil means emblem” and it is “the city of cities”. It is identified with the Aleph, “the gate of tea”, “the beginning”. A new, unnamed faction works against this, “closing doors, sealing portals, destroying keys” to keep the planes apart.
Conflicting accounts
- One account says “Sigil is reconstituted”; another, that “Sigil has to rise and is not yet ready”.
- “Technically, you cannot enter Sigil”, yet it has a fair, cafés and residents.
- Whether Paris is a district of Sigil, its support, its double or its populated part is not settled.
Open questions
- What sank Sigil, what raised it, and by what authority the Regulators reordered the cosmos.
- Who teaches the sigil sigilórico, and whether new seals can be made.
- Who “the lady” was before whom Ariel stood, and who the two who left were.
- Whether Sigil exists at all: the only recorded answer is “it seems it is”.
In Vala
Sigil lies at the point where all planes touch. It is a torus, a closed ring connected to the universe only by doors. It once emptied completely and stayed closed for five years; it is now being rebuilt and repopulated.
Description
Entry requires “my papers, my rights to enter Sigil”. In the Ladies’ Ward a prison operates before any code exists: “We don’t yet know what behaving badly means here, but the prison is there.”
The huge city is under construction, with flying cars and ships. Two states are known: empty Sigil (“Sogol, empty and cold”) and full Sigil with a million souls. New in this incarnation are a lake that reflects the lights of the far shore at night, and internal portals between points of the city. The new city is divided into classes.
Sigil was built around a portal of the Epic that could make “64 portals in one place”. All its portals require a key. Two old brochures of plane tours with visitor maps survive from an earlier era of planar tourism. A plot of land is valued at one million gold coins, the sum Tormento offered as buyer.
Government
Political factions dispute “who runs this”. Above them, the Lady of Pain rules by decree; by her decree blue dragons cannot live in Sigil. An entity does not allow gods to enter. Sigil “has always been a realm of terror”. The dog comes from Sigil, and the streets host major events of the gesta (campaign-cycle), among them those of La Jabalina.
Conflicting accounts
- Gods and artifacts are said to reside in Sigil, yet the entity bars gods; the number of Sigil’s gods is also disputed.
Open questions
- Who issues entry papers, and who makes and keeps the keys.
- Which districts exist besides the Ladies’ Ward; who divided the city into classes.
- Why the city closed for five years, what reopened it, and why the lake appeared.
- Why the blue dragons were banished.