The Neverwell
Into the nothingness
Disclaimer. Planescape is copyright TSR Inc. 1994 and
Introduction nothing presented here is intended as a threat to their sole
sovereignty over the setting. It also bears saying that the
campaign ideas presented herein are in no way endorsed by TSR; they
simply represent one interpretation amidst a sea of
Characters possibilities. In many ways, the dark you're about to lay
your sights on goes against a fundamental aspect of the
neverwell Planescape setting - the Lady of Pain's unknowable nature.
While reading this may clear up a lot of smoke about Sigil
DM techniques and why the Lady does what she does, it doesn't provide a
complete explanation. I think you'll agree that it elegantly
The Palace presents the darks of the Lady of Pain without sacrificing the
mood that is Planescape. If not, the site designer, namely
storyboard myself, plans to include a button for Mazing him later on.
New monsters Questions. Before going further, you'd best bang your
brain-box on the paradoxical nature of Sigil and the Lady.
Links Before answers can be found, the right questions have to
be asked. So, in the name of knowledge, here's a go at it,
real Guvner-like:
I. What lies beyond Sigil and in its center?
II. Where do sods who die in Sigil go?
III. How does the Lady protect Sigil?
What Lies Beyond?
Nowadays it seems like every berk and his cousin has a
theory about what lies beyond Sigil. Some graybeards
claim it's the vacuum of the Hinterland space, others that
it's an extension of the Astral Plane, and still more that it
is the cumulation of all possibilities in one. Perhaps the
most widely accepted theory is the last, since it accounts
for the chant that a Clueless who casts himself off the edge
of Sigil's streets gets landed in a random plane. Graybeards
refer to this as the translocation by infinitely converging
potential theory. What screed!
The dark of the matter is that
the void beyond Sigil is precisely what it looks like. Void.
Don't confuse this with the elemental plane of Vacuum,
or any other void on the planes for that matter. See, even
the void surrounding the four mounts of Gehenna have
something floating around in them. Strictly speaking,
they're not a void, at least not in the sense that the void
around Sigil is. See, Sigil's void is the embodiment of
nothingness; it is everything that never was, never will
be, and cannot be. Considering how the planes are
infinite in possibilities, this means that the nothingness
remains nothing. Somewhere along the line, the name
"Neverwell" was tagged onto this phenomenon, though
the meaning behind the name has eluded even those
bloods in the know.
Truth be told, it's something that most mortals sods
just can't seem to get a handle on, and that makes finding
answers to Big questions very difficult. Just what are
these Big questions?
i. Is there a difference between the void at Sigil's center
and the void encompassing it?
ii. What happens to berks who jump off Sigil's edge?
iii. Why does the Neverwell exist?
Recall that I said the answers were hard to come by; I
never said anything about there being no answers. There
are always answers, it just depends on where you stand.
i.
First, there is no difference between the nothing within
Sigil's center and the nothing surrounding it. If you put
a torus in a pond, the water around it is the same water
that's on the inside. Indeed, the terms 'inside' and 'out-
side' are entirely relative to perception. There's your first
answer, berk! Nothing is nothing.
ii.
I've never had the displeasure of meeting someone barmy
or desperate enough to cast themselves into that nebulous
darkness lingering beyond Sigil's streets. That said, many
accounts testify that the addle-cove undertaking this
risky task is cast into a random plane. The most logical
explanation is that the Lady of Pain doesn't want any-
one snooping about in the void, even if they could
survive it. Solution? Toss 'em to a random plane and
teach the sods a harsh lesson.
iii.
Lastly, why? Why does the void exist? Answering why
is always tricky, because out here on the planes, why
depends on who you ask. What is the whole "meaning
of the multiverse" question about? It's about finding out
why we are here. "What is the meaning of the multi-
verse?" is equivalent to "Why am I alive?" By the Powers,
the factions themselves were born answering this
questions, so don't expect my answer to be cut and dry.
Still, I'm going to try to leave the philosophizing to the
factols and focus on the logic. Seems like, if what an up
and coming Godsman says is true, the Neverwell exists
to keep the Powers out of Sigil (refer to the section
below title "Who is the Lady?").
Where Do Dead Souls Go?
Here's a poignant planar puzzle for you planewalkers out
there. See, any Clueless in Sigil for a few nights will soon
tumble to the dark that all portals require keys, and soon
enough, though it may take several weeks for the plane-
walking challenged, a berk's going to realize that the only
way into or out of Sigil is via portal. Now, when a berk
dies in Sigil, it stands to reason that his soul has got to
reach a portal in order to escape. According to texts of
the forgotten god Anubis' priesthood, the soul lingers
within the body for several days after death. During this
time the soul learns how to deal with its new stage of
existence and must accept its fate before moving on to
the realm of its god or moral persuasion. One problem,
in Sigil, all souls get trapped to their bodies and are un-
able to reach the Outer Planes without their bodies first
being tossed through a portal. This does not mean that
Sigil is chalk full with petitioners to the Lady. It does
mean that the Dustmen are unwittingly aiding the spirits
to find peace (or torment, depending on how they acted
in life)...at least, that's what the Dustmen are letting on.
Why are the Collectors so quick to move? Imagine how
barmy you would go if trapped within your dead body
for days or weeks. However, sometimes a body gets
irreversibly destroyed, by a disintegrate spell or simply
rotting away, and then the soul has no refuge. What
then? The Lady of Pain acts right quick, and casts the
the poor sod into the Neverwell. It's a rare event, but
when it does happen, slowly all trace of the sod vanishes,
people begin to forget his name, changes he made revert
to their previous state, and an enormous ripple spreads
across reality to prevent him from ever being born.
Who Is The Lady? 
What a sodding question! Is she a reformed tanar'ri
lord? The first mage ever to master the artifact that is
Sigil? The Great Unknown come from the Source to
test us? Everyone knows and no one knows; it all
depends on where you stand. However, the most telling
sign of character, as any Cipher will attest, is action. If
you see a man strike his sister you assume things about
the man, yet if you know his sister and he are spies who
have adopted the roles of violent lovers to infiltrate the
Abyss, then you'll see him (and her) in a different light.
So, who is the Lady of Pain? Well, it depends on what
believe, true, but you'd be an addle-cove not to examine
how she acts when finding your answer.
The Lady's most common form of action seems to be,
broadly, defending her city. After all, she has to contend
with Powers, fiends, and the factions, who all are biding
for the heart of Sigil. Sigil's heart is the Lady, and she
is heartless in her defense of the city. How does she
prevent hosts of armies from spilling into Sigil? She has
three lines of defense at her disposal:
i. Neverwell
ii. The Mazes
iii. Her Servants
If these lines of defense fall, then it is that the Lady of
Pain must appear to cast her bladed shadow upon the
offender. Death is the least of her punishments.
i.
According to Usharas, a Godsman making his mark upon
the planes, the gods are the embodiment of all that is.
Beings beings of pure belief, they have no emptiness
inside them like mortals do. Usharas claims that the
more "full" a cutter is spiritually, the closer he is on his
on his way to godhood. If what he says is true, it explains
why the Power can't enter Sigil. With the Neverwell
surrounding it, the Powers can't enter Sigil since first
they'd have to pass through the well of nothingness.
The Powers can't understand nothing, and so they can't
break the Lady's hold on the city. Mortals, however, can
and do enter Sigil every day, and the Powers learned
long ago to rely on them to find the key to bringing the
Lady down.
ii.
Such a broad defense is of little use against mortals,
who have made Sigil what it is today, and the Lady
reserves her Mazes for those mortals who have amassed
enough power to threaten her rule. After agonizing
research, sages have confirmed that the Mazes are
actually a single demi-plane that the Lady can connect
to any point in Sigil. This means that it is conceivable
for intrepid planewalkers to enter the Mazes from the
Ethereal Plane. Furthermore it means that, at least in
theory, all the Mazes connect with each other.
Undeniably the worst part of the Mazes is the absolute
certainty of those within that there is a way out. To
make the sojourn even more dolorous, the Lady actually
creates a single portal leading out. Course, this will
do most mortals no good, since it'd take several life-
times to find a way out, if that day ever came.
iii.
Beyond the dabus, upon whom the Lady relies upon the
day-to-day maintenance of Sigil's streets and the creation
of the Mazes, there exist two little known servants she
employs. The first are the subad, a race of dark beings
who serve as protectors of the Neverwell. Previously,
this race was unheard of, for it takes very little to
defend nothing. However, the dark is that the Lady
has overstepped her bounds, and now "something" has
been absorbed into the Neverwell. What this is isn't
clear yet, but the subad are racing to find out. The
second group isn't precisely a race, but a group of
cutters who have been marked by the Lady of Pain as
her "chosen." The chosen serve as the Lady's eyes and
ears across the planes to ensure that none infuse the
Lady with the power of worship, for to do so would be
to make her a god; then, by her own mandate, she would
be forced from Sigil, and all hell would break loose.