Monstrous races living in Sigil

Dark Ones: Eventually I'll have my extensive write-up about the Dark Ones. But I've always seen tribes of Dark Ones living warrens in Undersigil, where they raid the City Above hiding away because of the Schism that turned the ancient Children of the Light into Dark Ones, Humans and other races. Sigil in ancient times when they were part of the Children of the Light was one of their most sacred places they all made pilgrimages to. When the Schism happened many of the tribes were stranded in Sigil, and have decided to remain there ever since. Now as the Dark Ones they're confined to Undersigil spiteful and bitter of the curse that was inflicted on them.

great use of the beautification league!

derro
The derro of Sigil would be known as the expert mechanics and alchemists that they are except for the small fact that they're, for the most part, completely insane. Derro neighborhoods in the heart of the Hive and deep beneath the city streets are avoided by most citizens, feared as a source of bad luck and Far Realm taint.

Few are willing to deal with the derro on a regular basis. The githzerai, on occasion, will patronize them under the theory that their people were also once enslaved by the illithids. Githzerai tend to feel more comfortable around chaos and madness than most, anyway. Apart from githzerai, the clients of the derro are the completely desperate souls who feel they have no other choice, or berks as insane as the derro themselves.

Derro tend to align themselves with the Xaositects, the Doomguard, and the Bleak Cabal.

dark ones
The dark stalkers, dark creepers, and dark slayers are most commonly found in the Hive Ward and in shadowtowns beneath the Lower Ward where they mingle with other inhabitants of the Plane of Shadow. Dark ones retain ties to their home plane as well as their ancestral hatred of fire and light. They scavenge for their food or find work as burglars, touts, factotums, messengers, and assassins. Proxies of sun gods are targets for their rage and feelings of betrayal; even though the dark ones of Sigil are no longer technically exiled to the Underdark or the Plane of Shadow, they tend to haunt parts of Sigil that are essentially places of exile themselves. They carry chips on their shoulders the size of Carceri.

Occasionally they're willing to deal with the derro, in particular looking for alchemical goods that don't involve fire or light.

Dark ones tend to align themselves with the Dispossessed sect from Pandemonium, though a few have joined the Athar, claiming to have been betrayed by a sun god long ago.

ethergaunt
The ethergaunts seek nothing less than the destruction of the Outer Planes, not to mention the Prime. They craft weapons that utterly annihilate belief and souls and unleash plagues that turn entire worlds into dust. They appear in Sigil rarely, searching for rare goods or meeting in private with their mysterious allies, the nerra and the spell weavers; the most recent appearance was an attempted full-out invasion a few years back, when a rakshasa, a bronze dragon, a rilmani, and a drow with mechanical wings were foolish enough to bring a creature into the city that grew into an embryonic deity. Before the Lady of Pain showed up to maze or flay everyone, the ethergaunts were defeated and the newborn god managed to escape into another plane.

Normally, ethergaunts do not openly show their masked faces in the city. The Athar are said to have some contacts with them, and one might show up to trade their strange alien technology with the Godless, but it's clear to anyone with half a brain in their brain-box that when their plans come to fruition, the ethergaunts will kill all the Athar too.

There may be a handful of ethergaunts living in Sigil for the long term, living in disguise while they use Sigil's otherworldly energies to charge a device that might extend the Spire's anti-magic aura across other planes, or destroy the Spire entirely. In the short term they seek to turn religious orders against each other, to destroy their reputations and wipe them from existence. They hate most races, but sometimes enslave illithids to use as pawns in their schemes.

The oldest planars remember the time a few thousand years ago when ethergaunts made war upon the planes, using magic they created in cooperation with the nerra to bring whole armies of evil mirror-duplicates from parallel multiverses into our own. Some still seek out the forbidden magic left over from those wars, either to find a way to access other realities or to finally find their way home.

spell weaver
Though allied in the past with the ethergaunts and nerra, spell weavers are not poorly thought of in the present day. Fact is, no one knows what to think of them, since their language is incomprehensible and their minds impossible to communicate with psionically. Legend has it that once they had an empire that stretched across the planes, until a ritual performed in Sigil - which some say was once their capital - caused their empire to shatter so completely that it retroactively no longer existed. Only mysterious ruins with no history connected to them remain. In Sigil, they've constructed massive rune-covered obelisks and ziggurats with no visible entrance or exit. They are occasionally seen in the city's markets, looking for magic items. Sometimes they trade with the witchwyrds and denizens of Leng.

nimblewright
Over a thousand years ago, a human civilization became so dependent on its constructs that they became indistinguishable from them. They learned methods of transferring their minds into construct shells and making their construct servants as smart as they were. Then disaster struck - a chaos plague from Limbo infected their cogs and gears, and the magic preventing the glaciers from overwhelming their land faltered. The civilization is gone, now, buried in the ice until the day when the plague is cured and the trapped constructs are mined from their icy prison. Some of the constructs managed to escape to Mechanus, where they found work as laborers, scribes, court bailiffs, and sellswords. From there some of them have migrated to Sigil and Automata in the Outlands. For the most part, they live as ordinary citizens, though they have a certain expertise in the crafting of clockworks that they've gained from centuries of repairing one another. Though they can keep themselves in repair, they no longer have the expertise needed to create more of their kind, and seek out those who might be able to help them make children of their own race, or perhaps even free their ancestors from the black ice that claimed them.

Nimblewrights tend to ally themselves with the Godsmen. A few accursed rebels have joined the Doomguard instead.

maug
Maugs are constructs built for the eternal wars of Acheron. They function best as mercenaries and bodyguards, often competing with nimblewrights for jobs; usually patrons will pick the nine-foot tall, hulking maugs over the slender, almost fragile-looking nimblewrights. New maugs are always created in Thuldanin, but many find their way to Sigil from time to time. There are maug bars in the City of Doors, places where chemicals corrosive enough to burn stone are imbibed instead of wine or beer. Maugs will work for anyone who has the coin, but are often found supporting the Doomguard or Harmonium. Some have joined the Sensates, driven by stony curiosity to experience things that they couldn't as mere weapons.

Maugs are immortal, and some remember fighting in the wars against the ethergaunts, when they were forced to fight doubles of themselves from some parallel universe in which the ethergaunts had conquered all the planes. Occasionally a maug who fought for the ethergaunts will surface; these creatures were programmed from their creation to be fanatic servitors of the ethergaunt cause, and few ever manage to shake that programming.

reigar [from Spelljammer]
According to myth, the reigar invented arts and craftsmanship and taught it to the first elves, humans, genies, dragons, mercanes, and dwarves. Another myth claims they were the race that deliberately summoned the first illithids from their far realm on the other side of time, unleashing them on reality just because they could. Still another story has it that they destroyed their own world as some kind of demented art project. The most ancient portals and gates are said to be of reigar craftsmanship; some say the reigar created Sigil itself. Reigar are sensual, epicurean people, natural fits for the Sensates but considering themselves far too cultured and sophisticated and jaded for the Society of Sensation to be any use to them. They can be occasionally found in Sigil operating unspeakably decadent clubs or manipulating entire sects and factions for their amusement or to make some esoteric artistic statement. Their ends can end up aiding good or evil, law or chaos; the reigar do not seem to care, or they consider those forces so petty as to be beneath their notice. They care only for art, although their view of art is alien and incomprehensible to most other races.

urdefhan [from Pathfinder: Bestiary 2]
The urdefhans are native to the city of Awaiting Consumption in the Gray Waste of Hades (Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Todd Stewart, page 7), where yugoloth lords created them as twisted experiments designed primarily to help keep their other slaves under control. Urdefhans appear in Sigil as emissaries to the yugoloths, arranging trade deals with their native city and acting as servants and bodyguards for greater servants of their masters. They can be found purchasing slaves from Mercykillers, illithids, and denizens of Leng to be carried back with them to the yugoloth 'farms' in their city. They are disliked, but nothing they do is illegal in the Cage. Those that don't work for the yugoloths try to find other masters with similar interests in breeding and consuming slaves and their souls, such as vampires, nightshades, demodands, devourers, rakshasas, divs, kytons, asuras, night hags, and baatezu. They tend to align themselves with the Mercykillers, the Incantifers, and the Fated.

Sigil has a fair-sized population of tieflings who are descendants of refugees from Awaiting Consumption; these tieflings by and large hate the urdefhans with the fury of a thousand lower planar volcanoes, killing them when they can get away with it rather than seeing another slave consigned to the yugoloth breeding-pits.

illurien [from Monster Manual 5]
There is only one Illurien, and she lives in the Outlands. Rumors say that she is a refugee from the realm of Ilsensine, and she preys mainly on mind flayers and eaters of knowledge, trying to find the secrets that Ilsensine stole from her long ago. She isn't averse to taking knowledge from other sources, however. She comes to Sigil only rarely, usually when she's stalking someone in particular or to use the city's portals to cross over to another plane that she cannot easily get to with her innate plane shift ability. There are some who say she worships Vecna, but this is more likely an alliance of convenience than any true devotion.

Illurien is allied with no faction, but the sages of the Fraternity of Order are fascinated by her and occasionally bargain with her for knowledge. She can occasionally be convinced to bargain fairly with those who have information that Illurien wants and can't simply take.

What is Illurien? Some say she was a goddess before Ilsensine stole her divinity, or an elemental princess, a rogue noviere eladrin, or something born from Ilsensine's dreams. No one really knows.

The gith races view Illurien with suspicion. They appreciate that she hunts illithids, but she has been known to hunt them as well, searching for traces of Ilsensine's influence in their racial memory. They know better than any races in the multiverse that the enemy of their enemy is not necessarily their friend.

There is an entire order of keepers whose sole purpose in life is to protect Illurien's secrets by any means necessary. Those who bargain with Illurien for knowledge can expect a visit from them, as they seek to destroy anyone who has learned anything from her. They would kill Illurien herself if they could, but she seems to truly be immortal.

There is a rumor that Illurien has mortal descendants: psionic humanoids often mistaken for water genasi who scour the planes - including Sigil - for scraps of lore. Whether they collect knowledge for their own sakes or to sacrifice to their grandmother is anyone's guess.

denizen of Leng [Bestiary 2]
Mysterious traders and slavers of the Far Realm, the denizens of Leng are locked in an eternal war with the Leng spiders. They visit Sigil for the same reasons they visit the City of Brass, the Great Dismal Delve, the City of Awaiting Consumption, Curst, Torch, Zelatar, Gloomwrought, and other dark planar cities - to buy slaves, treasure, and exotic services with their exotic rubies. The denizens of Leng are often enslaved themselves by the moon-beasts (Bestiary 3), and seem unable to do anything about it. The denizens of Leng commonly trade with ethergaunts, spell weavers, dao, derro, githyanki, illithids, urdhefans, and dark ones, but will trade with anyone whose coin is good. They are not above kidnapping if they are short on things to sell. Dark creepers are particularly eager to act as servants and go-betweens for the denizens of Leng when such are needed.

While most denizens of Leng are constantly on the move, moving from one city to the next and returning regularly to their homeland of Leng, a few have settled in Sigil for longer periods, operating shops, tents, and kiosks in the Market Ward and the Hive's Night Market where disturbing goods are sold. They move their stores often, rarely spending more than a week in one place, as their prolonged presence tends to upset the locals. They seem to have a mysterious means of magically transporting stone buildings many miles away to another part of the city, effectively instantly. Besides slaves and rubies, they sometimes offer caged gremlins, cursed monkey's paws, murderous toys, drugs that inspire nightmarish visions, malevolent musical instruments, charms and spells that warp bodies and spirits in unforeseen ways, and trash masked with illusions to appear valuable.

They may have an alliance with the keepers, who will hunt and kill in order to keep the location and even existence of Leng a secret, but seem to leave the denizens of Leng alone. Some theorize the keepers may even be from Leng, though they do not say so where the keepers can hear them.

There is a secret that no one knows. Eons ago, the mercanes were enslaved by the Leng spiders who eternally war against the denizens of Leng. Even today, the spiders hold the children and spouses of the mercanes hostage, and force them to help supply and arm them so that they may triumph against their rivals. This is the only reason the mercanes wander the planes, and why their children are never seen.

There is another secret: another race of planar merchants, the witchwyrds (Bestiary 2) are in turn slaves of the mercanes, who captured the sandworms whose spice the witchwyrds need to live. The witchwyrds must pay the mercanes for the spice only they can provide, and this money goes to the Leng spiders to fuel their eternal war.

thendar [from Dragon #101]
The thendar are nearly as bored with their long lives as the reigar, though the reigar still consider the thendar to be beneath them. Unlike the reigar, the thendar are generally benevolent in nature. The thendar are enthusiastic members of the Sensates until they decide that seeking out new experiences has become tedious, at which point they might join up with the Godsmen, the Bleakers, the Transcendent Order, the Xaositects, or some other group for the novelty of it. Thendar find employment as sages, tutors, teachers, as guardians with the innate ability to pierce through illusions and disguise, as translators and craftsmen. Very rarely, they may spend a few decades as heroes or paladins before becoming disgusted with the futility of it and going back into seclusion. They often become very wealthy in their long lives, though they are as likely to give all their earnings away in a fit of ennui.

Thendar get along well with celestials, and those seeking an audience with powerful celestials could do worse than to approach a thendar for an introduction. They are also willing to act as guides to the Astral or other planes for those who earn their good will.

Thendar are said to be natives of the Astral Plane, though this is impossible - the Astral is a timeless plane where nothing can be born or mature. Be that as it may, the thendar have lived in the Astral since long before Gith's rebellion, using it as a base to explore the multiverse or a place to retreat and contemplate the void. Their original plane is anyone's guess, though there are hints they may have come from some world on the Material Plane that was destroyed long ago. Who, though, was responsible for this destruction? Titans, primordials, gods, fiends, ethergaunts, the thendar themselves? The thendar refuse to say.

The githyanki despise the thendar, who in turn think of the githyanki as mildly irritating upstarts. Of the Astral races, they get along best with the monastic buommans. It is said that the thendar know secrets of the spell weavers that even the spell weavers have forgotten, but can't be bothered to tell anyone.

alhoon
The elder brain is the center of an illithid community: it is their parent, teacher, their leader, and the paradise that awaits them after the deaths of their bodies. Mind flayer liches are cut off from the elder brains that have given them succor all their lives. No longer part of their communities, no longer able to look forward to having their brains join the collective upon their deaths, they wander, using their innate ability to travel the Astral Plane to explore the multiverse. Some come to Sigil, a place where all the planes are only a door away, a place so diverse that even a thing as appalling as a mind flayer lich is not too terrible to be part of a community.

For some alhoon, the hole in their minds where they could once feel the elder brains is an open wound in their souls, one they seek eternally to fill. Their own rotting brains have become irrelevant, and the uncaring multiverse refuses to give up its secrets quickly enough to satisfy an illithid's hunger for communion. They seek alternatives: some become librarians, some join factions (the Sign of One, the Harmonium, and the Fraternity of Order are popular), and some go on sprees where they steal brain after brain, soul after soul, linking undead brains-in-jars and soul gems purchased from shadow demons to psionic circuitry in a desperate attempt to make a mental network large and powerful enough to remind them of home. These engines of psionic and negative energy, buried beneath the city streets or hidden away in stately mansions or institutes of learning, most often destroy their creators as soon as they gain enough power, ending their own wretched existences soon after. Yet sometimes the institute or faction to which the alhoon belonged is too callous and pragmatic to allow the network to die, and these undead mental constructs are enslaved to whatever twisted cause their masters espouse. One, it is said, has become the property of a small group of ethergaunts who seek to use it to help them calculate methods of fragmenting an entire world or plane into scattered demiplanes. Another is the secret focus of a breakaway group of Signers who believe the undead web is the One of their prophesies. One was the focus of a group of Sensates who lost themselves in their tormented song, their minds ripped away to join the others and their bodies turned into pallid zombies who even now act as the network's eyes and hands on Sigil's streets. The last collates data for an elite and amoral group among the Fraternity of Order, organizing all they learn about the laws of the multiverse and keeping damaging secrets about their own fellow faction members for the purpose of blackmail. This last network is especially full of lore learned by the faction from the mysterious Illurien, who would in turn dearly love to find this network and devour its knowledge for herself.

I thought the reth dekala were the most interesting part of Tome of Battle. Being from Acheron and made of smoke and iron and flame, they reminded me of Vorkehan, the Mercykiller city.

My idea is that before the Great Upheaval, the Sodkillers were a faction whose core belief (perhaps inspired by the kolyaruts) is the importance of contracts. They also had a job - mercenary work - just as the Godsmen make tools and the Takers collect taxes, but that's not their philosophy. The Sodkillers, then, believed that the multiverse itself was a client and it was important that both sides fulfilled their contract, just as it was important for mercenaries to fulfill the contracts their clients gave them. Just as a mercenary must be paid, so must all of us if we do what we agreed to do. The dissent might be along the lines of: what exactly have we agreed to? When did we agree? Is our payment a lifetime, or is it the afterlife, or both? Is the afterlife a different job than life, or is it what we get in exchange for living? Is there a true afterlife, or is our wage blessed oblivion as the Dustmen claim? If death is our reward for success, what is our punishment for failure, especially if you believe that Acheron is the primary exemplar of your philosophy (preventing the Upper Planes from being seen as a reward)?

It's not hard to see how such a faction might find common ground with the Sons of Mercy, resulting in a faction that believes in justice first and foremost - the proper reward for fulfilling a contract, and the penalty for failure, is obviously part of that, but the Sons of Mercy bring in the new idea that there are also laws you haven't agreed to that are equally important, as well as the possibility that the less severe punishment might be given when laws are broken - a strange concept known as mercy.

This, by the way, is not necessarily the philosophy of the modern Sodkillers, who are really just the stern no-mercy fraction of the Mercykillers and not a true rebirth of the ancient Sodkiller faction. Though they're mercenaries again instead of running the Prison, they still believe in justice first and foremost; contracts are only one aspect of their philosophy, the one they're able to concentrate on the most in the new, less lawful post-Faction War Sigil.

Anyway, the story behind the reth dekala is that they were human mercenaries who entered into a contract with a baatezu noble whose stronghold was in Acheron (an exile?). When the baatezu started demanding they kill their own families, they refused, and so were cursed to exist in constant flame and agony. Though the baatezu is now long dead, they must hunt down and destroy their now-scattered descendants if they are ever to be free.

Okay, so how are the Sodkillers connected?

- Perhaps the reth dekala were Sodkillers, originally, and the Sodkillers of Vorkehan are those mercenaries who didn't turn against their patron. Perhaps Vorkehan was created by the baatezu noble, then - even its stronghold. The Sodkillers/Mercykillers might consider the reth dekala to be foul lawbreakers who deserve any agony they might inflict, while the reth dekala might revere the Sodkillers for having the strength and foresight to do what they could not, resulting in a weird sado-masochistic "Please punish me/I must punish you" relationship.

- The reth dekala might have approached the Sodkillers for help in fulfilling their contracts, and helped to build their city in exchange for helping to hunt down their descendants. When the Sodkiller faction stopped existing, they were technically free of this requirement, but now that they're back the reth dekala are insisting they continue their ancient task.

- Those reth dekala who decide to endure the pain rather than killing their descendants might be hunted down by enraged Sodkiller/Mercykillers, as well as kolyarut inevitables.

Perhaps the archdevil who created the reth dekala was known as Dekala, and reth is Infernal for "slaves of." It barely matters at this point, but let's say that Dekala was an exiled general of Moloch's court, and she resembled a pit fiend with green smoke and flame flowing out of her eyes and mouth, or like a fiendish version of the reth dekala themselves with smoke and flame replacing her legs. Perhaps some weapons crafted from her bones still exist, wielded by the most powerful of the reth dekala. Perhaps a sword made from Dekala's bones is the most effective weapon against them, and one of their descendants wields it against her otherworldly ancestors.

I'm not sure if Zodar really work as NPCs. Since everything can be found in Sigil, there's no doubt that there's at least one Zodar who has settled there, and maybe a handful of others are mysteriously tagging along with adventuring parties, but I doubt they make for a solid commune within Sigil. They don't seem to like crowds, or even each other. A conversation with one would be a little tedious, and possibly a tad scary, since they are after all unpredictable, indestructable deathmachines from space

And while we're on the subject of the Iron Kingdoms, here's some minor seeds that don't enter into faction politics:

A powerful merchant is phasing out his usualy bodyguard of normal pig-faced orcs and replacing them with the savage-and-hence-much-cheaper boar-headed Farrow. The disgruntled orc-union has decided that a staged assassination might make him reconsidder. Too bad they forgot to tell their hitman about the 'staged' part...

A slightly mad Gatorman shaman gets carried around Sigil by his tribe on an improvised gurney. He's deadly ill, but the spirits have given him a mission. Too bad none of his tribesmen can really tell the difference between prophecy and insane fever dream, but he sure keeps mentioning the demodands a lot.

A rogue modron has recently set up shop in town, but never leaves it and meets with the more enigmatic of Sigil's powermongers. Petty thieves that have staked out his place report strange Animatons, either pets imported from Mechanus, or the modron's clever creation. Some whisper that they're frankensteinian combination. When asked, his fellow modrons clam up and when checked upon a short while later they show signs of crying.

The caulborn (Bestiary 3) wander the multiverse, hunting for new facts and concepts. They care little for wealth unless it helps get them access to libraries and other interesting places and relying on their innate charm and detect thoughts abilities to teach them what they need to know. Because they have no need to eat or drink, and little need for shelter, most have no need to work, unless the local authorities crack down on homeless populations in an area where they want to be. In some cases they end up working alongside mongrelfolk, goblinoids, and other unskilled laborers, learning from their thoughts and earning just enough money to purchase knowledge. Since they have no interest in other races, they seldom join factions and they never hire themselves out as teachers or sages unless they are greatly in need of money. If it becomes necessary, in their judgment, to settle into more expensive parts of town and socialize with the upper crust in order to learn what they desire, they'll do that, charging high rates for secrets, lore, and prophecies only they know, being as accurate as they need to be in order to draw clients, but concentrating more on telling their clients what they want to hear; their goal is money, not educating others.

It's not that that the caulborn have any ethical difficulty with giving knowledge to others; it's simply that they don't care either way. Their focus is entirely on their own race and family groups. If teaching others can help them gain new information, they'll do that, but if it doesn't help them they'd prefer to keep to themselves. If joining a faction (they sympathize with the goals of the Sensates and Fraternity of Order) can give them access to information they couldn't otherwise access, they'll join the faction, but they'll leave it and move on the moment the faction is no longer useful to them.

Among some, the caulborn are hated for their disturbing appearance and predatory ways. If they can get away with it, they'll damage a victim's brain while consuming its thoughts. Those who are unable to protect themselves may find themselves their victims - places where the caulborn have been often become littered with dazed and confused homeless people, prostitutes, and others who fall beneath the interest of the law. Caulborn run afoul of the mysterious keepers, who will do anything to prevent certain secrets from being revealed. The liquid princess Illurien of the Outlands has been known to prey upon the caulborn, making their knowledge hers. For the most part, the caulborn treat everyone equally, from the foulest and lowliest dretch to the most exalted tome archon. They know they can learn something from everyone.

They have the innate ability to plane shift once a week, but Sigil's portals are often more convenient, both to get them to new places and to allow them to sit down and wait for exotic peoples and cultures from across the multiverse to come to them. Small colonies of caulborn (they commonly wander either alone, in pairs, or in colonies of three to twelve) can be found in every part of the City of Doors, from the miserable depths of the Hive to the academies of the Clerk's Ward to the elegant mansions of The Lady's Ward, working as manual laborers, clerks, doctors, high-priced sages, gurus, fortune-tellers, grifters, con artists, and nothing at all. After spending years in one place, they'll move on to a different part of the city or another plane, where they can be found everywhere from the City of Awaiting Consumption to the City of Brass to the Library of the Imenteshes to the Carnival of Flesh and Spirit to the White Well of the Norns to the Marketplace Eternal to the Casino of the Gods, to the Academy of the Scalpel in Hell, to shining Yetsirah in the Seven Heavens.

The caulborn have given any number of answers to those who have asked them their origin. Some have claimed to be descended from eaters of knowledge from Ilsensine's Caverns of Thought who saw the errors of their ways and now work for the good of all. Some claim to be refugees from a world destroyed by whoever the person they're speaking to hates the most for no crime but innocent curiosity. Often they'll describe themselves as penitent hermits seeking enlightenment, or they'll pretend to be nothing more than outcast laborers looking for work.

One of the most common theories, however, connects them to the strange living world of Palpatur (from Beyond Countless Doorways). When that planet was devastated by the Blood War, it fell into something like a coma, senseless and in agony. Yet some of the bioleche, organic tools the world created for the benefit of its inhabitants, was sent throughout the planes, developing sentience of its own and becoming the caulborn, determined to learn enough to reawaken their suffering world.

A darker theory has it that the caulborn are the result of neh-thalggu using their reproductive spore to transform humanoids - or, perhaps, the insensate flesh of Palpatur - into creatures that would one day learn enough to nourish the larval neh-thalggu within the irregular lumps of a caulborn's body. When a caulborn learns enough, this theory goes, the creature bursts apart and three to twelve juvenile neh-thalggu fly out, ready to explore the cosmos.

Mysterious humanoids that seem to be forged from the stuff of the spheres, many sages and theologians believe the zodars to be a sort of immune system of the cosmos. According to this theory, they were created at the same time as the crystal spheres to steer destiny at pivotal points in history, but only in events that threaten the stability of the spheres themselves. Even the destruction of a single world is rarely a large enough event to concern them, unless this destruction affects other worlds as well.

As an axis point in the multiverse, Sigil is blessed or cursed with at least three different zodars. Like all zodars, they never speak (or, rather, they are permitted to speak only three times during their lifetimes, so no one alive today has heard them speak).

1. Brashith was tasked at the dawn of creation with preventing the casting of the Sigil Spell, a magic created twenty thousand years ago by an ancient wizard who nearly used it to overthrow the Lady of Pain. For the last five hundred years, Brashith has stood still as a statue in the Gatehouse, watching over the madman Gifad, the Oldest Barmy. PCs who play through the events of Faction War will have to battle Brashith before the climax of the adventure.

2. Berith was tasked (again, the same time the spheres were created) with preventing Vecna from tampering with the structure of the multiverse with the Language Primeval in Sigil (in the adventure Die Vecna Die!). It has spent centuries inside the Armory, awaiting the day when Vecna will transform it into his fortress. Unfortunately, neither its three spells nor its wish were enough to defeat the lich in the end; Vecna destroyed it after a brief duel, showing the people of Sigil how dire their straits really were.

3. A zodar known simply as the Anti-Zodar looks radically different from others of its kind. Its armor-like exoskeleton, which is black as the night sky for other zodars, is instead a brilliant silver, gold, and blue, the colors swirling as if the air around it were distorted by incredible heat; however, it is cool to the touch. It was originally tasked with preventing the incursion of the Far Realm into its sphere of origin, but instead the energies of the Far Realm transformed it utterly. It now hunts down others of its kind to destroy them and consume their essence, growing in power with each zodar it slays. At the same time, without its appointed guardians, the fate of the multiverse grows more uncertain. While other zodars exist to defend the status quo of the multiverse and its crystal spheres, the Anti-Zodar works toward the destruction of everything. The Anti-Zodar is a legend to the Doomguard, some of whom believe it to be a servant of their gods or a nascent god in its own right. Currently the Anti-Zodar roams the City of Doors, searching out uncorrupted members of its kind to slay.

Other zodars can be found occasionally in Sigil, following around adventuring parties on some momentous mission or standing in front of a portal, waiting motionless and patient, sometimes for years, until it shifts to the correct destination. Since the arrival of the Anti-Zodar, however, they have become less common, forced to expend the powers granted to them long ago to defend themselves rather than to fulfill their destinies. Zodars who have used up their magic in order to escape the Anti-Zodar may approach powerful adventurers and speak the few words allotted to them in order to beg for their assistance in completing the tasks they can no longer complete on their own.

Suggested tasks
- Repair a planar breach or a crack in the fabric of the planes.
- Reignite a dying star.
- Separate a demiplane that has merged with a material sphere.
- Prevent any interference with the separation of the twin worlds of Abeir and Toril.
- Destroy an infestation of clockwork horrors before they strip-mine every planet in a sphere.
- Prevent the ethergaunts from dissolving a sphere into ethereal demiplanes.
- Prevent the Dark Powers from drawing an entire sphere into the Demiplane of Dread.
- Prevent interfering mages from keeping a star alive after its appointed time.
- Prevent a mad cult from interfering while a turtle with a planet on its back spawns its young in the tides of a giant red star.
- Ensure that three spheres merge into one after a cosmic disaster nearly destroys all three.
- Stop an elder evil from awakening.
- Prevent an elder entity of perfect good from turning a sphere into a utopia that knows neither death nor pain.
- Seal away all evidence of a war between rival groups of time travelers.
- Repair a paradox created by a time-traveling demigod.
- Find the new location of several stolen worlds.
- Guard Takhisis as she moves Krynn to another sphere.
- Prevent a hero from slaying the serpent that surrounds the world's oceans.
- Make sure that the giants of Ysgard cannot prevent the death of a jotun who must die so that the gods can create a world from its corpse.
- Direct the Blood War to the Outlands (or any other plane; the zodars don't care, but the Outlands happens to be the nearest portal) before the warring tanar'ri and baatezu can devastate a sphere completely.
- Find an artifact, the seed of an emerald mountain upon which the world rests, which has fallen into the hands of a faction that wants to use it to make worlds of their own.
- Attend the birth of a god destined to hatch from its egg, which happens to be a planet populated by millions of sentient beings (destroying the world in the process), and destroy those who might want to make sure the infant god continues to sleep.
- Prevent a mad cult from awakening a dragon that sleeps in the center of a world.

Tasked builder genies (see also this wiki article on tasked genies).

Pechs? Civilized minotaurs? Kobolds? Tohr-kreen? Tritons. Lung dragons (or their servants). Bee people (abeils and thriae). Avariel, elves, drow, dwarves. D'ziriak, jyoti, lumi. Cloud giants. Ice paraelementals? Nephilim?

Azers.

Lovecraft's Old Ones and their shoggoth servants.

Phirblas.

Archons (for some reason I imagine warden archons as architects).

The Crafters.