Need Help Killing the Lady of Pain

Basically what Hyena said: Trick her into leaving Sigil and have some heavy-duty firepower backing you up. It also probably wouldn't hurt to research which powers, entities or groups that hold grudges against her and let them get involved in whatever shenanigans will be taking place. Maybe resurrect a god or two that she helped to put into the dead book. Striking up a bargain with Vecna, Orcus or the Lords of the Nine might also be a good idea.

Alternatively - and the much safer bet, given that the LoP was conceived as being DM-powerful - just abandon Sigil to its fate 'cause chances are you ain't gonna win. Or if it's reality itself that she's destroying, maybe consider lying down and contemplating the sort of life your character has lived. You know, reflect on the better times and hope that your death will be quick and painless.

Pay no attention to the dabus behind the curtain?

Isolate her in Sigil by cutting off all portals leading out of the City of Doors. She may be essentially omnipotent within Sigil, but not outside Sigil. Getting either a powerful deity involved with portals (resurrecting Aoskar perhaps?) to help, or a group of deities, wouldn't hurt.

Of course, this would mean the loss of Sigil as a trade city, but other locations on the Planes would become more popular as a result.

I don't think cutting off the portals to Sigil would work. She possesses a fragment of Aoskar's divine power, so there's little hope of imprisoning her permanently within the City of Doors. Petitioning help from the Deities won't work either, because there are simply too many portals for all of them to seal away, and some lead to planes and demiplanes lacking a power or even quasipower (for instance, good luck getting the portals that lead to Paraelemental Magma sealed away-- Chilimba isn't even a quasipower.)

There is no canon, in setting way to kill the Lady of Pain. There are issues and dangers mentioned, such as tanar'ric lesser power infesting a printer. Apparently the Sigil Spell could give you power over the Lady, but casting it would be incredibly difficult.

oh, I didn't mean it in a dismissive way, just saying I looked through the books and didn't ever find one.

really, the Sigil spell should give you power over the Lady but it requires a lot of its preparation to be done in the city itself. If there was a way to use chronomancy and activate the spell from the outside of Sigil after Darkwood almost completes it I think it'd be enough to render the Lady powerless - especially with the lesser tanar'ric god in the printer ideally ready to pounce.

No, no canon method given directly, but given she is surely Divine Rank 0 (quasideity-- e.g. has not achieved apotheosis), then it would take a very powerful artifact to destroy her within her own quasidivine realm, and it would still take an artifact or two for non-epic characters simply to slay her outside of Sigil. Barring that, a deity or group of outsiders + quasipowers (such as a few Abyssal lords) could slay her once she steps outside of Sigil.

I can see children indoctrinated with killing the LoP sent into the Infinite Staircase, but as yet it seems they are finished off before reaching their Heart's Desire, or perhaps their hearts are led astray by the Lady or Her defenders.

The only problem with that is if the "heart's desire" stuff sends someone into an alternate universe or timeline where the heart's desire is satisfied. If so, it wouldn't kill the Lady here, it would just send the kids to a reality where the Lady is dead.

"Soaked into me deeper than any lover Ipos whispers secrets in the braids of my muscle and the marrow-filling of my too brittle bones.

He tells me the Lady is a vestige that got out - She died and resurrected Herself as something akin to a psion uncarnate but, well, more so. She is a fully present vestige who has no need of a vessel to be Here, to be extant in the Now.

Sigil is Her circle, the circumference-price for Her ability to traverse the axes of the Real.

Can She be killed? Yes, everything can die, but She can only be killed by someone who follows Her, who shadows the Road She took..."
-Praetor Noriia, Legends of the Pact Binders (perma-banned in Sigil)

"Catella's works were all about killing the Lady, in fact it was the subject of every single one of her collected novellas. From the first - All Her Blades Are Broken - to the last - The Lady is a Tanar'ri on a Ramp - Naomi Catella's murder mysteries were the most popular gatetown penny dreadfuls of her day. Given her elven lifespan, this was no small accomplishment.

Naomi was born to destitute elves more than grateful for their lot in life, seeing as they had given a whole killer planet named Athas the laugh. Growing up in the shifting border that was sometimes Lower Ward and sometimes Hive, Ms. Catella soaked up enough lurid real life experience - and glimpses of generosity and thankless charity - to fill out the pages of what we can, for the most part, loosely call mysteries.

Often enough the identity of the Lady's killer was clear by the second or third chapter. In some works, such as Vecna Did It, the mystery was spoiled from the outset. Only in a few works were we left guessing, or were left with multiple simultaneous explanations as was the case in The Lady R.I.P. Most people didn't read these to learn the killer's identity, they read them for the titillation. Naomi had a gift for walking the tightrope border of the heretic worth chasing down and the one utilized as moral fodder by the politicians of the city who cry, "Elect me or appoint me or join me in my coup so I can save you from filth like THIS!"

Each story manages to delve into the vices that the gatetown works against, the ones that might keep it from sliding. So Ribcage has its suspects engaged in free spirited kindness while the ones at Tradegate are lazy flappers who begin to outsource their work while still claiming their position as craftsmen. One story had to be rushed toward its ending due to its featuring of a prominent, well organized, and sane urban planning consultant in the city of xSoa. (Everyone should have realized the city would riot no matter what, that the publication of this "immorally kempt man" was merely a pretext.)

Naomi Catella hadn't entered Sigil since her first chapbook saw print, and spent as much of her life fleeing bounties put up by Sigil's Wheel of Law as she did writing. At some point, nearing a millennium in age, Ms. Catella decided that she wanted to go home, to see the city that had filled her Mind's Eye for so many years, to take in the sites that she'd scribbled onto the page in the form of love letters disguised as mysteries.

All the information we have of her last known whereabouts is she stepped through a gate in the Hinterlands, one that goes to Sigil even today, and never emerged from the other side.

Which would be the end of our tale, save that there are seven unsolved stories in the sum of her works, seven stories that have the most plausible means of murdering Her Serenity..."

Like I said. Do you think it is reasonable thematically - ignoring if it fits mechanically, just speaking thematically - for the Lady of Pain to be nothing more than some scrub on the level of the likes of...Murlynd, or Finder Wyvernspur? To be less than Zagyg?

Murlynd doesn't even have a divine realm. Finder, yes, less than Zagyg, yes. I don't know enough about the Dark Powers or The Serpent, and I don't recall the specifics of her mechanics within Die Vecna Die.
However, I think you are underestimating the power that even a quasipower has within its own realm. Within its own realm, for all practical purposes, even a quasipower cannot be killed by mortals, since it can mold the realm and parts of it to whatever form it pleases (e.g. the street could animate and devour the PCs, effectively imprisoning them as the spell if they fail a Reflex save), a quasipower can erase the doors and windows of a room they're in, it can decide which magic works within its realm, and where, and when, it can "forbid" any magic item of a type it doesn't like from entering its realm. It can create any natural or supernatural effect relating to its portfolio at a whim, not to mention that a quasipower can never be surprised within its realm. In addition to normal rank-0 immunities, a quasipower on its own realm is also immune to disease and poison, stunning, sleep, paralysis, and death effects, banishment, and disintegration. That's in addition to immunity to polymorphing, petrification, other form-affecting attacks (e.g. size alteration), mind-affecting effects, energy damage and drain. In addition, it may be impossible for anything lower than Divine Rank 2 to permanently slay a Quasipower on its own realm (I can't remember if it was elaborated upon in 3E, but I think 1E had it that slaying a deity or even quasipower within its realm would simply cause it to reform some time later, as if it had been slain on another plane or something. In addition, if you assume a quasipower is effectively rank 1 in its realm, then going by Deities & Demigods rules, it cannot die from massive damage on its own realm.)

Sciborg, that was amazing.

And Hyena, I said ignoring mechanics. In terms of the thematics, do you think it fits the Lady of Pain as a character in a piece of fiction to be a quasipower? I know what quasipowers can do, you don't need to list off their abilities to me. I don't care about if it fits mechanically. I am saying that I do not think that thematically it fits for the Lady of Pain to be one. I don't think it fits her to be a Greater Power. I literally do not think it fits her to be in the divine hierarchy at all, I'm stretching to even consider the possibility of her as an overpower. I honestly don't think any mechanics fit her, and that the most befitting ways to kill her would be solely something dramatically appropriate from a literary perspective, something that doesn't involve a single die roll or stat bonus.

I mean, you really think that someone as unique and prime as the Lady deserves, from a literary perspective, to be just another god? One of literally thousands, nothing special at all? That any divine entity deserves to be able to call her a peer, or even a lesser? I mean...I know mechanics are important to you, but you could at least make up new mechanics for her, not just jump to Deities and Demigods. Some kind of theoretical...DR Infinity entity.

Bah, I feel like maybe I'm harping on something stupid here and getting the thread off track. Apologies if so, folks. :/

Thanks for the kind words Idran!

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I think question here is not of power level but of narrative appropriate to the game - that isn't silly to me. For some the Lady is another statted challenged to be defeated, they see Her as something to be overcome. For others, the Lady is eternal, unassailable by PCs.

Personally, if there was a cool story I wouldn't mind her being just an ageless mortal, not even a god, Her power granted to Her by the City itself. Perhaps killing Her leads to Kyle Rayner getting the role.

To me, I like the Lady as a mystery, but would kill Her if I could make (or play in) a campaign worthy of such an ending. I don't mind her being three ratatosks in a robe so long as things are interesting and take into account the ramifications of killing her.

To kill the Lady, or destroy the machine projecting her form or whatever is to essentially declare a gods war in the Multiverse, as it leaves Sigil up for grabs. This action completely changes the nature of the game, to the point of making Sigil uninhabitable for anything less than a god.

Of course, in a homebrew cosmology Sigil's ability to make a portal to anywhere in the Wheel might not hold, and thus its importance might be lessened but at least until 4th edition I think canon held it as one of the lynchpins of creation.

There would likely be all kinds of contingencies by the forces of Neutrality as well as plans to make sure no one's enemies or rivals could master Sigil. The Lady might even shut down all portals before She expires, as we've often posited that She negates travel rather than allows for it but it might be the case She is what makes Sigil the City of Doors even as it is Her Cage.