The darker site of Sigil

Succubi are likely but Erinyes are not. That's because Erinyes are are avengers not seductresses. The only reason they would seduce someone is as a way to get revenge. As a side note, it's really infuriating how hard it is to remind people that, just because a given villain is attractive and female does not mean they are automatically trying to seduce mortals. Even WotC seems to be missing the distinction lately.

For fans' takes on Sigil's underbelly, you need look no farther than this thread on Sigil's Night Market.

Erinyes, despite their name, are almost always portrayed as seductresses in Planescape material. It's their duty to corrupt mortals to lawful evil, and there is certainly a place for both the carrot and the stick in this. They will use their sexuality if it suits their purposes, just as readily as they'll use their scourges.

They are not the Furies of Greek myth, which are an entirely separate set of entities (three goddesses that dwell in Pluton).

A good villian is one you also despise. Any other way and he's just another anti hero. Grazzt is most likely to fuck anything he so well feels fitting to do so. Most likely he'd then depraive them further till he is satisfied and then he do it all over again. As Vader goes hes a panzy of a villian. A tyrant maybe, but not much else. You just have to stoop to the worst things of humanity and you'll not only get a sick twisted and utterly vile villian. But a sadly believable one as well. He doesn't have to be all that scary, just repulsive enough, that'll put the nerve of even the steeliest of palidens.

Keep in mind that "canon" is whatever you choose to include in your game, so yes, Grazz't could rape babies (I mean, he's one of the ultimate expressions of sexual depravity, why wouldn't he?), but baby rape is not a subject most DMs want to get anywhere near. That's fine, but don't go out and say it's too much, or that it's taking it too far. The whole point of Grazz't is that he takes things too far.

Basically, you need to decide on the tone of your game. If your game is just supposed to be light-hearted fun, you should have Grazz't be like the villain from a cartoon. Sure he's evil, but his ambitions tend to involve taking over the world or something equally sinister but unoffensive. Besides it's not like he gets to succeed in his plans, anyway. This is a good way to go if you want to keep things breezy and unoffensive, but it can wind up feeling facile, overly-simplistic, or worst of all, un-Planscapey.

On the other hand, some DMs like to dive straight into the stomach-churning depths of brutality and degradation a real villain is capable of. This can be very effective at hitting players on an emotional level and getting them involved in the adventure. After all, who are you more likely to hate, the Grazz't who is trying ineffectually to take over the world, or the one who just raped and murdered your girlfriend? On the other hand, adventures that grim tend to risk greatly upsetting people (and their stomachs), and besides that, are often too moody to actually be any fun.

The best thing to do is simply find a happy middle ground (such as mentioning that Grazz't does horrible things to his prisoners, but not stating what he does), and try not to grouse too much when someone decides to draw that middle ground in a different place. Or you could to what I do and just avoid the lower planes as much as possible. Having your enemies be "good" guys is way more interesting.

As for whether Grazzt would stoop so low--oh, God yes. But really, you see this problem a lot in comic books.

There's this absolutely hilarious excerpt from a comic book a while back where we see the Joker--a homicidal murdering sociopath--getting morally indignant when he discovers that he's been working for a Nazi ("I may be a criminal, but I'm an AMERICAN criminal!"). This makes absolutely no sense; Grazzt having the same sort of opinion on child-abuse (and worse) would be similarly "buh-wha?" worthy ("I may be a totally Chaotic Evil Demon, but kids are off limits!" "Buh-WHA?").

It's a fascinating example of dropping our moral compass into our fictitious setting. On one hand, we want to keep the setting consistent; on the other hand, some of us get uncomfortable when that consistency calls for us to create things that defy our moral compass by outrageous lengths. What do we do?

Either take it as an opportunity to explore the forbidden in fiction (this is my preferred route--I mean, this is the reason why mythology and fiction exists--so we can talk about things we're not allowed to talk about!) or excise it completely (totally, perfectly legitimate; some people aren't looking for moral conundrums, just a relaxing evening).

It also depends on gaming background, I have no problem depicting Grazz't as a baby-raper, mainly because of my exposure to various White Wolf games, where canon NPCs have been described as baby-rapers. Mage: the Ascension described historical figure Gilles De Rais one of Joan D'Arc's associates, as a Nephandi Mage who was a pedophile who liked torturing children to death while masturbating. I'm pretty sure the Tzimisce Clanbook had things that were even worse in it. Granted more recent White Wolf releases haven't been as over the top.

As a player of a vampire larp, I've been around some really evil characters. The best ones being the insidious ones played by very smart roleplayers, and ones played by stupider players. There was a pedophile, played by one of the not so smart players, who was sort of an associate of my character. But he didn't last long, since his intentions as a pedophile was discovered soon due to the presence of a child vampire.

Honestly as I didn't flinch one bit at South Park when the Evil Christmas Critters mentioned ways to deal with Strawberry Shortcake in the Imagination Land episode, and were later described as raping Kurt Russell and a bunch of soldiers.

It's the type of evil, I expect the ridiculously over the top Vasharan mentioned in the Book of Vile Darkness, do on a regular basis. Generally I prefer more insidious forms of evil, since it's not as obvious.

Though you should know that as a fact in real life, child molesters don't fare too well in jail when mixed with other criminals. They tend to beat up molesters when they find out what they're in jail for.

Read or view anything by Clive Barker and you've got yerself a tannari right there!

However, it's also been implied since the beginning of the Batman continuity that the Joker, while bat**** insane also has a twisted sense of logic. It's his OWN logic, and not one that particularly makes sense to anyone else, but it's there. In this case, his logic dictates his action, based on his personal preferences. His reasoning is entirely self-centered. He doesn't like Nazis, so he feels indignant upon the discovery. He's still as chaotic as ever.

Seriously, this IS one of the reasons Law vs. Chaos is so very hard to do.

BTW, what Grazz't does off-screen shouldn't come up, unless your players are being really questioning. So don't worry about it too much. If it does, you could always ask them to not go there again if it makes you uncomfortable. It IS a game after all.

As far as atrocities in Sigil: it has Shemeska and A'kin as major players in town, as well as other high-ranking fiends, so it'll likely never be completely devoid of entertainment for the sort that like to make others feel pain. Granted, it also has a number of powerful celestials, but the Evil types have enough hidey-holes in the Hive that they can probably avoid the questioning eyes of the authorities most of the time. I'm sure the Harmonium would love to get rid of the "Night Market," but I think they'd realize they likely would lack the manpower to get rid of such areas and simply try to cordon them off and get whatever offenders they can. So despite having a bunch of paladins, clerics, and other holy types in town empowered with spells that do some major damage to the fiends, the fiends will still probably be hard to uproot, especially since they could be legal residents otherwise, and so the law would have to work with some serious disadvantages.

Not to seize this entire thread into the no doubt misanthropic clutches of a Joker-psyche discussion, but I'm 99% sure that the Joker's 'I-Won't-Work-With-Nazis!' gaff was basically a way of asserting the author's views over the character ("Nazis are so evil even the JOKER won't work with them!").

Whether we take it as canon or not, we need to keep in mind that all fictitious settings are completely at the mercy of their creators--a DM can decide tomorrow that there's no such thing as masturbation in Planescape, and so long as the players have fun that's totally fine. I'm talking one step beyond 'not mentioning it', since 'not mentioning it' doesn't always work (one player will sometimes insist we mention it!), and I like having the option to just go "It doesn't even exist in OUR fictitious setting!" on the table.

Does Sigil have human sacrifice? Every night at antipeak at the Temple of the Abyss! The real question is, how is this legal? It must be legal, otherwise the Harmonium, Guvners, and Mercykillers would have spared no effort to level the place. The only reason they haven't is because the law won't let them.

But how can the law allow them to sacrifice people? Surely they can't just grab victims off the street! (Well, they can, but not if anyone can prove it.) My theory is that they import their victims from licensed "victim dealers" who get them from places like the dao's slave farms in the Great Dismal Delve. These dealers also supply Sigil's vampires and illithids with food.

However, there is one bright spot in this dark business. If a victim manages to escape, he's considered legally free and his owners can't go after him. The Harmonium insisted on this since they didn't want to be forced into turning runaway victims over to the fiends. OF course, the chances of a victim escaping alive are about the same as a snowball's chance in Phlegethos, so the fiends don't really mind.

What happens if an adventuring party breaks into a vampire's lair and frees the victims? The victims are still considered free, but the adventurers will be charged with grand theft and sentenced to death. And if they're already going to die, why not have them die as victims of the vampire? To an evil-aligned Mercykiller, it's justice at its finest.

In my opinion, it's best not to delve too deeply into stuff like rape and child abuse in Planescape. Not because it's too shocking for a game; after all, it's on TV cop shows every day. But that is exactly the problem; too much of that stuff destroys the suspension of disbelief. Instead of playing Planescape, you're playing Law and Order: SVU. Sigil may be the big city, but it ain't New York. If you're going to have atrocities, they should be planar atrocities.

A vampire, just like almoste every other sapient creature has legal rights in Sigil.

Hey guys, I thought I'd write my own write-up of Sigil to get us off the topic of child-molestation. Cause, really, it's a topic that deserves to be written about without the stink of "Not children!"

The answer in MY campaigns is that Demons are pure evil just like Devils and Yugoloths. However, every demon is going to express that evil in a different way. No Devil, Loth, or Demon is going to be morally offended by *ANYTHING* evil. The sickest, most debased, most debauched, and nightmarish thing that humans think about is going to be pretty tame to them.

(Of course, you have to wonder how redeemed fiends come about)

However, you're not going to see Gra'azt or Asmodeus randomly going out doing "your particular perversion of choice." Mostly, because they have better things to do with their time and Fiends have enough personality that they have their own particular enjoyments. Orcus, for example, wants to make the entire world undead and debased monsters.

And weirdly, I totally get the "Joker won't work with Nazis" business. Why? Because I saw it as the Joker giving an excuse to turn upon the Red Skull. Lex Luthor/Red Skull and the Joker is like a miniaturization of the Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Evil conflict. The Joker won't work with ANYONE serving a cause because he's the embodiment of chaos. Idealogy is anathema to the character whose stated goal since the Killing Joke is to embody the principles of meaninglessness (yes, there's irony there too).

He's an Xaocist who spends way too much time with the Doomguard and Bleak Cabal.

Now onto Sigil....

Charles Phipps' Sigil

Sigil is a Gotham City, Victorian London, Sin City, and a Douglas Adam's locale given life. It is a city of Neutrality that exists because everything exists there in one form or another. It's one of the most baroque, crime ridden, and cosmopolitian cities in the Multiverse with JUST enough repression to keep everything functioning.

Does human sacrifice exist? Just go ask Larry the Priest of Cyric and they'll be bringing in the Berk from Oerth. Is it legal? **** no! If Larry and company are found out then they'll be hung from the highest tree in the Prison.

Of course, you'll see Baatezu FoO lawyers try to find every loophole imaginable to legalize it. Plus, Larry's buddies in the Revolutionary League will try and bust him out. Frankly, it'll be a miracle if he manages to make it to trial because Sigil is one of the few cities in the world where a man can make a coherent argument about cutting the hearts out of people on an altar and get mixed reactions.

As for rape and the other abuses of our world? It exists in the background like it does in most Noir novels. In Planescape, rape is done by gangs and abusive boyfriends just like its done in the real world. Spouse abuse, drug addiction, and every other real world evil exists in all their naked infamy but it's mostly background in the same way that it is in OUR world.

The fun part about Sigil is that it probably most resembles our world in terms of the legal system and the frustrations thereof. The Harmonium is a GOOD legal force and not the underpowered incompetents that the City Guard is in every other setting. If there's an evil cult tossing people into a Great Old One, the Harmonium actually has a 50-50 chance of being able to go in there and kill the b*****s.

But they can't patrol the Hive, let alone CONTROL it. Aside from the Lady's War, crime is rampant in Sigil.

Of course, Sigil IS a great deal more lenient in many matters I think. I consider any attempt to outlaw Prostitution, Drug Use, and other forms of Vice to be completely legal. Can Jerry the Bartender sell human meat to Baatezu? So long as Jerry can confirm the Berks weren't killed here or so on, then the Harmonium has to just grit his teeth when the the Devils enjoy their favorite meal.

And you damn well can be assured that the citizens WILL go crazy over child endangerment because they damn well do anywhere. It's not the Abyss, huh.

Of course, slavery is another matter. In my games, slavery is illegal in Sigil. Oddly, those slaves you see on the market square are usually with their masters willingly. They come from cultures that don't accent freedom or they're already broken. See, nice and legal. Of course, like human sacrifice, what goes on underground....

That's my take on Sigil.

I wonder if that's the city condoning human sacrifice, or simply not allowing collectors to kill people who have been impaled on buildings, or otherwise collect them before their time.

Darkest used of fiends in anything D&D related: Salvatore had a man torturted by a succubus who would use him to get pregnant then eat their offspring in front of him. Grazz't would get a kick out of something like that. 

I realise that it's not canon but in PS Torment you have a quest to rescue a woman from indentured labour in the lower ward (You also have the option of buying her contract).

The stated reason for the slave market (which is in the open and has harmonium guards walking past) is to keep space in the prison clear enough for the really bad criminals.

Most criminals in Sigil don't go to the City Prison — only those who commit civil infractions and fail to pay the fine.  The Mercykillers' official policy is to sentence those guilty of misdemeanors to 10 years hard labor in the Mercykiller HQ on Acheron; those guilty of felonies are sentenced to death.  In the real world, it was hard to find a crime that wasn't punishable by death in 18th-century England, so this is hardly unusual.

I'm still pretty sure that human sacrifice at the Temple of the Abyss is legal.  While it's true that old Noshteroth keeps a lot of high-ups under his thumb through blackmail, I doubt that Factol Sarin is one of them or he'd lose his paladin powers.  And even if the factol was compromised, that doesn't mean that even the Harmonium would obey such orders without question.  After all, they didn't have any trouble rebelling against the Anarchist who became factol and tried to disband them.  Yes, there is the Demon of the Bells to contend with — but Autochon is living proof of its limitations.  Besides, good against one Bellringer is one thing; good against an entire faction?  That's something else.

It's not like the Temple tries to hide its sacrifices, after all.  They impale the bodies on the spikes for all to see, and I'm sure they're always in the market for potential converts to attend their services.  Such blatant slaughter would prompt the Hardheads to do more than wonder why their factol wouldn't intervene.  And the Guvners count a number of high-ranking baatezu among their members — there's no way in Hell they'd hold back on destroying a tanar'ri stronghold if the law didn't forbid it.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion must be that the Temple's sacrifices are legal.  Since it would be impossible to have any kind of social order if they were allowed to just grab people off the street, the Temple must have to import their victims from elsewhere.  Maybe from dao slave farms, maybe as tribute from Abyssal cults on the Material Plane.

Now, it's probably true that the Temple's extensive blackmail of high-ups has something to do with keeping human sacrifice legal, but it's probably not the only thing.  Vampires and illithids require live sustenance, and they've got powerful friends in Sigil too.  I mean, if the courts let innocent bloodsuckers starve, that would be positively inhuman!    And if their victims are imported from the Material Plane... well, uncounted numbers of Clueless die every day on their own worlds and no Cager ever cared about them.  Why start now?

I thought about that, too. But how, on the other hand, would a habit of sacrificing intelligent beings become legal in the first place in a city, where the Harmonium, the Mercykillers, the Guvners, and several temples (and as far as I see it, every deity, regardless of alignment is opposed to demon-worshippers) hold positions of power?? Even if these three factions weren't around at that time, I'm certain several other powerful groups were, instead.

Personally I completely agree with that argument. But oddly enough, In the Cage explicitely lists "even the most righteous and holy of priests or paladins" as clients of the temple (top of p. 44).

The only explanation for this I can come up with right now is that the gods apparently are not nearly as strict as I believed before and have more of a 'The end justifies the means'- attitude, instead...

Well, technically we don't know when the Temple of the Abyss was created, either. 

I think the Temple is more like a mafia organization that wormed it's way to power, rather than being powerful enough to stand solely against the mass of groups who have one reason or another to oppose it from early on.