On the Outer Planes, philosophy ain’t just some graybeard’s far-flung way of seeing things: Belief is the fundament of reality. The planes of the Great Ring are made entirely of beliefs and values, from the lofty-heighted ideals of Mount Celestia to the deepest pits of savage cruelty in the Abyss.
What a lot of clueless berks fail to consider is this: If enough folks in a town hold a belief contrary to the rest of their plane, that town’s going to drift away to a different plane, slipping from the grasp of one reality to join another one better suited to their new philosophy. That means anywhere on the Outer Planes could conceivably become part of an entirely different universe, simply through a change in local beliefs.
What a sod believes in, then, has a direct influence on the multiverse, and the Outer Planes are the site of an endless struggle for the hearts and minds of everyone on them. The Blood War is more than a battle of extermination between fiends; it’s a war to establish a single, united Lower Plane, to define one brand of evil as the supreme one. In the same vein, the factions in Sigil are trying to sway the city to their point of view. If they do, the whole Cage will vanish off to some other plane. (That’s why the Lady of Pain isn’t just a figure – she’s Sigil’s anchor against the rest of the multiverse.) All this attention to ideology is important because it can actually cause the borders of the planes to change!
The Factions and the Kriegstanz
So how’s this work in day-to-day life? Creeds and dogmas gather new lands and adherents at the expense of all the others while trying to hang on to what they’ve got. All of this means something to every canny planewalker, too: Their actions can sometimes change the face of the planes. By getting involved with the philosophical politics – for instance, by thwarting or supporting a faction’s coup in a border town – they might keep that burg from the brink or give it the final push over the edge, sending it to another plane. When they choose, they make a difference a person can see and know. Rival ideologues fall to fighting, humiliation, espionage, even outright murder – not because they don’t like each other, but because their ideas have real power. That’s a clash of ideas, planar-style. And, squabbling in the thick of it all, are the factions, locked in their endless kriegstanz. Below is a mountaintop view of the factions. Details on each individual faction such as important members, headquarters and special membership abilities will be dealt with on the page for each faction. The following should be considered to be a “pocket guide to the factions”.
