Captain Jacky’s story
“The self-described ‘Captain Jacky’ described her recent experiences thusly.”
For decades events in Sigil have been building to a head. Asokar, the God of Portals, claimed this formerly neutral territory at the center of the Outer Planes centuries ago, and while it was a site easily claimed it was difficult to subdue; Abigail’s Army and the other Guilds were willing to accept his reign but not his rule, if you follow me. If you’d ever met a Power you’d understand it’s hard to even think about slighting one while he’s right there breathing into you, but other times it’s a different tale. So what Asokar probably expected to be a quick consolidation of power turned into a low-volume riot that went one for generations, fed by agents of various other Powers. Sometimes one’ll get bold and attack Asokar, up in his palace at the center of the city, in the sky above. Sometimes even it isn’t a power’s proxy, it’s — it was, I mean — some inflated wizard or the like with the kind of hubris you need to think you can take and hold the Big Prize.
The Big Prize: Sigil. You don’t call it that any more? What? The Cage. That’s stupid.
Fine, fine. So I was in the Seven Corners, based out of Fort Rackam, where they serve _drinks_ now, walking a patrol with six who’d taken the Queen’s silver… that means they’d been Inducted into Abigail’s Army, right? Just some nobodies-important, in case Wash Jones’s orangies were going to try something. And I saw this light, in the sky under Asokar’s palace, like a woman’s face but with knives coming out… not unlike, I should maybe point out, that painting over there. The Lady of Pain. Fine. I’m in some lame alternate future where this “Lady of Pain” has wrested control of Sigil from Asokar. I get it. You don’t need to keep hitting me over the head.
So this little power’s agent or whatever, the Lady of Pain, she flies up towards the palace and then Asokar’s out there in the sky and the two of them are making pyro and a light show, but it’s all contained. I think Asokar put a big forcecage or something up, that’s what it looks like. Then another light starts in, like, bluish? And at first I think it’s to do with the fight up above — it had been going on for a couple minutes by this point, and everyone I could see… everyone in the city probably, we were all watching slack-jawed like we always did whenever Asokar was out and about and in line-of-sight.
Yeah. Anyway, this light gets brighter and I get dizzy and disoriented, like someone’s hit me with a mindspasm, but a little different. And then it stops and I look around and all the buildings have changed and all the people around — except me, and the nobodies-important, and a half-dozen or so of the cigs around us… so like twelve or thirteen total? Less than twenty, definitely. Maybe fifteen, less. And I tell the Inducted to stick close to me, but they’re freaked and they scatter when they hear the crash.
Did I not mention the crash? I checked it out, big piece of masonry fell to the ground from up high, about a hundred yards from where I got hit with the mindspasm. Maybe it’s from the present, too. So I went to find the alternate-future Fort Rack and it was a bar, and that brings you up to speed.