The Doomguard

Source: Factol's Manifesto p.38

Harbingers of Decay

The Doomguard’s one of the more troublesome factions in Sigil: many berks just can't get a good handle on them. Sinkers - as members of the faction are called - cherish the forces of entropy, dancing while everything around them decays, falls into ruin, and disintegrates with the passage of time. The fate of the multiverse is a foregone conclusion: It's all supposed to crumble and fade away, so why rage against it? If the gate-town of Plague-Mort's about to slide onto the Abyss, let it. Better yet, help it along! Few Sinkers are content to just sit back and watch things fall apart; they do their best to assist the decay, whether that means taking a direct action (like starting a fire) or preventing one (like stopping a berk from putting our a fire).

'Course, members of this faction have to keep an eye on the big picture. Most Sinkers don't go around tearing up roads or putting sick folks in the dead-book; sure, the multiverse is going to collapse, but it doesn't have to happen overnight. Allowing a river to take a thousand years to erode its banks is every bit as strong and beautiful an act of entropy as is setting a fire. A lot of Sinkers'd even prefer the river, as it's a natural force of decay - one that's surely meant to be.

Like the Mercykillers, the Doomguard owes its charter to the Great Upheaval, when the Lady of Pain forced the nearly 50 factions in Sigil to reduce their number to only 15. The Lady’s shakeup - a glorious example of entropy lit its own right - made the loose gang of Sinkers formalize their organization and set themselves a purpose: patrolling the streets of the Cage. But the idea of guards promoting disorder and decay didn't sit well with the other factions; the Harmonium was sent in, and war broke out. The Sinkers retreated to the Armory, which they conquered handily, as no berk’d ever had the audacity to attack the monstrous structure. With fresh supplies, the battle raged for months. It was thought that the Lady of Pain might step in to set things right, but she never did; only her dabus took part, repairing roads and public structures damaged in the fighting. It finally took a vote of the other factols in the Hall of Speakers - one that threatened to revoke the Doomguard's faction status - to make them call off hostilities. The Sinkers even signed a blood pact swearing that they'd never again instigate a war in the Cage. In exchange, the Doomguard got lo keep the Armory as its headquarters and settled into a new duty: making and dispensing weaponry, a task well suited lo the faction's beliefs.

Even today, the enmity between the Sinkers and the Hardheads continues to boil: their philosophies are just too directly opposed for any kind of coming together. Other lawful factions have a similarly hard time dealing with the Doomguard, The Fraternity of Order tries to stem the tide of entropy with its narrow interpretations of law, and the Mercykillers long to punish Sinkers who take criminal actions to further the cause of decay. On the other hand, the Doomguard has a strong ally in the Dustmen; fact is, Factol Skall was instrumental in preventing the rest of the factols from revoking the Doomguard's status during the war. And while the Bleak Cabal scorns the idea that the multi verse has any goal, entropy or otherwise, Bleakers and Sinkers find common ground in decay.

But order lurks even in the midst of entropy. Following the multiversal Rule of Three, the Doomguard often finds itself split into three quarrelling subgroups, each taking a different approach to fostering decay. The first clique thinks that the multiverse ain't crumbling fast enough. These Sinkers periodically embark upon rampages of destruction: defacing or dismantling personal property, disrupting trade or negotiation in public places, and so on. They’re countered by a more sophisticated bunch of Sinkers who take a longer view, seeing the construction of a new bridge as parr of the process of decay. After all, masons chip the stone, miners empty a lode of iron, laborers add more creaks to their worn bodies, and razorvine weakens the span until if eventually collapses. According to this group, the disintegration of the multiverse is right on schedule: no need to hurry it along. And finally, a third pack of Sinkers - albeit a minority - thinks that everything’s falling apart too fast, that they must take steps to slow the rate of decay. Too much destruction coo quickly isn't entropy; it's just bedlam.

Interestingly, Factol Pentar's lent her support to the first group, the most violent of the three. She incites her Sinkers to acts of arson and vandalism, especially if the blame can be pinned on a sod from another faction. (Which causes marc chaos and anarchy, two powerful tools of entropy - Ed) Yet rumblings of discontent brew in the ranks; the old-fashioned Sinkers who prefer a slower or more natural erosion of order disapprove of the factors activities.

The Doomlords

The faction high-ups most loyal to Factol Pentar are her factors, called the Doomlords. Only the most powerful and ruthless Sinkers gel picked to be Doomlords; they must then undergo a transformation on the Negative Energy Plane so horrible that it’s spoken of only in whispers and innuendo. When they return, they wear robes and black-and-red masks emblazoned with the faction’s skull symbol. The chant's that the Doom lords never again remove their masks. The transformation's also said to drain a Sinker of his original personality, remaking him into a zealous ambassador of decay.

The faction has four greater Doomlords - though other lesser Doomlords exist - who've somehow tied to the quasielemental planes nearest the desolate Negative Energy Plane. Currently, the four greater Doomlords are: Devland (Pl/♂half-elf/F14/Doomguard/LN), the Doomlord of Ash; Nagaul (Pl/♀dwarf/F10/Doomguard/NG), the Doomlord of Vacuum: Roth (Pl/♂tiefling/F14/Doomguard/CN), the Doomlord of Salt; and Pereid (Pl/♀human/R19/Doomguard/LN), the Doomlord of Dust. The four spend most of their time in the faction's citadels on their respective planes, but they sometimes return to the Armory to lake a more direct hand in Sinker affairs.

To aid the cause, the Doomlords create champions of entropy - cutters charged with overcoming specific threats to the process of decay. For instance, a champion might oppose a priest who's preventing a town from slipping off into the Ethereal. The Doomlords also give their champions blades of tremendous power - specially forged on the quasi elemental planes - each specifically designed to combat a single threat Once the threats been negated, the blade turns to dust. 'Course, disposing with a major threat may take considerable time: an entropy champion might spend his whole lire trying to complete a mission, passing his blade on to a worthy successor if necessary.

Factol Pentar

Female elf planar

Born in the gate-town of Xaos on the Outlands some thirty-odd years ago. Femur grew up in an environment steeped in chaos anti destruction - which she embraced with arms open wide. Even as a child, she sought situations rife with danger and decay: as a teenager, she nearly lost her life reveling in a volcanic eruption.

In many ways, Pentar's the model of a perfect Sinker, preferring to let her Jong, raven tresses flow freely rather than tie them back, no matter how impractical. She's completely without fear in battle or any other hazardous situations. And that attracted the attention of the Doomlords, who early on imbued her with the power and responsibility of a champion of entropy. When the previous factol of the Doomguard met a glorious end in the midst of a slave uprising he himself had sparked, the Doomlords voted to appoint Pentar the new Factol.

The decision’s proven well-founded. Pentar's been factol for over five years now, and she’s always eager to perform her duties: she even sleeps garbed in battle gear, her swords and bow at the ready. Pentar also has an ancient dust blade, historically tilled the blade of modron death, that's been handed down front one factol to the next. It was forged specifically to quell the Great March of the modrons. (Every 17 cycles, thousands of modrons set off from Mechanus and make a clockwise trip around the Outer Planes, though no scholar's yet found the dark of it. - Ed) So far, though, every factol who's tried to stop the march has failed - some've even died in the attempt.

Pentar’s aware that many of her Sinkers disagree with her call for active, violent disorder. Fact is, she secretly delights in the growing seeds of rebellion, hoping to push the faction to the point where till display a little entropy of its own - perhaps by falling apart completely. Besides, the next Great March will take place in about a cycle time, and she's busy training to be the first factol to stop that threat of order and regulation. As such, she's come to leave more of the day-to-day dealings at die Armory to her most sturdy blood, a Tanar'ri named Ely Cromlich.

Ely Cromlich
Male fiend (Marquis cambion) planar

The cambion Ely Cromlich (His human mother was from Elysium and named her son after her home plane - Ed.) can always be found at the Armory, guiding the production and dispersal of weapons. He's completely in accord with Pentar, and the two of them are close friends - some say lovers. The fiend's an expert weapons master, capable of using any kind of arms; he frequently tests weapons brought to the Armory for sale and gives demonstrations of any unusual weapons a sod might want to buy, He is most inclined and helpful to folks who bring him a weapon he's never seen before (an unlikely event; as he's worked at the Armory for more than a century now), Cromlich also forges much-lauded Doomguard weapons that even chaotic berks line up to buy.

His able assistant, a man named Spragg (Pr/♂human/0-level/Doomguard/LG), handles a lot of the paperwork for prospective buyers and sellers. This sad-eyed, excruciatingly thin man is learning the ins and outs of weapon making - and the destructive force of Pentar's policies. He's slowly coming to realize that Pentar's practices are too wild and destructive, Spragg's begun to build a subtle backlash against Pentar, and now more and more Sinkers - especially the once-silent majority - are complaining about the factors guerilla tactics.

The Armory

Located at the edge of The Lady's Ward nearest the seedy Lower Ward, the Armory serves as the Doomguard's headquarters. The elegant ominous structure has an opening at its top that's protected by metal fretwork. Billowing up from the center of the Armory at all hours of the day or night is a tremendous blast of heat and light from the huge weapons forge below. The Armory has few windows, and the only entrance to the building lies beneath a dominating bas relief of the Doomguard's Faction symbol, the skull of a wild planar bull. Folks who enter the Armory tend to shudder as they pass beneath the monstrous sculpture.

The 24-story structure is covered with razorvine deliberately left to grow out of control - all the better to discourage any would-be thieves from climbing the walls and entering through the open roof But the four square towers anchoring the corners of the building remain strangely free of the sharp vine, even though no Sinker or dabus seems to cut it back.

The Armory's first floor is the only one open to the public. The mighty weapons forge takes up the center of the floor, with the rest devoted to the buying and selling of all types of weapons. In each corner of the floor are guarded doors leading into the four square towers, which hold only a small forge on the first floor and Sinker quarters on all the rest. Only the Doomguard - or sneaky bashers - may use the towers to get into the higher floors of the Armory. Those remaining floors house treasuries, guard barracks, meeting rooms, practice halls, display cases that boast every type of armor known, and repositories for weapons not available to the public. The topmost floor features only the factol's quarters and chambers for visiting Doomlords.

Buying and Selling Weapons

Just inside the building's only entrance is the area for buying and selling weapons, an exhibition hall that's open to the public 24 hours a day. A customer must first go through a harsh security check, and the entry hall's antimagic barrier is sure to pick up anything the searchers might miss. A berk more interested in a particular purchase is escorted into one of the weapon repositories, where, depending on his desire and his purse, he can purchase weapons both common and magical. A sod Without much jink can poke through slightly damaged or defective weapons, all on sale for half price. If a cutter's got real brass, he can check out the engines of war repository for large-scale equipment - a siege machine, say, or a catapult or two. (The Doomguard'll teleport any item anywhere in the multiverse, no matter what the size, for an appropriate delivery fee. - Ed.)

Those looking to have a special-order weapon made can talk to Cromlich at the central forge. A weapon fired in the forge costs three times the standard price, but they're exceptionally well-made and worth every coin. Besides, it's said that any weapon forged in the Armory has a special enchantment - undetectable by detect magic - that lets it absorb the effects of a spell cast in combat. 'Course, Cromlich won't say if a particular weapon's got the power, not unless he gets a mighty fine fee for his "professional opinion."

The Citadels

It's suspected that the Armory contains hidden portals to the Doomguard’s citadels, but so far not a single blood’s come forward with the dark of it. However, it’s known that the faction maintains one citadel on each of the four negative quasielemental planes, each built as close to the Negative Energy Plane as possible. Each stronghold is ruled by one of the four greater Doomlords. Sinkers often visit the citadels, both for patrol duty and to witness the destruction of the multiverse in a more dramatic environment.

The Crumbling Citadel: This monumental stepped pyramid made solely of triangular stone is located on the Quasielemental Plane of Ash. It's a perpetual ruin with rubble somehow falling endlessly from the high ceilings. The ruler - Devland, the Doomlord of Ash - is a very reclusive half-elf and allows only Sinkers of 5th level or higher to disturb his solace.

Citadel Alluvius: This inconvenient stronghold on the plane of Dust is more or less a tower fallen on its side. The original ceilings and floors are now the walls, and the curving walls now serve as concave floors and convex ceilings. The stone staircases are useless, running sideways through the tower. Pereid, the Doomlord of Dust, enjoys talking with visitors. Though her syntax tends to be as twisted as her palace. (Fact is, she often sounds like a Xaositect. - Ed.)

Citadel Sealt: Where the plane of Salt meets the Great Void in a wall of crystalline mineral the Doomguard excavated an echoing vault, miles in diameter. Here the salt eats away relentlessly at a berk, sucking dry every ounce of moisture. The citadel's often the site of festivities when the faction entertains visitors from the Lower Planes, and Roth, Doomlord of Salt, has recently doubled the number of planned retreats.

Citadel Exhalus: Tethered by a thread of nothingness, this citadel drifts through the void that is the plane of Vacuum, Meditative Sinkers come here to contemplate the logical conclusion of entropy. Any visit to its unprotected platforms is perilous, since devouring spirits of the plane sweep through unimpeded, It's no wonder that Nagaul, the Doomlord of Vacuum, is terse and grim - even for a female dwarf.

Within the Ranks

Naturally enough, the Doomguard's hierarchy is a loose one, despite its militaristic outlook. At the top are the factol and the Doomlords (the equivalent of factors), and below that is everyone else. But the faction's not going to appeal to everyone, especially not cutters who like to collect and hoard treasure, land, or trinkets. None of that matters to a Doomguard; all that's important is focusing on the end.

Role-Playing the Sinkers

The Doomguard doesn't bother marking namers and factotums; the only distinctions it makes are among faction members who push hard for entropy, those who let nature take its course, and those who slow it all down. 'Course, as the first bunch of Sinkers is usually the most vocal (and violent), the latter two groups often find themselves viewed as agents - tools, really - to be manipulated by "right-thinking" faction members. This can often lead to blows when Sinkers of different leanings try to work together. But infighting's natural, they’d say - just another manifestation of decay.

The Doomguard's one of the factions most open to a body's personal interpretation of its tenets. Regardless of how a Sinker leans, he always responds to a direct threat to entropy. But the method of that response varies from one body to another, depending on alignment anti faction leaning. Say a Hardhead moves to break up a brawl, or an Indep tries to quiet a stampeding herd. A Doomguard who believes in speeding up the decay of the multiverse would physically restrain the berk trying to restore order. Another Sinker might take a longer view; Perhaps letting the Harmonium basher make his arrest is the entropic thing to do, as it may engender more hatred for the Hardheads and eventually spark a mass uprising,

A Sinker’s got to live with his own choices, and that extends to personal habits, as well. Some Sinkers use only the newest of gear, delighting in the erosion of virgin materials. Others use equipment that's passed through many hands, insistent that secondhand articles be shepherded to their demise. And some sport clothing and weapons so old as to be barely functional Course, a Doomguard warrior who fights with a broken sword won't be much loved by his adventuring group - except, perhaps, by a rogue who follows the Sinker along, picking up gold coins that drop through the hole in his worn pocket.

Alignment. The Doomguard's open to bashers of all alignments. But a Sinkers world view tends to put him in one of the three competing cliques that've popped up in the faction.

Those of chaotic alignments usually fall in with the Sinkers who want to accelerate the pace of decay; those of neutral alignments generally agree that the multiverse should crumble at its own pace, with no help or hindrance; and lawful cutters try to hold entropy to a slow crawl. What’s more, these three distinctions are further colored by whether a Sinker leans toward good or evil. Good Sinkers prefer inaction as a method of pushing their agenda - rather than tearing down a new kip, they'd merely stop others from shoring up a decrepit one. But evil Sinkers play a more active role, figuring that it's better to start a fire than sit around and wait for one.

Class. Clerics of the life domain are banned from the Doomguard; their spells are a slap in the face to the forces of entropy. However, all other classes - including Clerics who don’t use those healing spells - may join the faction.

Fact is, a Sinker’s class often determines how fiercely he fights for entropy. Many fighters take a direct approach, using their strength and weapon skills to weaken bridges, upend merchants' carts, and so on. Wizards and clerics tend to step back and more readily grasp the big picture, promoting decay in a subtle, long-range fashion. And rogue's like to use their abilities to stir up chaos, rather than build their fortunes - a rogue might plant stolen goods in the mayor's pocket, for example, or a sweet tongued bard might incite oppressed masses to riot.

Sinker Membership

The Doomguard's open to most everyone, but it wants to make sure that an applicant's not some berk who'll run around destroying things just for the fun of it, A body looking to sign up must pass three tests to prove his understanding of and devotion to entropy.

A candidate should talk to Ely Cromlich or Spragg at the Armory; whichever of them is less busy'll administer the tests. First, the basher must smash one of his weapons to pieces on an outer wall of the Armory, showing both decay and his willingness to surrender his past life. Second, he must take a sack containing no fewer than 500 gold pieces into the Hive Ward and scatter the coins in a public place - if a riot breaks out, all the better. But it's the third test that usually gives a basher pause; He must prevent the dabus from trimming back the razorvine on any single overgrown building in the Cage for a full day. With communication difficult and combat most likely fatal (especially if the Lady of Pain takes offense at a berk messing with her agents), the applicant must find a more creative method of protecting the razorvine. Any cutter who passes all three tests is given a Doomguard-forged sword and henceforth considered a Sinker.

Faction Abilities
The Doomguard is very militaristic in organization and outlook, all members are trained to fight with a sword, if they don't have it already they gain proficiency with swords (Shortsword, Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar, Greatsword). In addition, they can spend Inspiration to deliver an entropic blow, turning a successful attack they make against a creature of an opposing alignment into an automatic critical hit.
They can also sift through destroyed matter for one minute, running your hands through charred buildings and rubble, to determine the cause of the destruction so long as it occurred within 100 years.

Finally, if a Sinker's especially ruthless in his pursuit of entropy, he may find himself picked to become the entropy champion of a Doomlord. Only those of 5th level or higher who've served the Faction well may be considered for this promotion. Once petitioned by a Doomlord - or even the factol - the Sinker must first travel to die Doomlord's citadel on die appropriate quasielemental plane.

Once there, the basher undergoes a fasting and purification ritual for one week. Then, he's brought to the stronghold's forge, where the steel to be used for his new entropy blade lies in a molten pool. The Doomlord chains the Sinker to a table and peels away a layer of his skin equal to the surface area of the weapon to be made. (Which might account for why most entropy blades are short swords. - Ed.) The Doomlord forges the skin directly into the new weapon, casting various binding spells in the process. Then the new champion's allowed 33 days to recover and sent on his mission. The champion will receive the following feat:

The Chant

Factol Pentar seems to be taking less and less interest in the workings and concerns of her faction, instead preferring to get ready for ihe next Great March. To that end, she's looking for loyal Sinkers who'll go to the gate-town of Automata, hook up with the Council of Anarchy, and get its help in smuggling a live modron or two out of the clockwork plane of Mechanus. Through intimidation and maybe dissection - Pentar hopes to get to the dark of the modrons and their mysterious march before it takes place.

Many Sinkers aren't happy that Pentar's wrapped up in her cause, bur the Harmonium seems glad - anything to stay her calls for destruction and mayhem. Fact is, lately the Hardheads have been more cordial to the Doomguard than ever before. It might be that they want to avoid more hostilities, but only a leatherhead would put a single copper piece down on that bet. Many whisper that, it’s just a prelude to an attack on the Armory - the Hardheads are eager to get their hands on the incredible weapons therein.

A growing fad among Sinkers involve buying strong drinks and other intoxicating delights for naive Sensates, who think they've found generous new friends. But the Doomguard's plan is to steep the pleasure-seekers in constant revelry, hoping that roving bands of drunk Sensates'll bring fresh entropy to the Cage. It also might have something to do with the increased sightings of fiends especially tanar'ri - in and around the Civic Festhall. Similar numbers of tanar'ri are paying calls on the Armory, and it's a cinch they're not dropping by just to see Ely Cromlich.