Welcome to Chaos
Be Good. If you can't be good, be quick.
Without a doubt, Sigil's a wondrous city. Under tile watchful eye of the Lady of Pain, it senses as a crossroads to all creation, drawing all sorts of creatures to its thorny bosom. Where else in the multiverse could a basher ever think to see a deva and a balor arm wrestling to settle a dispute? Only Sigil has the character to draw them both in ... and the might to keep them both civil.
Despite its wonders, though, lots of cutters find themselves with a desire to leave the city from time to time. For some, it's wanderlust. For others, it's expediency (like a price on their heads).
In either case, many of them find their way to the Chaos side of tile Great Road, where laws are loose and every cutter's his own boss... at least as long as he stays out of the clutches of something more powerful.
This book's a guide for cullers who're about to head for tile Chaos planes:
It'll share a few secrets of the places they'll find there and the souls they'll meet. That means that this book is intended for both players and the Dungeon Master. The Book of Chaos and Chaos Adventures, on the other hand, should be read only by the DM - others should keep their noses out of them, berk!
And enjoy my stay, to traveler! Welcome your.
Travelling the Planes
Bloods know that when it comes to crossing the planes, a soul'd best be prepared. A basher can't just expect to stroll from one place to another like on a prime-material world. For one thing, the planes are so big there's infinitely more ground to cover. For another, even in the most "normal" regions, the terrain itself- whether it's mountain, river, gorge, or whatever - is wrought on a grander scale. And, of course, many of the planes are just plain deadly in their own right. Clueless berks can be roasted, drowned, dissolved, frozen, crushed, or just plain killed before they even know what's hit them, if they don't take a bit of care. Then there's the natives, many of whom have served for ages as the stuff of prime world nightmares. The moral is, a cutter's got to know what she's about before she sets out across the planes.
Covering the Distance
Everyone knows that a body can't expect to get anywhere traveling the planes cross-country. The planes are just too bleeding big, and there's lots of places that are far too remote to walk to. Sigil's the best example of that, because it can only be entered by portal. But even outside of Sigil, portals, conduits, or spells are almost absolutely necessary for long-distance travel. 'Course, that doesn't mean cutters never walk anywhere. For one thing, if they're using a portal or the like, they have to walk to it to begin with. And it's not likely to drop them exactly where they want to be, so there's some walking involved again on the other end. Often as not, that'll lead to another portal, gate, or whatever, which takes the travelers closer to their destination but still leaves them some ground to cover.
For most cutters, then, a trip from their kip in Sigil to, say, the town of Windglum in Pandemonium, involves a series of short journeys to reach their next jumping off point. First, they'll have to walk across Sigil to the first portal they're planning on using. Unless they know of one leading directly to Bedlam - the town where Pandemonium's gate is currently located - they'll have to settle for dropping somewhere else in the Outlands. If they're a small group with a powerful enough wizard, they can then teleport directly to Bedlam, assuming the wizard's familiar with the place. But like as not, they'll have to travel across the Outlands for a short bit, instead, looking for a local who can show them a conduit or other pathway leading closer to that town. Wherever that drops them, they'll probably have to walk a short distance to enter Bedlam itself, then across town to Pandemonium's gate. Once through the gate, they'll have to walk some more to find a passage to the plane's third layer, then again to reach Windglum itself. And while the walks themselves aren't long in each case, a cutter still has to deal with each environment.
The ironic thing is, there's likely a portal somewhere in Sigil leading directly to Windglum, if only the travelers could've got someone to point it out to them. But given the politics of Sigil, that might have taken even longer.
Surviving the Environment
Forewarning's the secret to surviving on a plane with a hostile environment. Before crossing through a threshold to another plane, a basher needs to know how to endure its conditions. The trick to that is simple: Ask someone who's been there. If there's no one available before the journey who knows, a basher should be ready to ask some of the locals when he gets near the threshold. They've been dealing with the environment for as long as they've been there, and they know its dangers. Even if they're naturally adapted to the conditions and aren't threatened by them personally, the locals have seen lots of adventurers come and go. They've had the benefit of seeing how those visitors survived or didn't, and can pass along their secrets to those who ask. 'Course, convincing them to help can be a bit tricky sometimes. But it's worth the trouble to avoid dying from ignorance.
Dealing with Natives
Naturally, travelers not only have to survive the plane itself, they also have to know how to deal with its natives. Here again, the main trick to getting by is to ask ahead of time. If a cutter can't get the information before leaving home, he's got to seek it out on the way. Usually, there'll be someone he can dicker with for the necessary knowledge. If nothing else, there' ll be a basher who's set up shop on or close to the plane in question, and who makes a living by provisioning visitors and advising them. That advice includes knowledge of the natives a cutter can expect to encounter, and the niceties of getting along with them. Just be sure to bring along a lot of goods to trade with, because these information brokers can be expensive sometimes, especially if they know they've got a basher over a barrel.
If, despite asking ahead of time, a cutter meets up with something she wasn't warned about, the next best thing to being prepared is to stay calm. Not everything that meets a cutter wants to kill her, so staying cool gives it time to have its say. By the same token, those things that do want to kill a cutter on sight often mistake calmness for confidence. That makes them hesitant to fight, at least till they've sized the cutter up to see how much of a threat she really is. And while they're doing that, she can size them up as well, so when the fight does come, she knows whether to stay or run.
That brings up the third trick to dealing with the natives: Don't be afraid to flee. It's much better for bashers to pack it in and move along when outmatched, because they can always come back better prepared. In effect, they've won even though they fled, because now they have information they didn't have before.
Planar Politics. If Sigil is, as some claim, the heart of the planes, faction politics is the lifeblood pumping through that heart. And Sigil's factions reach outward to the rest of the planes as well, affecting much of what transpires there.
However, not everyone on the planes gives a fig about Sigil's factions. The most obvious example is the denizens of the prime worlds, who are as clueless about the factions as they are about other planes in general. But even on the other planes, a lot of souls are either ignorant of the factions or disdainful of them. In fact, in some places, local philosophies or concerns outshine Sigil's factions in importance. Within the githzerai strongholds in Limbo, for instance, the politics of terrain shaping is extremely important. And from Ysgard there has spread a philosophical outlook whose adherents are known as the Ring-givers. These and other examples are detailed later in this book, with the planes on which they're most commonly found.
Among Cagers, it's common practice to refer to such groups as sects, so as not to confuse them with the factions who run the various aspects of Sigil. Now, that may seem a pretty pretentious attitude for Cagers to take, but considering how snobbish and self-absorbed they can be, it's a wonder they deign to recognize outlying groups at all.