Difference between revisions of "City Courts (Sigil)"

Latest revision as of 18:37, 14 March 2024

The Headquarters of the Fraternity of Order (more commonly called the Guvners), the City Court and the surrounding quarter are the liveliest places in The Lady's Ward of Sigil, perhaps because the people in it are so close to death. Every crooked cutter, it seems, comes here sooner or later, scragged by the Harmonium. Whether he gets out of it again depends on the judges in the private halls of the Court. Because it has a public function, the Guvners' headquarters is divided into public and private halls. In the public halls, a cutter can find knights, Cagers, witnesses, advocates, clerks, accusers, and Mercykiller and Harmonium guards. The crowds and bickering seem like disorganized chaos (unlike the organized chaos of most of the city), but the Guvners have a plan for everything. In the Court’s private halls, a body doesn’t find anyone but Guvners and their guests. There, the judges meet to discuss cases and reach their decisions, often referring to the immense library of laws the faction’s assembled.

Outside the Court, a number of taverns and inns serve those attending trials. In comparison to other places in The Lady’s Ward, they’re pretty lively. In comparison to places elsewhere in the city, they can seem damned quiet, especially after a number of harsh sentences have been handed down. The taverns serve anybody from thief to Hardhead, and there can’t help but be a little life in ’em. Most of the alehouses do extra business selling meals to prisoners or running wine and beer to the back rooms of the Court.

The private halls of the Guvners are best left to those who have a reason for going there; describing them to others might only invite disaster. The more important portions of the Court don’t belong to the Fraternity of Order at all: The public halls, the outer courtyards, and the arched porticos where advocates hawk their skills are where much of the business of the Court is decided. With large, distracted crowds all over the Court, cross-trading knights are cheeky enough to pick pockets, snatch purses, and strongarm the weak. The Court itself has little protection to spare; a peery cutter with friends is better off than a lone fool with a fat purse. The Guvners’ guards are too busy corraling prisoners and maintaining order in the courtrooms to make time for every barmy who upsets a baatezu in the alleys nearby.

The law library of the Guvners is useful for many things, the least of which is codifying all the laws of the City of Doors. A mage with any sense at all knows that the laws that govern the multiverse must also contain the laws that govern magic. In the Library of the Guvners, that’s literally true. Every spell known to man or mage exists somewhere in the library, though it requires a mage of great learning to find the strands that reveal a spell’s secrets.

Note: The City Courts of Sigil originally appeared in In the Cage: A Guide to Sigil. Their use here is for the purposes of providing context for the campaign only.