I guess we’ll probably find out sooner, but I’m curious. It mentions in several lore things how sigil might be her prison and that she could be involved in the blood war. Do you think that she could be a demon lord?

I am going to presume this is a present day FR related thread, lol.

She was introduced to the game as whole as a stand alone figure, with rumors across all the different planes of who and what she was and why she is so powerful and yet never leaves Sigil.

unofficially, she was conceived as the anima mundi of Sigil — essentially the living embodiment of the place itself. She is Sigil, and Sigil is her. 

The one thing that she absolutely isn't is a deity.  And after the flap WotC got from listing her alignment in the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, I'm really hoping that they're not going to try statting her out or giving any definitive answers about what she is.

This is from memory - and my memory is shaky at the best of times, and not improved trying to think back 20+ years. But it was mentioned somewhere that no one knows for sure whether the LoP made, or found Sigil. Also that it's unclear whether Sigil's primary function is to keep her in, or something else out. It's called The Cage, though, so maybe that's a hint. But then it's a cage with an unusual number of holes, the place being lousy with portals going everywhere. 

We propably will find out who and what she is - which of course will ruin everything. They really should hire some adults, with better sense of things - but they're not going to.

So the story will undoubtedly be something inane and boring, like ... she was a powerful demon queen who threatened to usurp Orcus, or Mephistopheles, or one of the others, and she got thrown in the Cage. It'll be utter junk, of that I'm sure. 

An adult might come up with (see, this is dangerous, because now I actually need to cook up something at least slightly good, right? Well, give me the benefit of a doubt: I'm winging this as I write) something like: She is the Lady of Pain, not because of the pain she might inflict upon others, but because of her own suffering. She is powerful, sure - but she is not powerful enough. The thing she wants more than anything in the world, she cannot achieve. This is also why she takes such a laissez faire approach to ruling her city: She doesn't care, and it's not about that. It's literally not a city to her - it's a cage. And she's not whose caught in it - her only child is. 

Infinity ago, when the world was young and fresh and clean and wonderful, there was an agent of the lower planes. In more recent times, she might have been called a succubus, but this was long before such things became standardised. Rather, she was a creature of lust and love, primal and dangerous, a counterpoint to Sune Firehair if you like - an expression of all the things that go wrong when passion is involved. Jealousy and heartbreak and so on.

Now, in those early days of everything, there was a war between heaven and hell. One that's never actually ended, but back then it was new. And our Lady was dispatched to seduce a general of the heavens - again, no mere Solar, but an earlier, more primal force of good. And she did so, succesfully, then being what she was, brutally backstabbed and murdered him.

But from that union sprang a child. And this unknown child is what is contained in the cage. The city of Sigil that we know is not the cage itself - it is the lock. Beyond, should anyone ever succeed at unlocking it, awaits something ... unknown, and dangerous enough that it's own mother sealed it away - to keep the multiverse safe, and to keep it safe from the forces of both heaven and hell, who want it gone. 

And so the Lady of Pain is called that way because of love - of her child, of it's father, and of the things she's had to do to them both. 

There. Improvised, so make of it what you will.

I think there was talk of her being a primordial incarnation of balance/neutrality to Ao's incarnation of good.

Quote from Acromos >>

We propably will find out who and what she is - which of course will ruin everything. They really should hire some adults, with better sense of things - but they're not going to.

Mostly agree, although I don't think it really matters who they task with detailing the Lady of Pain's background and history. Nearly anything that anybody writes will destroy that air of mystery and mystique, which most of the original material purposely left open to individual interpretation. Yes, there was some vague speculation scattered throughout various books and supplements, but the information was intentionally vague.

And I know that anybody can always ignore whatever details come out in this newest rendition, but it kinda feels like reveling how a magician does a magic trick... It just destroys some of the illusion by knowing the "truth" of it. 

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

The one thing that she absolutely isn't is a deity.  And after the flap WotC got from listing her alignment in the 3.5 Manual of the Planes, I'm really hoping that they're not going to try statting her out or giving any definitive answers about what she is.

Also agree with this sentiment, especially since providing a stat block would not only destory some of the mystique but would also make the Lady of Pain just another creature for the PCs to fight/defeat.

Quote from Javier_Phenergan >>

 

Mostly agree, although I don't think it really matters who they task with detailing the Lady of Pain's background and history. Nearly anything that anybody writes will destroy that air of mystery and mystique, which most of the original material purposely left open to individual interpretation. Yes, there was some vague speculation scattered throughout various books and supplements, but the information was intentionally vague.

And I know that anybody can always ignore whatever details come out in this newest rendition, but it kinda feels like reveling how a magician does a magic trick... It just destroys some of the illusion by knowing the "truth" of it. 

 

And ain't that the truth. I do confess I feel doubly disappointed when they destroy the mystery - and then do it with a bad story. 

Truth be told, it's not always bad, but as far as I can tell, it's invariably bad when it's an edit to something existing. Thus, I feel that no supplement, no expansion or whatever, has ever been good. But some of the original work is .... frankly fantastic. I still get giddy just thinking about how excellent Planescape or Dark Sun is. Then I remember Dragonlance, and the feeling dies badly. 

Didn't the Lady of Pain at some point kill a god that tried to usurp Sigil? I have somthing in that direction somewhere deep in my mind... back from the AD&D 2e Planescape set...

Quote from Voras >>

Didn't the Lady of Pain at some point kill a god that tried to usurp Sigil? I have somthing in that direction somewhere deep in my mind... back from the AD&D 2e Planescape set...

I believe that you might be thinking of Aoskar, who was supposed to be a deity of portals and gateways. Rumors were that Aoskar either possessed Sigil at some point or was trying to take control/gain access to it. The Lady of Pain not only ousted him but put him in the dead book as well. His main temple in Sigil eventually became the guildhall of the Athar faction, since it "proves" that even a "god" can be killed.

I think Coaxmetal put it best:

"IMMORTALITY IS ONLY A WORD. ALL THAT EXISTS CAN DIE. EVERY LIVING THING HAS A WEAPON AGAINST WHICH IT HAS NO DEFENSE. TIME. DISEASE. IRON. GUILT."

Just popping by the thread to note that the writers did an excellent job of explaining what the Lady does while unveiling none of the mystery required to keep the character interesting.  Everything in the recently released in the Planescape book covers all the canon knowledge about the character, and does so in a way that should make us og Planescape feeling pretty satisfied.

My headcanon for the multiverse is that she’s a planar incarnate for sigil or a goddess. Either way, she’s the midwife of the multiverse. The spire and sigil aren’t the centre of the multiverse, rather they’re the edge, the border and the beginning. Spire is where the outlands form from, replacing loss land as it vanishes into the other outer planes at the gates. The part where the air goes into a balloon. This is also why the weird divine and levelled spell stuff happens.

Sigil is the wall that bounds the multiverse, it’s also the ring that binds the inner and outer planes. Looking outside it you see nothing, and it connects everywhere because it is the edge of everywhere. The part that bounds the far realms and the normal multiverse. 

Although my world does not exist within the normative cosmology of D&D, my fond memories of the Planescape from long ago did lead to me dropping in a location of a peculair place into the Plane of Shadow, the city of Sigil, and it is indeed ruled over by the Lady of Pain.

After the names, though, they are completely different. I did, however, only give it a single sentence, so maybe I will expand that out to a paragraph.

Pain pain! PAIN!!!

My 1-20 homebrew Planescape campaign featured Sigil and the LoP heavily towards Tiers 2 and 3. This is homebrew so not canon, but in my cosmology, Io didn't create Bahamut & Tiamat but rather split his essence to become them. He split in three ways, though the third, Sardior the Ruby dragon, wasn't well known in the multiverse. 

So Io splits, but for a reason unknown to even the gods, Io's original body was left behind. That type of godly magic (or McGuffin, if you will) can't be left unchecked, so it was hidden deep in a vault - the power of the body was so great that even Sardior, who vowed to protect it in secret, couldn't stop planar portals from occasionally slipping out of the cracks. 

You can probably see where this is going. Sardior took on a guise and acted as ruthless protector of Io's body - the body's cage became Sigil, Sardior became the Lady of Pain (feeding on Io's power to keep things in check when necessary) and the greatest lie in the multiverse was kept hidden. 

My players, obviously, were the first people to ever learn this in the multiverse. They are the main characters, after all.