Factions (PS:T)

A faction is an organized group of like-minded individuals built around a core philosophical belief. There are fifteen factions in the Planescape setting, though only five can be joined by The Nameless One.

According to Able Ponder-Thought, there were once forty-nine factions in Sigil. At some point, the Lady of Pain declared that only fifteen should remain. Shortly thereafter, everyone who was not a member of one of the chosen factions wound up dead. This event came to be known as the Great Upheaval.

Joining a faction

A faction can be joined after its faction recruiter has been spoken to about membership and any assigned tasks or quests have been completed.

If the Nameless One is already a member of a faction, joining a different one will result in the loss of the original faction's benefits.

Swearing allegiance to a faction grants access to weapons, equipment, and other items unavailable elsewhere.

Factions

Joinable factions

• The Dustmen
• The Believers of the Source
• The Revolutionary League
• The Society of Sensation
• The Xaositects

Other factions

• The Athar
• The Bleak Cabal
• The Doomguard
• The Fated
• The Fraternity of Order
• The Free League
• The Harmonium
• The Mercykillers
• The Sign of One
• The Transcendent Order

Joinable Faction Philosophies

• The Dustmen ("The Dead") believe that by purging your passions you can ascend toward the purity of True Death. They say that life is a great trick full of pain and misery. All these worlds and all these universes are just shadows of another existence. If things were truly alive there be no such thing as pain and misery in the multiverse. Life is supposed to be about celebration and positive feelings. Existence in the multiverse is muted, dull, full of pain, and twisted with sorrow. There is no celebration, this existence is a mockery of true life.

• Believers of the Source ("Godsmen") believe that all life springs from the same divine source, ascending and descending in form as the cosmos tests it. To them, all things are godly. All things can ascend to greater glory, if not in this life, then in the next. Patience, that's all it takes. Everything: primes, planars, petitioners, proxies, is being tested. Survive, succeed, and ascend. Fail and get reincarnated to try again. Mess up and come back as a prime or something worse in the next life. The problem is nobody really knows what the tests are. Is a person supposed to be good, evil or something else? Godsmen are trying to figure that out. They calculate what's the whole purpose of the multiverse, what's being tested and how.

• The Revolutionary League ("Anarchists") believe that all other factions are built on lies and greed. They are all corrupt and are guiding people in the wrong directions, keeping them as slaves and prisoners to the powerful. Their beliefs are lies. They need to be destroyed and the world rebuilt with what's left, that's the way to the real truth. The other factions do not care about the truth, they all have: property, bodyguards, jink, and influence. Once the other factions come down, then people can find the real truth. Break it all and rebuild with the pieces that are left, that's the only plan.

• The Society of Sensation ("Sensates") believe that one can know the universe by experiencing it fully through the senses. The senses form the path to truth, for the multiverse doesn't exist beyond what can be sensed. The senses are the only proofs of existence. Without experience, without sensation, a thing isn't. If a person can't taste the soup, then it ain't soup. The only way to know anything for sure is to use the senses. Which is real, a description of a rose or the rose itself? The description has no smell, no thorns, no color. Picking a rose, that's real, and the way a person knows is by experiencing it. Given that, the multiverse has limits, a person should try to experience it all, only then do the secrets of the multiverse start to make themselves clear.

• The Xaositects ("Chaosmen") believe in learning the secrets of the multiverse by embracing chaos, the randomness the of the multiverse. They believe the multiverse wasn't born from Chaos, the multiverse itself is Chaos. There's no order, no pattern to anything. That's the meaning of the multiverse, the great secret everyone else is too afraid to admit, chaos. So why fight it, since Chaos is how things are meant to be? It has a beauty and wonder all its own. Is there any pattern to this existence? Any order that gives it all meaning? None, not a one. By gazing upon Chaos, learning to appreciate the randomness of it and understanding its sublime intricacies, the Xaositects learn the secrets of the multiverse.

Non-Joinable Faction Philosophies

• The Atharl ("The Defiers") believe that there are no gods. The great and feared are unbelievably powerful, but they're not gods, they are liars. Those who claim to be the "gods" of the planes are mortals just like us. They want to part the veil, discover the secret behind everything, and look on the face of the unknowable. They let the powers call themselves gods, because there's no point upsetting the powers, as an angry power would be a dangerous enemy, but this doesn't change their essence as only very powerful beings, not gods.

• The Bleak Cabal ("The Madmen") believe that there is no meaning to it all in life. Nobody said that reality had to make sense. They believe the multiverse ain't even a cruel joke, because that would give it all meaning, they believe the multiverse is just senseless. Other factions will run around trying to discover the meaning of something that's senseless, waste their life on it, and call the Bleak Cabal mad. The multiverse doesn't make sense, and it ain't supposed to. That's all there is to it, pure and simple. Quit looking for meanings, accept what happens, and look inward. There's no meaning on the outside, so the question is, is there any meaning inside?

• The Doomguard ("The Sinkers") believe that entropy is the fate of the multiverse. Everything is falling apart sooner or later: People die, rocks erode, stars fade, planes melt away. That's entropy, the fate of the multiverse. A lot of people think that's a terrible thing, but the Doomguard believe it's the way things are supposed to be, the goal of everything. The ones who try to fix things, stop the decay and put everything back together are fighting the natural goal of the multiverse, trying to do something unnatural. That isn't right. They don't believe that if somebody builds a house they should tear it down for entropy, rather that the building is part of the whole decay: the stonecutter chips the rock, the logger cuts the tree, and later the termites chew the beams until the whole case comes down on its own. They believe in seeing the grand scheme not tearing down everything that gets built.

• The Fated ("The Takers") believe that the universe belongs to those who can take it and hold it. Every person makes his own fate, and there's no one else to blame for it. Those who whine about their luck are just weaklings. If they were meant to succeed, they would have. Everybody's got the potential to be great, but that don't mean it's going to happen. Those that make things happen get what they want, while everybody gets what they deserve. There's no point feeling sorry for those who didn't make it, it was their own fault for being weak. Some people call this a cruel philosophy of the weak ruled by the strong, but the Fated believe there is compassion except one has to earn it, and that while might sometimes makes right there are a lot of things such as respect that cannot be taken by force.

• The Fraternity of Order ("Guverns") believe that everything has laws. Mankind has laws. Gods have laws. The multiverse has laws. Once a person can understand the laws, he can do pretty well for himself, he knows how to use them to his advantage, and how to break them without getting caught. If everything has laws, there are laws for the whole birdcage, the planes and all that. And if everything has laws, then those laws can be learned. They believe in learing the laws of the planes and learning how to break them, how to use them, how to get the best advantage of them. This is how you end up with real power. Let the other factions search for the meaning of the multiverse, it doesn't matter what it all means, it only matters how it works. Knowing the operation of things, that's what's important. How cares what it all means when a person cannot make it do what he wants?

• The Free League ("Indeps") believe themselves as free thinkers refusing to be shackled by a blind ideology. There are some seeking to make their own truth, getting the positives and refusing the negatives from other factions, there are some who fancy to maybe even start themselves a new faction. There are some that don't want to make the choice, for fear of being wrong or offending one power or another. They do not even consider themselves a faction and nobody tells them what to do. Still, a person must belong to something if he wants to stay alive. The Free League is a kind of informal group of like-thinkers to protect themselves from the other factions. They share news, pass around jobs, and watch each other's backs. Some believe the Indeps to be cowards afraid to play a stake on the truth, but they believe that if there is a greater truth, it is not the dogma of one of the factions so they should not put all their eggs in one basket.

• The Harmonium ("Hardheads") believe that the secret of the multiverse is simple, the Harmonium is always right. The Harmonium says there's only one way to have peace: their way. Factions can squabble among each other or join the Harmonium, those are the only choices. They believe that the ultimate goal of the multiverse is universal harmony, and it's ready to spread that belief to all those other people out on the planes. If that needs war, the Harmonium is ready for war. There might not be peace right away, but every time the Harmonium gets rid of an enemy, the multiverse is that much closer to the universal harmony it was meant to have.

• The Mercykillers ("Red Death") believe in justice above eveerything. They believe that the whole reason laws exist is to see that justice is carried out. Justice purges the evil and makes room for those better that belong in the multiverse. Once everybody's been cleansed, then the multiverse reaches perfection, and perfection's the goal of the multiverse. Some believe the Mercykillers see themselves above the laws and are wrong in what they do, with their justice not being real justice. They Mercykillers don't like those people's attitudes but they cannot hang them for their opinions, they argue that they do not make the laws of justice, only enforce them. All in all, they see themselves as no better than the rest, but no worse than them either.

• The Sign of One ("Signers") believe that every individual is subjective and their own universe. Every person is unique and that is the greatest glory of the universe, that each living and dead creature is different from all others. They believe the the multiverse centers around the self, the world exists because the mind imagines it. Without the self, the multiverse ceases to be. To them, each person is the most important person in the multiverse. Without at least one person to imagine it all, the rest of the factions would cease to exist.

• The Transcendent Order ("Ciphers") believe that for a person to become one with the multiverse, he's got to stop thinking and act. Action is the purest form of thought. When a cutter can know what to do without even thinking about it, then he's become one with the multiverse. Action without thought is the ultimate goal. Every being knows the right action to take at just the right moment, problem is, some people start thinking and mess it all up. Thinking adds hesitation and doubt. It overrules instinct and separates a person from the multiverse. By the time a person has thought about something, the right action for the right moment is gone. Once mind and body are in harmony, the spirit becomes in tune with the multiverse.