#bleak cabal

The character design for my player character from Baldur’s Gate 3.

He’s a divorced single dad, a psychiatrist and a very done wizard who lives in Sigil.

This is an NPC for my DnD table playing the Turn of Fortune's Wheel module in the Planescape setting. There's an encounter where they encounter three faction members, discussing the meaning of the multiverse, but it provides no visual for these people. So I drew one and came up with backstory. _______

Gracie was born a human in Sigil, city of doors, when a portal is opened in her neighborhood, directly connected to the Blood Wars taking place in the hells. Gracie, along with many other civilians were captured and dragged into the hells before the portals were able to be closed.

Time behaves differently when being tortured in the hells. While Gracie and the other captives spent years and years being experimented on, tortured, and used for rituals, they did not age, and they could not die. It would be over a decade before a party of adventurers made their way down to the hells to liberate the captives, returning them back to Sigil. However, Gracie returned with monstrous deformations. Her cranium was more horns than not, her eyes a constant fountain of blood, her limbs bent, broken, and reset into unnatural positions.

The Bleak Cabal is a faction in Sigil who believe that the universe has no meaning, only that which an individual finds for themselves. Most of it's factions find meaning in helping those afflicted with extraplanar ailments and curses, so they had the halls of their gatehouse filled to the brim after the liberation of the captives. Most of these patients were too far gone for saving, some even electing to be put out of their suffering. Gracie, deemed by the Cabal's experts, was the worst case that they were able to bring back to normalcy.

It took months of enchantments and procedures, removing horns, correcting bones, to return Gracie to a humanoid form, though she was different from before. Her freckled and sun kissed face had assumed a pallid sheet white color. Her once silky copper hair became wiry, thick, and jet black. Her rounded ears held a sharp point. Her ocean blue eyes still held the flames of the Nine Hells, taking on a red hue.

Even once Gracie was physically healed, the mental scars carried with her. She would come to discover that her parents, already elderly prior to the portal's opening, had passed away during her time in captivity. With nothing left, and with new relationships forged with the members of the Cabal who had cared for her, Gracie made the decision to dedicate her life to the Bleak Cabal, specializing in demonic curses and how to dispel them.

_______

TL;DR: She's been through it but she's like fine now.

If nothing holds meaning, then pain serves no purpose. It doesn’t teach, it doesn’t punish, it doesn’t spur growth or change or redemption. It’s just pain. It just hurts. With no reason to, it just hurts…

First, a little bit of explanation for those unaware: Planescape was a setting for 2nd edition AD&D. It is, arguably, one of the most uniquely creative settings ever devised for a D20 system, but that's probably just my love of it and how weird it could get coming through. The important part right now is that it had the Factions - philosophical groups that struggled to manipulate the nature of the multiverse, because belief can alter reality for the Outer Planes.

When it was a new-ish setting and I was deep into it, of course I thought the louder and wilder ones were cool. You know how it is, right? But there was one faction that, these days, absolutely 100% speaks to my very heart - the ominously named Bleak Cabal. You'd expect them to be nihilists with that name, and to a degree they were, but what made them different is that, where everyone else is looking to enforce their philosophy on the multiverse and prove that it's the real truth, the Bleakers looked at everything and went, "Well, doesn't seem to be much of a point to any of this, does there? Hey, buddy, you look hungry, want some soup? And you, gentlefolk, I saw you sleeping in that alley, I've got a spare room you could set up kip in for a bit so you can stay dry."

The Bleakers looked at the multiverse, decided there's no grand meaning or ultimate purposes, and concluded that you should be kind. Everyone's going to be going through the worst of it sooner or later, and it's better to hold out a bowl of hot soup and a warm blanket when they do than it is to mock or belittle them. The world's on fire and in the trash bin, why make it any worse when you don't absolutely have to?