Social Class: Lower class
Character: The large, architectural nightmare that is the Gatehouse looms over the neighborhood, an ugly blot in an uglier skyline.
District Type: Slums
Buildings: Faction headquarters, poor residences, poor lodgings, poor trades , poor services, temples
First Impressions: The roundabout Madhouse District is at least a predictable street, as it snakes around the Gatehouse and meets itself on the
other end. The moans and screams of the barmies and desperate fill the neighborhood, and few Cagers want to be here after dark.
The sounds of the city.
Surrounding the Gatehouse stands the Madhouse District. The blocks of tenements and kips radiating out away from the hill atop which the Gatehouse stands are awash in the filth of the true aspects of the Hive: the poor, the hungry, the apathetic, and the barmy. The smell of human excrement and bub sting the nostrils, and an outsider wandering through the district is likely to be swarmed by beggars asking for food, drink, or coin for both. Pickpockets and thieves abound, eager to bob a cutter simply for having what they do not. [A display of arms can be useful in this section of the Hive – The Editor] This district epitomizes human misery at its worst. The sick, hungry, and hopeless still queue day in and day out to seek refuge and temporary respite from their ills with the Bleakers within the Gatehouse, and the lines may reach down from the hill and into the rest of the district. Their situation is unlikely to change soon, even with a cutter such as Jeena Ealy upon the Sigil Advisory Council.
One of the more notable, and utterly unofficial, spots within the district is the so-called Night Market, somewhere between Lot’s Lane and Laughing Cat Alley. Just like the Great Bazaar, but with a darker side, the Night Market sells goods and services, but nothing therein has a name or a past. Don’t inquire as to the origin of any of the goods, or the names of any who might be hired for a service. It’s better that way. [Inquire about Retzz and ask if he still deals in inks and parchments. If you’re aware of his trade already, you might seek him out. – The Editor]
Nearly in the Slags themselves, sitting on their edge along Shatterbone Street within the Madhouse District, sits the Weary Spirit Infirmary and the Boneyard Pond behind it. Within, Ridnir Tetch, a Bleaker, tends to the sick and injured for no cost, and even provides those awaiting his care with food and shelter. Tetch doesn’t believe in magical healing, and maintains that the mundane surgical techniques developed mainly by his own random practice upon patients are the true panacea of healing. The Boneyard pond behind the Infirmary is piled high with those not surviving their injuries, or his ‘care’, ‘till it is picked clean nightly by the collectors anyways. [What harm is it to kill a sod when he comes to you for help? And why shed a tear or even care when you firmly believe there is no meaning in the multiverse? That’s Tetch’s creed. – The Editor]
One of the other oddities of the district is the new feature near the center of Laughing Cat Alley, near the Night Market. A bowl-shaped depression roughly a hundred yards across that contains the street, and now one building sinking into it. The adjacent structure, a now collapsed flophouse, is a pile of rubble lining one side of the sinkhole. Travel along the street has been slowed, but not stopped. What bothers many is that the depression was once a slight rise in the middle of the street. As it goes, a number of years prior, there once stood a freestanding arch of black stone in the center of the street containing a portal to one of the layers of Baator. The frequent passing of hellhounds and other, less welcome, visitors to the ward finally became too much of a burden to the factions and so they toppled the archway and paved the current street over it. The latest feature of the alley begs the question: did the toppling of the archway cause the portal to cease its intermittent function, or has it remained active all these years, with perhaps something now lingering under the city streets biding its time. The factions no longer exist officially to investigate, and the Hive dwellers could care less until a gang of Baatezu rips their way up from below, so the status quo is likely to continue as the depression expands even more.