The Lady of Pain
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O garment not golden but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory, but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable fire,
Our Lady of Pain![...]
I have passed from the outermost portal
To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
What care though the service be mortal?
O our Lady of Torture, what care?
All thine the last wine that I pour is,
The last in the chalice we drain,
O fierce and luxurious Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain.
The enigmatic ruler of the City of Doors, the Lady of Pain is a figure shrouded in mystery and conspiracy - and rightly feared for her tremendous power.
First things first, the Lady's not a god. She's not a demigod, proxy, avatar or anything of that sort. In fact, dropping her name in a prayer or worshipping her in anyway is liable to get a berk mazed or flayed depending on her particular mood.
She exists everywhere in Sigil all at once. She sees everything, she knows everything, she hears everything. The Factions exist by her grace and grace alone. She is Sigil's defender, protector, maybe even tyrant; depending who you ask.
The Lady of Pain is known largely for her two methods of enforcing order:
Flaying
Those who touch the Lady's Shadow are flayed in an instant. Those who draw her ire may well be flayed, if they're not mazed. In doing so, she separates a sods Soul from their body in agonizing fashion. There is no return from a Flaying. You're dead. Mist.
Mazing
Perhaps a less extreme punishment, or more so depending on an individual's proclivities. The Lady is capable of booting people into a demiplane of her own making - a nightmarish and convoluted labyrinth designed to torture and drive mad whosoever is banished there.
Whatever happens though, whenever a sod succumbs to a Maze they do so with the full knowledge that escape was just around the corner... if only they were a tiny bit better.
Escape is a possibility, as slim a chance as that may be. But in all of Sigil's sordid history, there have only been two recorded instances of cutters escaping from a Maze.
- Dolores Poem - Algernon Charles Swinburne