Hive Ward

Nowhere is life cheaper than in the Hive Ward, a dismal collection of dirt-chalked slums and battered tenements more fit for vermin than humanoids. Looking for honest work? Keep looking. The Hive's a good place for cutpurses and gamblers, but not good for jewelers and art dealers. For most, life in the Hive is a tedious journey down a road of despair, with death waiting at the end.

Allesha's Pantry
The best known charity kitchen, operated by Allesha Sheevis in an abandoned workhouse not more than a hundred yards from the Slags. Everyone's welcome at the Pantry.

Despite the depressing neighborhood surrounding the Pantry, its interior’s surprisingly cheery. Colorful posters cover the brick walls, bearing slogans like “A full stomach lifts the spirit” and “Tomorrow is a new day.” Clusters of paper strips, arranged to resemble flower bouquets, decorate spotless wooden tables filled with steaming pots of tomato soup and pigeon stew.

Bottle and Jug
With its black granite walls, barred windows, and steel spires, the Bottle 8 Jug looks more like a fortress than a tavern. But it’s not only one of the Hive’s most popular watering holes, it’s easily the most notorious. Those with jink to spend and who aren’t averse to a little blood. . . well, let’s just say there’s no place in Sigil like the B8J.

Gatehouse Night Market
A cutter wanting quality merchandise at reasonable prices from (reasonably) honest dealers should go to the Market and Guildhall Ward. If a cutter wants to buy spider venom, hire a burglar, or sell a stolen necklace, the Night Market is the place to be. Three tips:


 * 1) Don't ask for names
 * 2) Don't ask for guarantees
 * 3) Don't ask for change

Green Stone Stables
At Green Stone Stables, a rickety warehouse with peeling green paint on Black Boot Walk, Bismen Yscoppel rents mounts of all kinds, from riding horses (of which he has only four or five at any time) to spittle boars. Yscoppel charges bargain prices, but his animals aren’t exactly top of the line.

Hive
Parts of the Hive - the Xaositect headquarters, not the ward - can be found within a few blocks of the Gatehouse. The headquarters itself is all over the place, a sprawl of empty tenements, abandoned warehouses, and decaying shanties. So where does the faction actually get together? Good question. Cutters should look for violet torches - the color comes from a special oil imported from Gith in the plane of Limbo - that the Chaosmen occasionally burn to alert other faction members to their presence.

Mortuary
Headquarters of the Dustmen, the Mortuary sits in one of the ward’s dreariest sections, a neighborhood of empty streets and abandoned shops. The building's a cluster of windowless vaults arranged around a black dome. Now and again, the Dustmen mount the skulls of trespassers on sticks and post them around the Mortuary to make a fence. The adjacent streets are crowded with decaying taverns and gloomy boarding houses; the long shadows of the Mortuary provide plenty of cover for sods who don't want to be noticed.

Black spines radiate from the center of the Mortuary, giving the building the appearance of an immense insect. Inside its walls are interment chambers paved with black flagstones, a memorial hall where bodies of notables lie in state, and a vast network of catacombs containing countless portals.

Scratch Wall
On the border of the Slags, not far from Allesha’s Pantry, stands a stone wall nearly a block long and as tall as a storm giant. It’s all that’s left of a protective bulwark, smashed to pieces when the Blood War threatened to spill over from the Slags into the rest of the Hive. The wall, made of a soft black stone from Gehenna, has proven to be an irresistible lure for every berk with a chisel or a piece of chalk and something to say. Embarrassing poetry, questionable boasts, and inane declarations of love cover just about every inch of the wall.

Slags
The most miserable section of the Hive Ward is the Slags, an endless expanse of gray ash, raw sewage, and smoldering debris. Streets strewn with bones wind past mountains of bricks and rubble. Rats nest in tangles of razorvine. Spiders scurry in crevasses so immense that a basher might think a power had hacked up the ground with a meat cleaver.

Hard to believe that the Slags used to be like everywhere else in the Hive, a jumble of shacks, shops, and shoulder-to-shoulder sods. That was before that one little intrusion, one little aberration in which the Blood War seemed to spill into Sigil. In a matter of weeks, the place was crushed like a roach under a boot. Leastways, that’s the chant.

Weary Spirit Infirmary
A sick cutter or busted-up basher has few choices if he wants to get better: He can hole up in his kip and hope the powers repair him, or he can cough up some jink and hire himself a healer. Otherwise, he can lie down in the street and die, or head to the Weary Spirit Infirmary, the Hive’s free hospital.

Its brick walls encrusted with dirt, its windows barred with iron rods as thick as a man's arm, the Weary Spirit looks like a prison - which ain't so far from the truth.

Notable People

 * Turnfeld Three-teeth: Bartender/amateur information broker
 * Allesha Sheevis: Soup kitchen operator
 * Barl Hoxun: Proprietor of the Bottle and Jug
 * Retzz: Forger
 * Bism Yscoppel: Stablemaster
 * Sil Orsmonder: Butcher
 * The Honorable Kluppin Livesay: Judge at the Hive's central court
 * Ridnir Tetch: Asylum Warden