Streetsweeper’s Yard
The Streetsweeper's Yard
Located in a sunken hollow within the grimiest, most chaotic expanse of Clerk's Ward (or perhaps bordering the Lower Ward), the Streetsweeper's Yard is a scar on the cityscape, defining the absolute endpoint of Sigil's consumption. It is not a building in the traditional sense, but a sprawling, open-air sprawling complex enclosed by walls built entirely of compacted, rusted scrap metal, fused together by unknown magical means and sheer pressure.
To those approaching, the Yard is signaled miles away by its smell before it is ever seen. It is a nauseating, physical miasma—a thick, warm cocktail of rotting organic matter from a thousand Prime worlds, burning planar sulfur, acrid chemical runoff, and the unmistakable tang of decaying magic. In Sigil, they say if you want to know what the multiverse truly smells like, go to the Yard; it contains a piece of everything that has ever been thrown away.
The Landscape of Refuse
The interior of the Yard is a chaotic, nightmarish mountain range of garbage. Piles of refuse rise forty or fifty feet high, blocking out what little ambient light filters down into the Clerk's Ward. These piles are not stable; they shift, slide, and collapse without warning, creating a treacherous terrain where a single misstep can lead to being buried alive in filth.
The Keepers: The Dabus
The Streetsweeper's Yard is, fundamentally, the domain of the Dabus, the silent, floating caretakers of Sigil. They are the only permanent reason the Yard doesn't grow to consume the entire ward.
They float silently on the oppressive air, their filthy, ragged robes—the color of ash and dried blood—never quite touching the garbage below. A dozen or more can be seen at any time, using their telekinetic abilities to hoist massive piles of new refuse delivered from the city streets and massing them into the existing horribly mountains. They do not sort; they simply congregate and compact.
The Dabus are utterly indifferent to intruders. They will float right past a party of planewalkers, their flickering illusory rebuses communication silent messages above their heads (perhaps a symbol of a skull crossed with a broom, or a question mark over a pile of gold). They will not help you, nor will they stop you, unless you attempt to interfere with the fundamental structure of the piles or attack them directly.
Hazards and Denizens
While the Dabus manage the Yard, they do not own the ground. The deeper, dark recesses of the refuse mountains are a dangerous ecosystem, providing 'kip' (living space) for those desperate or monstrous enough to call it home.
The Scavenger Scum
The outskirts of the Yard are infested with disease-ridden giant rats and swarms of gross, winged insects. Further in, where the piles provide better cover, cross-trading bandits and desperate cutthroats maintain hidden shelters built into the garbage. They use the Yard as a hideout from the Harmonium, a base to ambush fools looking for "treasure" in the trash, or as a place to dispose of bodies for a fee. They know the safe routes through the shifting piles and often grease the palms of any guards posted near the main entrances.
The Monsters Beneath
Deep in the wettest, foulest core of the Yard, the truly horrific creatures dwell. Several otyughs (and rumor has it, a larger Neo-Otyugh) live like kings in the decay. They are perfectly camouflaged in the filth, rising from the mountains to snatch scavenging rats, bandits, or planewalkers with their tentacles.
The toxicity of the runoff has also created unique abominations: mutated garbage creepers, slimes that have ingested cursed magical ink, and the occasional sentient garbage golem that has accidentally been formed from the mass of rejected components and magical residue.
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