The Gatehouse

I taste naught but ire white, wrapped around in bitter black, it sheds all thought, all might, and rend the hapless back.

- A Bleaknik working on the line outside the Gatehouse

The central part of the Gatehouse is a tall, semicircular, roofless tower with numerous sprawling wings attached to it. The Bleakers admit to adapting their faction symbol from a design inlaid in the tiled floor of the tower. (Who or what the tiled pattern represented has been lost in the millennia; the Gatehouse is an ancient structure, even by planar standards. The Madmen derive a certain ironic serenity from using an empty symbol in a world where nothing means anything.) The entry to the building looks like nothing more than a giant portcullis, but the steel bars are folly 5 feet in diameter. Scholars have long speculated on what the former inhabitants could’ve wanted so desperately to keep out. The size of the gate makes it impossible to move. However, the gaps between the bars are 15 feet apart, wide enough to allow thronging poor and lost inside.   During the last hundred years or so, the Gatehouse has been opened up to the indigent. Outside the headquarters, sods without a coin to their name line the street, waiting for their turn to enter. They’re looking for a hot meal and a bed for a few days before having to return to their slums, and they can usually find it in the Almshouse wing of the asylum. But the Gatehouse also holds an orphanage and several different wings for those whose minds have snapped. Many sad parents wait in line with children they can no longer care for, ready to hand them over to the orphanage, and just as many tearful children wait to commit their aging, addle-coved parents to a mental health wing.   Sad fact is, most of the folks who wait patiently to enter the doors are mentally ill. Some seek treatment on their own; others are brought by caretakers as a last resort .The Cabal tries to accommodate everyone, but it can only let in 50 sods each day, regardless of which wing they’re directed to. The rest must wait outside, the line of those seeking admittance snaking down the Bedlam Run and hack into the Hive. Some parties wait weeks before finally getting inside the tower. Even if a body only wants to ask a Bleaker a few questions, waiting in line is the only way most sods ever get into the Gatehouse. An impatient berk could swap places in line with someone who’s been waiing longer - for the right price. Faction members and friendly high-ups get in without having to wait.   A sharp cutter'll realize that the constant stream of desperate bodies outside the Gatehouse attracts knights of the cross-trade faster than razorvine brings the dabus. Many berks who need muscle for shady jobs here and there just flash a bit of jink, and a dozen hungry sods from the line’ll scramble to sign up. And there’s plenty of peelers looking to cheat a dimwitted body out of his last copper piece. Most of the criminals who prey on the folks in line come from the Gatehouse Night Market, an underworld bazaar a few blocks deeper into the Hive where the right price'll buy secrets, stolen property, or even slaves.   ’Course, that’s not to say that the criminal element is all a body’ll find near the Gatehouse. Bleaker artists canvas the long line of sods, boldly sharing the sour fruits of their introspection with the masses. The atmosphere outside the asylum is often that of a funeral circus, with the latest anguished poems, elegant dirges, and gloomy stunts all battling for a spectator's eye. If a body shows any interest, one of the "Bleakniks" (as they're called) will most likely take him back to an artist's tavern or cafe a few blocks away, there to beg his sponsorship or simplay discuss the great Cabalist poets of the last hundred years. Indeed, a pub called The Weary Head is a well-known gathering place for Bleakniks of every artistic persuasion.

The Tower and the Wings

The central tower of the Gatehouse houses the faction's bureaucratic offices, as well as the living quarters of various high-up officials: Factor Lhar resides on the fifth floor. Folks who've waited in line are ushered into the open area behind the huge portcullis for processing. Half a dozen Bleakers are posted here each day, answering questions and directing those in need of help to the right wind (only fellow Bleakers are allowed into the faction quarters). Sods being admitted to the asylum are seperated from their caretakers and sent to another Bleaker hovering nearby, who escorts the new inmate to the proper wing. Only the processing rooms located in the first floor of the tower are open for public viewing: the upper floors of the tower are for Bleakers only.   Lhar's promoted four Bleakers - Ezra, tessali, Tyvold, and Sruce - to the high-up status of factor: the four are second only to Lhar himself. They serve as administrators in the Gatehouse, each oveerseeing one of the four wings.   The scholar Ezra runs the Almshouse wing. He regulates the number of beings who're let in each day, how long they're allowed to stay, and what work (if any) they must perform in exchange for charity. The conditions in Ezra's wing are often cramped, dirty, and squalid. He's woefully understaffed, having only a handful of helpers at the Gatehouse - most of the Bleakers in his jurisdiction are out in Sigil operating the kitchens. In time of great need, Ezra can cram upwards of 3000 homeless sods in his wing, though that leaves virtually no room for sleeping or moving about in the small (20-foot by 20-foot) quarters.   Tessali and Tyvold are elven cousins from Arborea. their most important contribution thus far to the Bleakers' treatment philosophy was a mazelike, walled garden to the back of the Gatehouse. Greenery's a bit rare in Sigil, but the Gatehouse has a full-time staff of 40 members tending the grounds and fighting off razorvine.
Tessali's got the formidable job of trying to control the aggressive berks in the Criminally and Irrevertably Insane wing. The barmies confined to these tight (5 feet by 15 feet) quarters are truly the worst of Sigil, and it's mostly their screams that passerby hear throughout the day. the two-story wing can hold 188 patients in individual rooms. Unfortunately, it's currently full to capacity and then some, with many rooms holding two berks each. Because these inmates are the ones most likely to try escape from the Gatehouse, they're allowed to exercise only in the two walled courtyards at the ends of the main wings, and then only under heavy guard.
Tyvold has perhaps the easiest area to govern: the Orphanage and Insane Asylum wing. He has a staff of 45 Bleakers, but Tyvold's never at a loss for new assistants. Many cutters who join the Bleak Cabal have a deep interest in mental health and in healing others, though few have the courage to apprentice in Tessali's wing, and apprenticeship to Sruce is by invitation only. furthermore, each of the three floors in Tyvold's wing is, for the most part, a large, open space, which makes cleaning and observation easy. The top floor is earmarked for Sigil's orphans, children age 14 and younger. The bottom two floors are devoted to mentally ill folks who're expected to recover, given a little time and treatment.   The wizard Sruce is in charge of the five-story Mad Bleaker wing, the are that houses faction members in the throes of the Grim Retreat. She's originally from Krynn, though she didn't venture onto the planes until her fiftieth year. Now 70 years old, only her haunting eyes betray what she's seen and endured the past two decades. The pressure to heal the mad Bleakers and return them to their duties is enormous, but Sruce does what she can. the wing contains 280 barren cells, each 10 feet by 10 feet, though currently only three floors hold Cabalists struggling to regain their minds. Sruce lets out the extra rooms to travelers. Bleakers stay for free, but others must pay 10 gold pieces per day - and take a solemn vow to never discuss the odd sounds heard at night.
The cells are by no means luxury accomodations, as they're meant for Bleakers who feel they're truly going insane. fact is, each cell contains only an old straw pallet for bedding. The outside of the windows are lined with bars, the inside with black, dillapidated shutters that always remain closed. (Among the Hive children, it's a mark of bravery to run up to one of these windows and try to peek through the cracks in the shutters.)
When a Bleaker commits himself to the wing (or is taken there by friends), one of Sruce's staff escorts him to the nearest unoccupied cell and close the ironbound door, locking it with a heavy steel bar. A metal shutter slides into place across the door, cutting off al light and life. How long the Bleaker chooses to remain there - forgoing all food and drink, in a state of transcendent despair - is up to him. A number have died in their cells, never finding the strength to grasp the faction's code. most, however, cry out their reaffirmation of the Bleaker philosophy, even as they collapse from starvation or dehydration. A staff member finds the fallen sod sooner or later. If he's not dead, his door's left open by the worker so the Bleaker can later stumble away on his own. But if they Bleaker looks bad, he's taken to an upper floor and tended until he's well enough to leave. (The faction forbids its members to discuss the Mad Bleaker wing with anyone other than fellow Madmen.)   Fact is, no matter which wing they're taken to, most folks eventually leave the Gatehouse fully recovered. but they all keep a mum about their treatment, saying only that the Bleakers were "kind" to them.