So many memories had been washed away by the troublesome events and planning for the Illithids, but with Stooth's latest report, the images come flooding back.
Gabriel’s wide-flung business interests have taken him all over the Multiverse, as he travels around collecting souls and supervising his business offices (and other various and sundry dealings). Two of Gabriel’s most important office locations are his primary in Acheron, and the one serving his highest-profile clientele in Sigil, the City of Doors and Outer Planar nexus. As such, his trading and travels have given him a degree of familiarity with several locations important to the Outer Planes, and means of transit between them.
Soul trading in Acheron is a brisk and competitive business, especially near a particular permanent Color Pools to the Astral Plane in Avalas, which is the top Layer of Acheron and the home to several Deities’ realms. That Color Pool is a very popular transfer point from the Styx into the Astral Plane. The Styx is broad and lazy there, and the riverbank is open, gentle terrain, unlike most of the landscape in Acheron that has been gouged by the Eternal and endless battles of the Blood War. A large level landing area has been worn by boot, foot, and hoof over the ages where Styx travelers can debark. A short climb up a steep rocky hillside along a well-worn natural stair leads directly to the Color Pool.
The rocky hillside is usually covered with advertising and graffiti for events and services available in Acheron, to attract the attention of newcomers descending the stair to the Styx. (Posters for a band in a concert competition in the Nine Hells,
Ifrit And The Face-Melters, are still prominently displayed even though the concert was long enough ago that other notices have been posted on top of many of them. The concert became infamous, because the band’s name was literal.) From time to time Gabriel’s office manager in Acheron sends someone to the rocky wall to post his business's own advertising notice — why not capitalize on the situation?
On the Astral side of the Color Pool, a regularly scheduled Voidjammer stop provides safe transit and shipping to thousands of other stops in the Astral Plane, many of which are themselves transfer points to other places and Planes.
Gabriel has used the Voidjammer Lines himself on occasion, especially when shipping a lot of bulky cargo in his other "business", trafficking contraband goods besides souls. The Lines consist of a dozen or so massive armored battleships, each with some type of special power source making it among the fastest moving free objects in the Plane, each containing a small army to defend the flying fortress, and each following a scheduled route with a thousand stops, with the routes cross-linked to make transfers easy from one ship to another. Much of the Astral Plane is served, providing relatively safe and reliable transit across the dangerous and unpredictable Plane. The Voidjammer crew is indifferent to what they carry, as long as passengers and their cargo do not make a nuisance of themselves to the ship or other passengers. Otherwise lesser offenders will be put off the ship and forever denied further passage, and greater offenders simply disappear. The Voidjammer Lines also make it well known that their flagship can appear very quickly to help defend any of their other ships, if the need arises. Waiting on the Astral side of the Color Pool is an experience not to be missed, where Tanar’ri and Baatezu may wait in near proximity without battle breaking out.
Gabriel recalls one time when the crowd was large, with two parties of Geniekind coming out of Acheron on business who were studiously ignoring each other, and he didn’t have to wait long. Sure enough, in some Time later, how long is hard to tell in the Astral Plane, a distant object began to resolve into the shape of a vessel floating against the silvery haze. It very quickly grew in size.
When the ship finally came along side the waiting passengers, and stopped, it was enormous. Estimating distances in this featureless void was challenging, but the Voidjammer had to be at least 1000 feet long stem to stern with a beam of at least 250 feet. A company of uniformed attendants with ferocious stares descended, heavily armed and armored, circled around a dozen battle mages. They were quickly followed by a wave of passengers: a dozen Baatezu with their retinue of 50 highly organized porters carrying heavy baggage; twice as many Tanar’ri with twice as much luggage and a chaos of bearers, and several dozen other creatures of various types from all over the Lower Planes. The ship waited as they moved off toward the Color Pool to Acheron, watched closely by the armored attendants to make sure there was no trouble at the stop before they disappeared through the Color Pool. Then a small group of liveried attendants descended and began to check in the new passengers. For each passenger, the attendants inquired about destinations, and collected fares in gems which were closely examined, and then evaluated with Magic, before they were accepted. A few individual passengers came up, who had been waiting at a distance away, and several groups paying together boarded together. The company of Efreeti hustled up early, apparently intending to take priority over the Dao. The Dao did not even approach until the Efreeti and most of the rest of the passengers disappeared inside the ship, and then they too were processed into the ship.
On the return trip, Gabriel’s passage through the Color Pool from the Astral Plane was similar. Proceeding from the Voidjammer, he came to the Color Pool, from this side a bright red-orange like the color of flame, and passing quickly through, the Evil hit him like a slap across the forehead. He plunged down the steep, rough rocky stair, the center of the steps worn smooth from others passing, and as he rounded a bend in the hillside, the black river was below, churning and steaming. A queue of boats was always waiting for passengers, who were just beginning to trickle through the Color Pool into Acheron; an entire fleet of boatmen always comes, dropping off the passengers boarding the Voidjammer, and picking up the ones leaving the big vessel. Just as Gabriel reached the queue, yet another boat poled to shore and a small party of mixed Yugoloths jumped off and rushed up the rocky hillside stair toward the Color Pool, and the Voidjammer beyond. Gabriel hurried along the queue of boats and came to a boat with a bent, hooded figure holding a pole. Gabriel paid his fare in magic items and gems, the creature nodded, took the packets in a skeletal hand, put them away under its robe, and silently poled out from the shore to take Gabriel to his destination nearby, a short distance downriver where a cluster of shops and offices has sprung up into an impromptu, nameless but orderly shantytown.
For Gabriel’s office in Acheron, few locations are better than the tacit relative peace that all Blood War factions give to this spot on the Styx, near the Color Pool and Voidjammer stop but just a little downriver to avoid the inevitable clashes right at the Color Pool itself. Citadels and cities in Acheron come and go, but unless a merchant wants to commit to a Deity’s realm for the relative stability and pay the hefty tithing costs, it is hard to find a better spot than one protected by the commerce of the Styx.
In Sigil, Gabriel had a much wider choice of locations. The Market Ward has everything for sale. The Lady’s Ward has upscale clientele, including a constant turnover of Lower Planar lordlings trying to make a name through profligate spending; they lease an expensive townhouse, and lose their deposit when their fall from power destroys them and the local landscape, but in between they may be very good customers for a souls merchant. And the Hive is the best place to hide any
sub rosa activity.
Gleron Mithgarten's offices in Sigil settled on a busy corner location directly on the broad boulevard just below The Lady’s Ward leading into the Market Ward, with a secondary, secret meeting place in The Hive for certain special customers. Standing under the awnings of the buildings along the broad boulevard for the main shop, the view extends all the way to the first high-walled elegant townhouses in The Lady’s Ward, and high-class foot traffic dominates the area, liveried servants going to market and rich window shoppers as passers-by, with porters bearing their parcels. In Gabriel’s corner store at the intersection of a street of boutique shops with the main boulevard, his trading does very well, and his quiet side-business generates just the right amount of attention from just the right repeat customers.
Mithgarten even reports occasional dealings with one of the highly placed movers of events in Sigil, who spreads his business around to keep up his contacts with everyone: Marle’Crucias the Arcanaloth, a jackal-faced Daemon who is also legendary in Acheron and across the Lower Planes as one of the best players of all sides against each other for his own profit. After Marley got to know about Gabriel’s shop in Sigil, he began paying occasional visits to the Acheron shop on the Styx as well. Almost any information can be had from Marley, almost any business contact can be introduced, and almost any arrangement can be made, for the right price. And Marley does not deal much ill to his regular customers; he always delivers what he promises them – and always has plausible deniability for the fallout that sometimes ensues.
The competition is fierce in Sigil as well as in Acheron, but there is gold enough for all.
One of the largest competitors for specialty goods (but not souls) in the Sigil neighborhood is the famed MetroMagic Trading Company, “Purveyors of Rarities” as their small gold-lettered sign says. Their location is at the top of the boulevard and to the left along a brick plaza, nearer to the city wall to Outside. Across the street from Inn Champagne, a restaurant widely acknowledged as serving the best food in Sigil, the MetroMagic warehouse squats on a large tract of expensive land just into The Lady’s Ward. Talk in the city is that it is part of the extensive real estate holdings of a legendary Light sculptress whose glorious works fetch astronomical prices in the best art galleries in the city and adorn several of the major temples; her name is Star Feather. Many believe that this name has simply become popular among the Elves, since it is also the name of the Elven Empress of the Alliance of Elven Worlds, ever since the resignation of her predecessor, Emerald Siftara. Those who frequent Inn Champagne do know that it is true the Inn manages a Star Feather’s real estate holdings; the leasing office is inside the Inn, she is the Inn’s owner, and the signs on the gates of the few remaining vacant townhouses in The Lady’s Ward say “Star Feather Realty”. Apparently this Star Feather is a favorite of Heimdall, the Deity of the Rainbow Bridge that runs throughout many Prime Planes – some say she is actually Deity-Touched – and so the City Watch, who are allied with Heimdall’s temple, will not touch her, and put their best efforts into security around her townhouses.
A curious fact in Gabriel’s attention: There is a brisk business in travelers’ maps of the Astral Plane, offered for sale in Sigil, and on the Voidjammers, and in many other places. His manager in Sigil even carries some for sale in a little map stand, like many shops in the city; there is a brand available in bulk from MetroMagic at very reasonable wholesale prices. The mapmaker’s name and Wizard Mark on them, widely considered to be the most reliable and up to date, is: Star Feather. As Gabriel knows from his extensive travels, this name has been found on the oldest maps since ancient times, and most believe it to be simply the name a cartography company has adopted, perhaps taken from one of those ancient maps to give the appearance of authenticity to the ones they sell now. The mapsellers on the Voidjammer Lines say otherwise; they claim that this Star Feather was First Navigator for the Voidjammer Lines aboard their flagship and still supplies the maps, and say that they should know.
Another curious fact in Gabriel’s attention is that there are rumors on the Styx in Acheron claiming there is yet another Star Feather who deals with a senior Charonadaemon boatman; it is said she will pay very well in gold and gems, sometimes even in Mithril bars or in Magic, for information about movements of creatures and things on the Styx, especially ones that pass through the Color Pool. More curious, and perhaps the reason Gabriel remembered the rumor at all, was that Marley would not confirm or deny this rumor; his flat “not for sale” was very uncharacteristic of him.
What does all this mean? How can it be related to Gabriel's current situation? More importantly, how can he use it to his advantage? Well, he'll do what he always does: watch, and wait, and when the time is right, everything will become clear.