The Mandate Desk: Sigil’s Mission Authority
Player Primer for Our West Marches Campaign
In a city with infinite portals and no central government, most things in Sigil run on philosophy, chaos, or the simple will of the Lady of Pain. But the Mandate Desk is different. It is a small, unassuming office tucked inside the Hall of Records—a sliver of calm bureaucratic order in a metropolis where nothing stays still for long. Despite its mundane appearance, the Mandate Desk is one of the most important institutions for adventurers like you.
It is the place where the multiverse asks for help.
What the Mandate Desk Is
The Mandate Desk is an administrative office overseen jointly by mortal clerks and the dabus—the silent stewards of Sigil. Mortals handle the paperwork. Dabus provide the actual authority. Together, they interpret disturbances in the multiversal fabric and determine which anomalies threaten the stability of Sigil.
Every Fracture, every unstable portal, every timeline kink, every planar spillover eventually crosses their metaphorical desk.
The Lady of Pain does not give orders.
But the Mandate Desk ensures her city stays intact.
What the Mandate Desk Does
The Desk tracks emerging threats and dispatches operatives—like your adventuring party—to handle them.
Their duties include:
- Receiving rebus-glyph reports from the dabus
- Translating multiversal anomalies into mission statements
- Assigning Fracture Resolutions (our campaign’s one-shots)
- Granting authorization for portal access
- Issuing Planar Commendations after successful missions
- Maintaining records of every mission taken and every outcome
It is both a quest board and a cosmic watchdog.
Every mission you undertake begins with the Mandate Desk handing you a dossier.
How Missions Are Assigned
A typical assignment involves:
- Dabus Arrival: A dabus floats in, trailing rebus symbols that outline the problem.
- Interpretation: A mortal clerk translates the symbols into a briefing you can understand.
- Authorization: The Desk determines which portals can safely be opened.
- Deployment: You are escorted to the correct gate and provided your mission key.
- Resolution: You deal with the anomaly—anything from a dying star to a corrupted echo of a forgotten age.
- Debriefing: Upon return, the Desk logs your success or failure in Sigil’s records.
The process is brisk, efficient, and strangely quiet. The Mandate Desk doesn’t negotiate—they assign.
Why the Mandate Desk Exists
Sigil survives because the Lady of Pain keeps the city detached from the conflicts of the multiverse. But the multiverse itself is incredibly unstable. Realities collapse. Planes drift. Timelines knot and snap.
When these disruptions threaten to ripple inward toward Sigil, the Mandate Desk acts.
They don’t claim authority.
They don’t claim to serve the Lady.
But everyone knows they are part of the system that preserves the City of Doors.
The Desk’s Role in Our West Marches Campaign
The Mandate Desk is the engine that drives our game.
- Every session starts with a new Mandate.
- Every DM’s adventure is framed as a Fracture Resolution.
- Every magical reward is standardized through Commendations.
- Every character returns to Sigil because the Desk brings them home.
This structure keeps the campaign cohesive while letting each DM explore any idea they find compelling—any world, any era, any tone.
Want to run:
- a prehistoric dragon war?
- a cosmic horror orbiting a dead sun?
- a timeline spliced by paradox?
- a Feywild court locked in an endless waltz?
- a prime-material heist in Waterdeep?
The Desk opens the portal.
You step through.
The story happens.
Why Players Should Care
The Mandate Desk is more than a quest dispenser—it’s the reason your character can exist here at all. Without it:
- Portals wouldn’t open on command
- Commendations wouldn’t be tracked
- Missions wouldn’t be coordinated
- Sigil wouldn’t tolerate wandering adventurers meddling with its delicate structure
The Desk ensures order where there should be none, structure where the multiverse provides only chaos.
It is your anchor in a city that bends every rule—physical, magical, and temporal.
In short:
The Mandate Desk is Sigil’s mission authority—the quiet, bureaucratic force that keeps the City of Doors functioning and gives your party a reason to step through portals into the unknown. If Sigil is the heart of our campaign, the Mandate Desk is the hand that points you toward adventure.
