Fiction of Planescape: “The Analects of Sigil”
[For an introduction to this series of posts, see here.]
“The Analects of Sigil” is another little story with a big title by Zeb Cook, a partner to his “The Plane Truth.” Why “analects”? It’s not very clear what the title means. An analect is a collection of literary or philosophical extracts; The Analects (in our reality) are the collected sayings of Confucius. The word doesn’t have any obvious meaning here; perhaps it’s just meant to add a little flavor of esotericism. In that sense, it may well suit the story, which, as much as anything, seems to be an exercise in adding flavor or atmosphere to a game setting.
As with “The Plane Truth,” “Analects” is framed as a found document. In this case the document is the “confession of late Handulus, scholar of the 3rd rank, as extracted by Jerak of the Mercykillers before appointed witnesses” — much as “The Plane Truth” was framed as a series of journal entries found by some magistrate.
Handulus, the confessor, was a member of the Fraternity of Order (aka the Governors/Guvners) who ended up shifting his allegiance to the Doomguard. He has been accused of killing Jeron, a “factor” (something like a middle manager) of the Governors. Handulus was a specialist on the citadels of the Inner Planes. Recall that we met a warrior from one of these citadels in “The Plane Truth.” Through luck Handulus found a page from the Codex of Infinite Planes (which had also appeared in Cook’s “The Plane Truth”). The page described some previously unknown citadels. Handulus set off and was eventually able to find the Five Citadels of Surrender. (These “Five Citadels of the Planescape Setting” are a unique contribution of this story. As far as I can tell, they have not been mentioned in any other Planescape materials.)
True to their name, at each citadel you have to surrender something. The first citadel is on the Plane of Salt, and there Handulus surrendered his fear. The second citadel is on the Plane of Ash; Handulus surrendered hope. The third is on the Plane of Vacuum, and Handulus surrendered his compassion. The fourth citadel is located on the Plane of Dust, and there Handulus surrendered his remorse. The fifth citadel is on the Negative Energy Plane. Handulus does not visit it himself, but he suggests that the ambitious Jeron will feel compelled to visit it and that whatever is surrendered there will be enough to kill him. In any case, stripped of his fear, hope, compassion, and remorse, Handulus becomes a Doomguard, a guardian of entropy.
This conversion is not surprising given the context of Planescape. One possibility is that Handulus has simply discovered the Doomguard’s own citadels. According to A Player’s Guide to the Planes, one of the original books of the Planescape Campaign Setting,
The Doomguard maintains one great citadel on each negative quasiplane: Ash, Vacuum, Salt, and Dust. The Negative Energy Plane represents the Doomguard’s idea of the ultimate fate of the multiverse, so the Doomguard’s citadels are built as close to the plane as practicality allows. (p. 19)
Are the Five Citadels of Surrender, in fact, the Doomguard’s citadels plus the Negative Energy Plane? If so, Handulus’s conversion would be no surprise.
Regarding the five surrenders, it may be mentioned that Confucius’ Analects mentions five central virtues (though later Confucians wrote of “Four Cardinal Principles and Eight Virtues”). But these don’t map in any obvious way onto the emotions surrendered at the Five Citadels (also see Sean Gandert’s post on this topic).
“The Analects of Sigil” is perhaps not as deep as “The Plane Truth,” but it does have its interesting points. For one thing, it shows the importance of psychology and belief in Sigil and on the planes. Gate towns in Planescape sometimes slide into the planes they lead to if the balance of their citizens’ psychological constitution changes too much in one direction. Similarly, a Guvner can become a Doomguard if his or her psychology changes.
Aside from this the story gives more evidence of Cook’s ability to improvise on ideas drawn from literature. For example, the importance of dreams, which we saw in “The Plane Truth,” and associated with Borges, Calvino, and Pavić, briefly manifests in “Analects.” Handulus recounts that his instructors in the Fraternity of Order
loved to tell us tales of things like Schalgtar’s last entry on the dream-snakes of Elysium in the Great Dictum [the Guvners’ canonical text], and how they poured illusions into his mind. This tale made a particular impact upon me, though I did not know why at the time. Now I understand it all, of course: the dream-snakes had influenced me through Schalgtar’s words. Their power comes not just in their confrontation, but even in the discovery of their existence. Their influence on me was meant to be a warning, I sincerely believe, a caution for what I was about to discover. (p. 6)
The dream-snakes, which do not seem to appear in other D&D materials, recall Borges’s dream tigers (Dreamtigers being a book that influenced Cook). To be sure, Cook’s dream-snakes and Borges’s dream tigers have a different sort of existence. The dream-snakes are native to Elysium, which is described in Cook’s A DM Guide to the Planes as
a land of fertile richness and unsurpassed natural beauty. Near the banks of the River Oceanus, which winds through all the layers, are tall trees, waving reeds, and lush meadows. In the hundreds of miles beyond the river’s banks, the forests give way to grassy plains, then rolling hills, until the land finally becomes rugged badlands that are wind-sculpted into forms of artistic beauty.
… the driving force of Elysium is goodness and goodness only. Order or anarchy — it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s for the good. (p. 57)
Borges’s dream tigers, on the other hand, exist at the “submerged or chaotic level” of his dreams (Dreatigers, p. 24). Yet dream tigers and dream-snakes are each in their own way autonomous. Although Borges’s dream tigers do not have an autonomous existence within his reality as do the dream-snakes within the world of Planescape, Borges does not have conscious control over them: his attempts to “cause” himself to dream of tigers always misfire.
There’s not much more, really, to say about this story. Zeb Cook left TSR in 1994, the same year in which these stories were published — and in which the Planescape Campaign Setting boxed set was released. But the possibilities of the setting, with its unique tone and guiding ideas, would be elaborated on by other designers and writers. In future posts of this series, we’ll look at how other writers have developed the Planescape setting.