The Philosophy of Sinomi Sii

The Philosophy of Sinomi Sii

The Value of Existence

The most important thing to any being is its existence. All else of value is worthless if the being ceases to exist. Existence is thus the only thing of intrinsic value to any being - the only thing valuable in itself. It is the very thing upon which everything else of value is dependent. The most valuable instrumental goods are therefore those that protect a being's existence. As no being's existence is entirely safe so long as anyone or anything can end its existence, power, freedom, and self-improvement are the most important things to cultivate. The ultimate goal, to put it another way, is total self-sufficiency - to be able to depend entirely on oneself for everything, including one's continued existence.

Achieving Self-Sufficiency

Fundamental to achieving this self-sufficiency is understanding life and death, particularly what can end life and cause death. Living beings can cease to exist for many reasons: severe trauma, poison, disease, or mere aging, for example. A certain class of beings, namely the undead, do not suffer from these weaknesses. They are unaffected by severe trauma, poison, disease, aging and so on, and can often shrug off many attacks to their body, whether the attack be physical, magical, or otherwise elemental. Nor do they need to eat, sleep, or breathe. They are also immune to necromancy (with rare exceptions), one of the most potent means of causing death to the living.

Of course, there are disadvantages to undeath as well. The undead are vulnerable to divine and positive energy, often suffer from cravings, such as for blood, and can be controlled, repulsed or even destroyed by sufficiently powerful clerics. Thus, those who seek total self-sufficiency are unlikely to desire undeath, unless they can become some of the most powerful undead, such as a lich. For the rest, the dark art of pale mastery provides a means by which to achieve many of the advantages of undeath without also taking on its disadvantages. The pale master's deep study of necromancy and undeath and his bond with undead leads to acquiring many of those advantages. True masters of the art can be difficult to distinguish from the undead as they come ever closer to achieving total self-sufficiency.

A Note From the Planes

The contents of a letter from Sinomi to an unknown party, the beginning and end unreadable, and apparently sent during Sinomi's extensive planar travels after his return from the Abyss (see Sinomi Sii, Vol. 2) are included below:

"But enough of the past. I have encountered some interesting ideas on the planes, which I share with you now before I depart once again. There are two factions on the planes that have caught my attention: the dustmen and the bleak cabal.

The nihilistic members of the bleak cabal believe that there is no objective, ultimate meaning. To anything. There is no higher purpose. Things just are. People searching for meaning are wasting their lives searching for something that does not exist. The only meaning that makes any sense is the meaning we make for ourselves. If any search for meaning is to make sense, it is an internal search. Some find that this view that all is ultimately pointless leads to a deep sense of futility and melancholy. I on the other hand find the idea liberating.

The dustmen are a faction that has quite good relations with sentient, free-willed undead. According to them the concepts of life and death are misguided. There is only existence. If anything, if we must use the words "life" and "death", then we are all dead. Everyone, on every plane, even on prime worlds. Some are perhaps more dead than others. Primes are perhaps just newer to death than planars and petitioners and the like. Those called "undead" are the purest, purged of passions and senses. The credo of the dustmen could perhaps be stated: "Respect Death, and don't ever treat it like a servant." Their goal is to attain true death, but they also believe that one mustn't rush through any state of existence to get there. I find something congenial about this view, but it also quite fatalistic, which is less liberating than the view of the bleak cabal. In any case, both views seem worthy of attention."