Ah. My TNO just respects them for doing their thing and keeping the ghouls in check.
The tails are good money early in the game, anyway.
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My TNO has so much money right now I have no idea what to do with it. My TNO is a mage, I didn’t plan on picking up Vhailor, and Dak’kon only uses his own sword, so I’ve been able to sell quite a few nice weapons. I am finally getting to areas where expensive items can be bought though, so I guess I’ll do a little of that. I’m wondering if I need to buy any spells in the Lower Ward marketplace. I do have a shortage of Level 4 spells, but I also can’t remember what kind of scrolls I will end up finding just by playing the game. I’m also debating what items it is safe to drop, because I’m still carrying a lot of books and keys that I don’t THINK I’ll be needing?!
Gotcha. I always complete the catacombs before taking the sphere to Pharod, so the trip is much more rewarding for my TNO.
EDIT: Spells always seem to be feast or famine. I used to play a mage since I’d be upping intelligence anyway, but last time I played as a fighter. I think I liked that better.
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Yeah, I just missed some stuff in the Drowned Nations (including the decanter of endless water), so I had to double back. Which was fine, as it gave me an opportunity to rob Pharod’s Court. The backtracking wasn’t hard, as there’s a portal to the catacombs in Lothar’s lair.
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I’ve also played as a fighter who maxes int, wis, and cha - it sounds dumb but it actually kind of works!
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Now that I’ve encountered the Godsmen, I’m thinking about joining a faction. Don’t remember which, if any, I joined in my previous playthrough. I can’t really sympathize with the Dustmen or the Godsmen, but I think the Godsmen may have an important quest revolving around them. I can’t really remember what the Xaositects are about. That leaves the Sensates and Anarchists as the two that sound the most appealing. Choices, choices.
EDIT:
The Planescape faction I like the most are the Bleak Cabal, though they’re not featured in Torment.
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I’ve settled on the Sensates. First for the members-only sensoriums, and later for Grace. She isn’t very useful in a fight, but I don’t like the other options.
I can’t really remember what use the Godsmen are. Forging something, I guess. It’s been too long.
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The Godsmen are building some secret project in the back of the Foundry. I think you’ve got to be a Godsman (or perhaps an Anarchist impersonating a Godsman) to get back there and see what they’re up to.
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I joined the Godsmen, albeit probably temporarily. It seems the Godsmen are building some sort of magical cannon for the baatezu (the lawful evil devils). That doesn’t sound good at all.
I also entered the siege tower and met Coaxmetal, a sort of golem built into the tower who functions as a living forge. He’s obsessed with entropy and makes weapons to bring about the undoing of the multiverse. What a creepy weird being it is.
I’ve begun exploring the Clerks’ Ward and its many side quests, but have temporarily gone back to the Hive to stash items and get some tattoos. I also decided to take the opportunity to add Ignus to my party and learn some fire spells from him (though I doubt I’ll keep Ignus around for the duration of the game).
Ignus was a mad pyromancer who wanted nothing more than to see everything in existence burn. He began setting fire to the Hive, causing much death and destruction in the slums. So fed up with Ignus’s pyromania were the inhabitants of the Hive, that everyone with even the slightest magical gift banded together to exact ironic punishment on him. They tracked him to a tavern and united their powers to transform his body into a conduit for the elemental plane of fire. Ignus was glued to the spot, catatonic but still alive, eternally consumed by flames. The tavern where Ignus was trapped was renamed the Smoldering Corpse in honor of the new morbid attraction that floated in a column of fire just inside its entrance.
Then The Nameless One used the Decanter Of Endless Water to set Ignus free from his infernal prison.
After asking Ignus who the mage was that taught him the ways of pyromancy, Ignus revealed that it was The Nameless One himself in one of his previous incarnations. Your cruel training was inflicted upon Ignus as a young boy, and it was you who shaped him into the monster he became.
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I bought Planescape: Torment back when it first came out. I still haven’t gotten around to playing it. That’s how backlogged my game queue is. 
I love playing D&D, especially in a multiplanar environment. That said, I agree with sentiments that the art style and unceasing slang was annoying.
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If anyone is looking for further information, here is a podcast that discusses Planescape: Torment.
Ha, I think it says something that I was nodding along with this paragraph, but then did a total double-take when I saw what you thought that answer was!
My read is that while the game is clear that belief can change the nature of the Planes, for purposes of the Nameless One’s story the one thing that can change the nature of a man is regret.
Sorry I’ve been swamped with work-stuff and unable to reply earlier! I don’t think there’s any way to approach this topic that’s not saturated with spoilers, so let me just hide the entire post:
Spoiler-riddled reply to Mike Russo
Surely Exhibit A in the case for “belief” as the answer to the riddle must be The Nameless One’s confrontation with the Transcendent One in the WIS ending:
TNO: “If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can.”
Transcendent One: THEN YOU LEARNED A FALSE LESSON, BROKEN ONE.
TNO: “Have I? I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil’s hag heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.”
Of course this evidence is not a slam dunk; The Nameless One’s answer to the riddle is not necessarily the game’s, and moreover it’s entirely possible that even The Nameless One wasn’t answering the question honestly and instead was telling the Transcendent One what he needed to hear.
So we can look further. The game has many examples of characters whose very existence is defined by belief—their own force of will and conviction or that of others. Adahn, Vhailor, the inhabitants of the Dead Nations for instance… but let’s focus more narrowly on characters whose nature has changed and the reason for this change: the night hag who does good, the deva who does evil, and of course the Nameless One himself.
Ravel Puzzlewell
Mebbeth: “Yes… yet it is the irony which hurts the most…” She gives a sickly smile. “An act of kindness, thrice repaid… it is the way of the planes that my few acts of kindness should be the death of me.” She laughs softly. “Yet I have no regrets…”
Ravel has quite a fearsome in-game reputation, but we do find out about a couple of these “few acts of kindness” over the course of the game. One, obviously, was helping the First Incarnation sever his mortality. We also learn during our meeting with Ravel that her attempt to break open Sigil was not a hostile act against the Lady of the Pain as we’d been told throughout the game:
Yves the Tale-chaser: “It is said that she put the question to the Lady of Pain; not directly, but shouted it to Sigil itself, daring for the Lady to answer. When no reply was forthcoming, she wove terrible magics that threatened to open the Cage and let the fury of the planes roll in like a wave.”
but rather one of compassion:
TNO: “Why were you imprisoned, Ravel?”
Ravel: “I tried to help a Lady and a-kindly she did not take to it.”
Fall-from-Grace: “The Lady of Pain? You tried to help her?”
Ravel: “My offering of help was unwelcome. I tried to set her FREE; Sigil is the CAGE, a City of Doors and Locks, is a prison for her. It must be, mustn’t it be? Why else call the city of Sigil ‘the Cage?’ And who is caged? The Lady! A prison so small for one so great. Unjustness, wrongness, intolerable to torment a woman thusly! … I resent anyone, even a Power, being imprisoned and think that all, everyone …whether stones, shores or quiet bladed ladies… should be FREE.”
And so this conviction—this deeply-held belief in freedom and revulsion at unjust imprisonment—was strong enough to compel Ravel to act not only against her self-interest but also against her nature. Not just in the case of the Lady of Pain, but also in the case of the Nameless One:
TNO: “Is that what you were trying to do when I met you so long ago? Were you trying to set me free?”
Ravel: “Quite possibly, possibly quite. Life’s chains and fear-of-death may have gripped too-tightly on the man I new… knew? Knew then, hmmmm-hmmmm?” Ravel picks at one of her jagged gray hairs, wrapping it around her finger. “No liking for chains and cages does Ravel have…”
An interesting parallel between Ravel and the Nameless One are Ravel’s incarnations who help you throughout the game. And they do not share her nature:
Mebbeth: “Mayhap… Mebbeth has forgotten herself many times over… I have dreamed that I was someone else…”
TNO: “How could you not know who you are?”
Mebbeth: “How is it ye do not know yerself?” Mebbeth licks her lips. “Many things… even bits of the self… they fall through memory’s cracks, shadows of things forgotten, these memory thing-pieces, maybe bad… maybe good.”
TNO: “But why Mebbeth? Why the disguise when you could have been Ravel again?”
Mebbeth: “Here, in this place, all I did was the mendin’ of things and bodies, settin’ bones, deliverin’ babes… in all these things, I was content.” She sighs. “As for being that other, that Ravel…” She licks her lips again. “I think… ye take for granted what a comfort it would be, oft times, to misplace a memory or two.”
You can change your nature from night hag to midwife by forgetting who you were: forgetting the memories and experiences that shaped your values and beliefs. There are obvious parallels here to the Nameless One’s own incarnations, which I’ll talk about below.
Trias the Betrayer
Dak’kon: “The chains do not hold him. Belief chains him.”
Trias’s motivations are not as fleshed-out as Ravel’s (likely a casualty of the game’s general decline in polish during the second half), but we do see a few glimpses. In particular, Trias’s fall to evil seems to have two sources. The first is his conviction that by forcing Mount Celestia’s hand in intervening in the Blood War, he is serving the greater good:
TNO: “What really happened to your wings, Trias?”
Trias: “Baator’s fires burn hot indeed, but they are candles compared to a father’s anger.” He fluttered the burnt shreds of his wings. “There is no pain like being cast from Mount Celestia.”
TNO: “So you’re fallen, then? Why should I believe any of your words?”
Trias: “Speak not to me of treacheries and falling, mortal. I am willing to sacrifice even myself that Good might triumph.”
TNO: “That’s noble, Trias, but what gives you the right?”
Trias: “I am here. I see the evil. I am willing to act on it. My will gives me the right.”
Here we see, as with Ravel, how a sufficiently strong belief can empower someone to act against their nature. We can also learn a little bit about a second motivation for Trias’s betrayal if we try to redeem him; he is convinced he has no other choice or purpose:
TNO: “What will you do when I have left you, Trias?”
Trias: “I shall once again attempt to levy a host against the gates of Paradise. They will not have me back, and there is no other purpose to my existence.”
TNO: “Trias, have you forgotten the face of your father?”
TRIAS: “What do you mean?”
TNO: “The Upper Planes are the home of justice, beauty, and goodness. They are also home to forgiveness. Go home. Admit your error and beg forgiveness.”
TRIAS: He opens his mouth for an angry retort… and pauses, reflecting. He bows his head. “You speak convincing words, mortal, and their wisdom pierces me. I shall seek the forgiveness of my fathers, and accept any retribution they choose. If we meet again, it is my hope that I will be redeemed.”
You could point to Trias’s redemption as evidence that regret (and the consequent yearning for forgiveness and salvation) has changed his nature. But another way to look at his redemption is as a change in his core beliefs: prior to meeting the Nameless One, Trias held an unshakeable conviction that he was irredeemable, and locked onto his current path of action;
Trias: “Never again shall I see them, I fear, the ordered beauty of Arcadia, the vistas of Elysium, the Seven Mounts of Mount Celestia… all the ugliness contained in these Lower Planes is effaced there, where it is truly possible to believe in redemption. Too many look only to the Lower Planes for their inspiration and aid, I fear… That is all I have left to me in this place.”
the Nameless One redeems Trias by dislodging that belief, and reminding/convincing him that there is another path still open to him. There is again an obvious parallel here to the plight of the First Incarnation. So let’s talk about him next.
The First Incarnation
Ravel: “Isn’t it in the nature of a man to want to live forever?”
Dak’kon: “Only if what lies on the other path carries greater pain.”
It is undeniable that the First Incarnation’s answer to the riddle is “regret.” He says so explicitly:
First Incarnation: “Death’s kingdom will not be paradise, not for us. If you spoke to these others that were here, know that a fraction of the evil of their lives is but a drop of water compared to the evil of mine. That life, that one life, even without the thousands of others, has given a seat in the Lower Planes for eternity.”
TNO: “But you seem so much… calmer. More well-intentioned.”
First Incarnation: “I became that way, yes. Because for me…” His voice takes on a strange echo. “It is regret that may change the nature of a man.” He sighs. “But it was too late. I was already damned… I found that changing my nature was not enough. I needed more time, and I needed more life. So I came to the greatest of the Gray Sisters and asked her for a boon - to try and help me live long enough to rectify all the damage I had done. To make me immortal.”
We’re never told the nature of the First Incarnation’s original crime. I’ve seen speculation that it involves a role in the origin of the Blood War or the Pact Primeval; or that the Nameless One was the Lord Admiral of the Divine Hammer. None of these theories really fit with what’s known of the Nameless One’s history or the setting’s chronology and cosmology. My favorite theory is that the First Incarnation’s original crime was in fact unremarkable on a cosmic scale and has been lost to history; but it was his mistaken belief in the enormity of the crime and the impossibility of redemption that drove him to seek Ravel—to change his nature into the half-man that caused centuries of torment and accumulated centuries of regret. As with Trias, the First Incarnation’s belief that nothing was worse than the punishment that awaited him in the afterlife in the Blood War changed his nature. Regrets accumulated during his time watching the actions of the various incarnations from his small corner in their minds challenged and dispelled this belief.
The Nameless One
The First Incarnation’s answer to the riddle is forshadowed by Yves the Tale-chaser, if you inform her of your conversation with Deionarra’s father Iannis:
Yves the Tale-chaser: “There was a man, a prestigious man, that for all his wealth and status was terribly unhappy. His daughter had perished, and what little was left of his life was shadowed by the gloom of her passing. So it happened that a former lover of the daughter came to him and spoke of her with meaning and feeling, restoring the light to his heart. And in so doing, both found two wholly different things, each of which would prove precious to them in separate ways. One found the spark of life returned to him, the gloom chased from his eyes and the corners of his mind. And the man, the lover, the petitioner found something else that was to prove more precious to him on his journey—regret. For it is regret that can change the nature of a man, it is said, though perhaps only the Gray Sisters know it for certain.”
What’s remarkable about this tale is that Yves is wrong! The Practical Incarnation never felt any regret for manipulating and killing Deionarra. He also never shared any of the First Incarnation’s regrets about the pact with Ravel. He was the first incarnation to find and invade the Fortress of Regrets, but he did so for the purely selfish reason of ending the constant assassination threats. It’s clear he had no idea his adversary was his own mortality:
Practical Incarnation: “I was walking into this Fortress blind in some ways - I didn’t know what my killer was, so I needed someone who could see things I couldn’t in case the enemy was beyond my visual range.”
We don’t know for certain, but I’d wager that if the Practical Incarnation had known about the nature of the Transcendent One, merging with him and accepting his fate in the Blood War would not have been contemplated for even a second.
Like Ravel’s incarnations, the various incarnations of the Nameless One all have different sets of memories, and hence have different beliefs, values, and nature largely separate from those of the First Incarnation. We the player, as the agent of the latest incarnation, are thrust in the awkward spot of being held accountable for actions of the Practical Incarnation “we” never committed. Depending on the player, maybe we do feel regret for how the Practical Incarnation treated Deionarra. Maybe we don’t.
In the Fortress of Regrets we can merge with the First Incarnation and open the bronze sphere:
The sphere wrinkles in your hands, the skin of the sphere peeling away into tears and turning into a rain of bronze that encircles you. Each droplet, each fragment that enters you, you feel a new memory stirring, a lost love, a forgotten pain, an ache of loss - and with it, comes the great pressure of regret, regret of careless actions, the regret of suffering, regret of war, regret of death, and you feel your mind begin buckling from the pressure - so MUCH, all at once, so much damage done to others… so much so an entire FORTRESS may be built from such pain. And suddenly, through the torrent of regrets, you feel the first incarnation again. His hand, invisible and weightless, is upon your shoulder, steadying you. He doesn’t speak, but with his touch, you suddenly remember your name. …and it is such a simple thing, not at all what you thought it might be, and you feel yourself suddenly comforted. In knowing your name, your true name, you know that you have gained back perhaps the most important part of yourself. In knowing your name, you know yourself, and you know, now, there is very little you cannot do. The first incarnation’s hand is gone from your shoulder, and he is watching you with a slight smile.
The bronze sphere is filled with regrets, but notice that it’s not regret itself that changes our nature: it’s knowing ourselves as we were in the beginning, as the First Incarnation. In this moment we, the player who has been controlling the Nameless One and who have imparted in him our own nature and beliefs in our gameplay choices, cede agency of the Nameless One back to the First Incarnation. Regardless of whether we played the Nameless One as good or evil, lawful or chaotic, we relinquish our beliefs and replace them with the memories and regrets of the First Incarnation. And in what’s left of the game, we have no choice but to execute the First Incarnation’s will in merging with the Transcendent One and accepting our place in the Blood War.
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