Now GOG offers Planescape Torment for sale once again, I see a lot of people discovered the best RPG ever made and many old fans return to play it once more. I also played it once more with all mods and enjoyed even more than 10 years ago. I even got my hands on the book and read it through. The book was based on one of the first scripts used when the game went into production and can be considered canon to the story. Even though the book is a slimmed version of the game, it finally fills in the last plothole I've always wondered about. I thought I would share it with the other fans here.

After the Nameless One merges with his mortality, he find himself fighting in the Blood War. Why he suddenly was summoned there, remains a mystery. I figured he had to go there to pay for crimes in his past lives or something, but the final chapter of the book actually sheds light on this. I guess the developers cut this part from the game because of deadlines. Anyway, here is the passage from the book explaining the final scene:

After regaining his mortality, Thane (as the Nameless One is called in the book) finds himself back with Fhjull Forked-Tongue. Fhjull start the conversation:

“Interesting.” Then his eyes darted back to Thane. I’ve watched you for eight hundred and thirty years, waiting for you to make yourself whole. At times, I must admit, I despaired or ever claiming what was lawfully mine. But seeing you here, now – my patience is rewarded a thousand fold. I am redeemed. Perhaps I will even return to Baator.”
…
Thane felt the need to take control and brandished his sword at the fiend. He realized immediately that it would do no good, but the slim tube looked just like the one he’d recovered for Pharod. It was his, and he wanted it back. How did it fall into Fhjull’s possession? The king of the collectors had said he took jobs for Blood War generals, said he was in tight with the fiends. Pharod had even seemed to expect Thane somehow, as if … [Fhjull can read his mind]
“As if he’d been told that along would come a dead man, the only person who could retrieve something that has been stolen from me and placed beyond my reach.” The amnizu twirled the steel cylinder in his sleek fingers, then cracked it in half. Out slid a tightly rolled piece of worn parchment, which the fiend spread open.
“Let’s read another story,” he began. “A young man signed a deal with me, long ago-this contract you see before you now. We came to his world to gain new recruits for our Blood War armies. The folk of his pitiable village were of poor stock, but all we really wanted were warm bodies, convenient targets to distract the tanar’ri. He was quite amusing, organizing the resistance. And, of course, I knew from the moment I saw the fire in his eyes that I had to break him. When the sacrificial fool offered to buy the town’s safety with his own servitude, well.. it was a plot twist more perfect than any I could have written. The righteous man’s fall was a demoralizing blow to the village. The sight of their leader brought low shattered the spirit of his people far more painfully than a mere tour of duty on the Lower Planes ever could.” The fiend uncrooked three of his long fingers. “Three guesses who that man was. The first two don’t count.”
Thane remembered everything now. His village had been unable to repel the invading baatezu. He’d agreed to fight in the Blood War if the fiends spared the others. The deal was deliverable at his death, and he’d scoured his world for a means of forestalling that end. A wizard had sent him to the planes in search of a way to trick the baatezu, to wriggle out of the damnable contract. He’d thought he’d finally succeeded when Ravel Puzzlewell took away his mortality. He hadn’t counted on the trauma of death and rebirth wiping clean his past, on his misguided need to discover what he was missing, to find the truth of existence. He’d freed himself from the fiend’s clothes and walked right back into them again.

There is it. The chapter goes on explaining more details and how Fhjull secretly helped and nudged the Nameless One into the right direction in his search. I really wished the developers had added this final part into the game, since it's quite a shocking and interesting ending.

I hope you enjoyed it :) If you don't own the book and you want some more details on the origional script, feel free to ask.

One word: wow. I wasn't expecting any of that. Certainly a plot twist by anyone's imagination.

830 years? That's older than the oldest elves! No wonder Chris Avellone didn't want them in his game here! LOL!

To be sure, that ending is still incomplete, because it opens up many more questions than the amount it answers (which is good in many situations, but I feel is inconsistent with a recent interview w/Chris wherein he said he feels TNO's story is done & not worth revisiting in a sequel). Couple that with the fact that there are different ways to end the game, I think its better, and possibly deliberate, that they left it out of the game. It's very interesting, but did Chris Avellone really say that what you wrote was in his original script?

Nevertheless, thank you very much for sharing this, Hezus. PS:T is my 3rd favourite game of all time, played & finished it for the 1st time within the last year after thinking I'd never have the chance to play it, and have nothing but good memories of it. Getting information like this is juss great.

I remember reading somewhere that one of the first scripts was used as a base of the book. And looking at the ending of PS:T, the last chapter seems to fit really well. At least it finally makes some sense to the last cinematic.

However, I have no solid evidence that Chris Avellone has written this same ending in that first script. Maybe the creators of the book came up with this ending themselves. It's something I'd really like to know, though :)

From the info you get from your First Incarnation in the final dungeon, it sounds more like you looked for immortality because you had done LOTS and LOTS of evil evil things in your life, and you needed to cheat death to avoid divine punishment. Forever. And then you lose your memory and everything gets gloriously muddled.

This... well it's interesting, but it makes TNO just seem like he's trying to weasel out of a bad work contract. There's no over-reaching fear of retribution for life of evil, just a "righteous man brought low." In essence, it seems to cheapen the First Incarnation's motives. It does add some context to the closing movie, but honestly I'm glad they left it out. The current implication of the closing movie is that TNO is stoically going off to pay the piper for all his incarnations' crimes, which works just fine for me.

I always thought the end movie took place in the future after TNO had died

I've always gone with that scenario the first few times I finished the game. But then I realised it's just a rough assumption and it's never really mentioned in the game. Besides, TNO had good and neutral incarnations as well, so that might have saved his karma.

Plus, nowhere is being mentioned that really evil people go to the Blood War to fight when they die. You go there if you were contracted as a mercenary or captured as a slave. You get conscripted to either one of the sides, so being cast down there to fight for yourself, seems odd. I don't know much about D&D or Planescape, but in this game, really evil people would end up in the Pillar of Skulls, I guess.

And lastly, since TNO is mortal now, he'll probably die in the Blood War within considerable time and then be at peace. Doesnt seem like much punishment after all he's been through. Pushing up the daisies was like his second nature :p

^ Different 'punishments' and different 'tasks' for different souls in the Lower Planes, Hezus.

The Planescape setting is, in a nutshell, the after-life of all the AD&D worlds (ie- Toril of Forgotten Realms, which is the world that's the setting for the BG series, NWN series & IWD series; there's a few FR references in PS:T too, which I found neat), though souls can be birthed there as well. The Lower Planes are essentially Hell (Baator) and the Abyss, with various Planes between them.

Back to the story, thanks again for sharing, but I see a major hole in it.

Ever since you posted it, I was wondering why this AD&D deity, that AD&D deity, this powerful wizard, that powerful cleric, all didn't pay close attention to TNO's plight, especially since it lasted 800+ yrs. Especially again, since it seems Lothar only kidnapped Morte, juss to show a measure of kindness to TNO (while still displaying & maintaining he's someone to not ever be trifled with).

But all of those points were rendered moot and not worth expanding on & sharing, once I figured something critical out in the passage you shared, which essentially goes against the logic of the story being told in the game.

And that's this: Trias is not to be killed in the game. If TNO follows through and kills him, the game effectively ends; TNO fails in his quest.

Trias bound Fhjull Forked-Tongue in a contract wherein he has to always do nice things to those that ask him of it. The contract is in effect for as long as Trias is alive.

With this in mind, since TNO has already met Fhjull, and already knows of the deal he has in place w/Trias, unless TNO is an absolute dimwit, TNO can effectively appeal to Fhjull's kindness as per the contract with Trias, citing extreme duress & stuff unto foolishly signing that deal to defend his village, and Fhjull would be BOUND to release TNO from service.

Thus, the story in the novel isn't at all consistent with the story in the game. Unless TNO in the novel has a wisdom score of 2 or something.

Trias can be killed in the game. It will give you the same exp. as redeeming him. And if you have Vhailor in your party, he will kill Trias regardless of your decision.

I havn't mentioned it, but in the last chapter of the book, Fhjull also thanks TNO for removing Trias for him (TNO kills Trias in the book), since he couldn't because of the kindness contract.

TNO would be able to kindly ask Fhjull to end his Blood War Contract, but the point is: he doesn't even know about this service contract. Even with a wisdom of 9999 he can't appeal to what he never knew. In the book, TNO even confronts Fjhuill about this afterwards but Fhjull correctly answers he only has to help, if that specific piece of information was requested from him. As for the timeline, TNO was conscripted into Fhjull's service before he signed the deal with Trias, so at the time of the deal he was allowed to be evil.

To me this is the ultimate shock ending. By helping TNO, Fhjull has also helped himself by getting Trias out of the way and finally redeeming his Blood War contract. It shows that even though you force the devil to help you, he will still have his own hidden agenda and never loses his evil side.

^ Gotcha. That clears things up. IIRC, as when I tried killing Trias in Carceri (and then reloaded afterwards; juss wanted to see if I was able to do it! LOL!) and succeeded, the game ended, saying that a valuable person regarding the plotline has been killed.

Yep. The main moral in PS:T is don't ever allow yourself to bound to things beyond your full & absolute control - especially when such dark powers are the ones in control.

Meh, lame. I always imagined - as I know a number of others had as well - that The Nameless One was Zerthimon. This seemed hinted at by some of the memories one receives while talking to Dak'kon, not to mention the parable he recalls of him using his last wish to know who he is; one of Zerthimon's major tenants seemingly "know yourself". This possibility made TNO a deep and interesting character, and left a vast unknowable legacy of questions behind him.

The answer given in the book is so bland and uninteresting that it accomplishes just the opposite ... but, seeing as it never made the cut for the final release of the game I am going to blissfully ignore it and pretend I never read this. (amusingly I just happen to have taken one of my pain pills earlier, the side effects of which include some memory loss, so I'll probably forget this thread in its entirety ... though that leaves the unfortunate truth that I might accidentally read it again when I come back to the forum ... hmmm)

^ Yeah the story in this novel is interesting, but I can see why Chris Avellone didn't want it in the actual game. It still seems like it doesn't fit at all, especially the discrepancy between Trias' role in the game vs. what he's reduced to in the novelization. Thereof, the novelization is interesting to throw into the debate of what TNO's past really was, but there's about a million more interesting & more plausible scenarios better than it.

To put it in a better way and easier to understand, I mean like it seems nothing more than a clue that's presented as fact, but yet you're compelled to dig deeper to see what truth it's hiding unto eventually seeing what TNO's story really is. At least that's what I meant when I said the story in the novelization is interesting. B/c it's certainly not interesting if that's what TNO's fate really was (no offense to the OP; rather, the book writer, who I'm sure wasn't Chris Avellone as he's too genius). Of itself, it's nothing more than a plot-twist, and doesn't have anything of the depth & 'atmosphere' that was ever present in playing the game. And given what I know of the Realms cosmology/Planescape setting, I'm hard-pressed to believe that TNO's fate would be sealed strictly by how it's portrayed in that book.

I liked the game's ending better... this seems like a bit of a deus ex machina ending. The game's ending challenged me to rethink my decisions throughout the game, and think of how they brought me to this point. Different playthroughs could mean different reasons to go fight in the Blood War. Guilt. Regret. Peace. Suicide. But since all playthroughs end this way, the fact is that we all die someday. Even the Nameless One. I think that's the message of the game ending.