gloamingdaydream

What can change the nature of a person?

Upon leaving the mortuary, the opening area of Planescape in which I woke up in, the very first thing I stumbled upon was a faction of death worshippers, known as dustmen. And no, not death as a satanic entity or anything of that sort, but simply a faction that relishes the idea of dying. I spoke with their supposed leader, a man called Emoric, and questioned him about their philosophy, to which he replied with a lecture on their values, expressing himself in words such as “false life”, “true death”, “eternal boundary”. As I found myself asking him to elaborate on each one of those. What stuck to me out of his entire monologue was in the way he chose to explain the core of the faction: A belief in which one must choose to release their passions, escape their emotions, and only then may one be able to escape this false life of pure suffering upon their death. I did not talk to this man for the rest of my playthrough, but I did return to the ideas that these dustmen believe. His usage of the word “passion” struck me, a substitute for emotion that, although meant the same thing, implied that these human aspects of ours are burning urges. These urges, according to the dustmen, are what we must discard in order to truly be liberated. But I saw it differently. I wanted, and want still, to be burnt by my passion. I would like to be engulfed and drown in it, and so the dustmen and I are in such a case, complete opposites. Whereas they see emotion as something to escape, I saw it as something to embrace. My interaction with these dustmen, regardless of how much I disagreed with them, set the tone for the rest of the game.

My first five hours were spent in a perpetual search. A search for a supposed journal I’ve lost, a search for a man who knew of me and who could explain my plight, a search for the place where I “died”. And when I say “I”, I of course simply mean the player character who I am controlling, who has no name. I am given the option to lie to people by giving them the name “Adahn”, but the game makes it perfectly clear that this is not a name. Every time the option to give this name pops up, it is preceeded by the clarification that this truly a lie. I, of course, chose never to lie, and simply had to explain to people I’d just met that I had no recollection of a name. It was perfectly clear to me, then, that this character on screen was but a vessel. The Nameless One was really just me. Or whatever self I chose to present to these characters.

My interaction with the dustmen and the relationship I had constructed with my avatar set the tone for the rest of my playthrough. I learned about much of this world, I learned of the planes, of their structure and form, of the alignments that determine much of these places. I attended lectures on death, on a particular war that has been raging for time immemorial, I joined a faction called the sensates, whose philosophy is that the multiverse must be known through our senses. In short, Planescape Torment, was, for me, spiritual nourishment. I was far more enthralled by these small moments, these conversations with interesting people, than by reaching the “end”, and it was clear that the companions who followed my avatar thought the same. I had gone on a journey to find myself by exploring the multiverse, and that is exactly what had occured.



“What can change the nature of a man?” Is the question that haunts this game. And my answer was the planes themselves. For me, the planes themselves hold experience, change, emotion, knowledge, and all else. But that’s an obvious statement that anyone who plays could tell you. All of this rambling was a preamble to lead to what I actually wanted to say.

The Planes are art. My journey throughout this planes has largely mirrored my reality in which I have proceeded to experience hundreds of different worlds, each with their own unique attribute, each with their own “values”, their own philosophies. The factions and the people I encounter within the planes are art, they are all beacons in which I find much of and which I continue to look for, they are “meaning” itself. The answer one finds at the end of the game is not determined by the game, nor by the self, but by the self’s engagement with the game.

The planes are what change The Nameless One. Art is what has changed me. Art contains thought, emotion, empathy, calmness, resonance, divinity. A few weeks prior to playing Planescape, I was wondering what was the thing that had changed me. What was it that had gotten me to go from a stubborn atheistic man that was angry at the world, to a non-binary, spiritual artist whose passion is to create something for themself? The answer to that is art, or “the planes” as the game would have it.



As I entered the fortress of regrets, I found myself alone. I’d lost all my companions on the journey, whether by intention or by accident. But funnily enough, this too was a mirror of reality. My companions still exist, as do my friends, but once I truly find myself through the creation and experience of art, that is where I am alone, and where I look at myself, just as the Nameless One looks at his previous incarnations, the way I look at the “self” that I used to be years ago.

It is an odd thing to look at. It’s not something I’m going to leave here, in this moment. There’s no doubt I will return for another playthrough of this game eventually, and when I do, that second playthrough will be intensely different. Why? Because I will not be the person I am today. I will have had the experience of having experienced the planes already once before, I will have read many more books, listened to countless more albums, seen a few more films, played more games, made more art. I am constantly evolving, and as a result, the world that I observe and engage with is also evolving. The planes change the nature of the person, and the person in return changes the nature of the planes, or at least that is what I currently believe. Maybe I’ll read this in five months and think I’m regurgitating a load of crap, but I hope I’ll still appreciate this current incarnation, just as I can look fondly upon my previous incarnations and appreciate the fact they have led to the incarnation of Elliot who exists today.