The Planescape: Torment Dustmen And Damn Good Faction Writing
Planescape: Torment is an infinity engine CRPG that launched in 1999 in the wake of the hugely successful Baldur’s Gate. Borrowing from the rule set of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition), Planescape: Torment aimed to market a narrative based experience rather than the combat based gameplay of its relative games Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale, and to its benefit that has let the classic stand the test of time even against modern titans such as Wasteland 3 and Divinity: Original Sin 2. I started playing through Planescape because of the high praise it earns, mostly in the realm of its unspoilable experience. I’ve read many synopsis and watched videos that try to summarize this game but I don’t think that anyone can exactly put into words what this game is. I am not far into this game, maybe even just dancing around a quarter way through and in no hurry to finish. I’m letting this game marinate as each of my play sessions happen instead of forcing myself to play it in all my spare moments. However this is a large experience and as larger thoughts start to pop in my head I want to take the opportunity to stop and write about them.
And with that large introduction, this article will feature the main faction that you will be dealing with in your first 10 hours with Planescape: Torment, the Dustmen, and how my interaction with its members has given me a new perspective on how factions in video games can be written. Growing up I never played games with dynamic faction systems that functioned on a role playing level, I played games like Skyrim where the Dark Brotherhood was just another ride at the theme park that you might as well see and had no wield on whether your character believed in “committing murder”. So quite a shock when my decision to join the Dustmen in Planescape: Torment sincerely had nothing to do with what tangible rewards I would gain but rather if I was buying the scripture that they were selling, and while they were never for me, learning about this organization was one of the better parts of wandering Sigil. Full spoilers ahead for the introduction and Dustmen encounters in Planescape: Torment and because of the nature of these encounters I strongly suggest you find a copy of the enhanced edition on steam and play through the game yourself if you haven’t already.
Planescape: Torment begins as you wake up as an immortal man with no name and are tasked with nothing except that you want to find out who you are and where you’ve found yourself. Luckily it’s easy enough to find out where you are its the morgue, more specifically the Dustman morgue where most bodies end up after kicking the bucket in Sigil. On making your grand escape and casually explaining that there must be some sort of mistake to everyone you pass you meet a Dustman named Dhall. Dhall is an important character to the beginning of the Nameless Ones self realization but he is also pivotal in learning the main pillars of the Dustman organization. It is kind of awkward to be enriched in this level of detailed information before even leaving your first building but if you can brush it off it’s not all that jarring to the overall experience. Dhall is a devout believer of everything that the Dustmen believe in, he believes that life is a hollow existence full of pain and suffering and that by letting go of emotion and passion you can strive for the “True Death” which is a void state of afterlife in which there is nothing and allows the soul to know absolute peace. After talking to Dhall this seems absolutely unappealing, it does allow the player to attach more with the theme that perhaps you may want to find a way to stop this curse of immortality but the raw extreme that Dhall explains leaves a sour taste in the players mouth for the Dustmen. Also, since if any other Dustman see you you have to kill them, that puts another damper on your relationship.
Once you are free of the Mortuary you are able to start going wherever you please in Sigil, one of these places is a nearby bar for Dusties called the Gathering Dust Bar. There you first see a silver-tongued man named Mortai. When you meet Mortai he offers a contract, 50 jink to basically become an organ donor, except, they raise your body to use as free labor after you’ve had your name penned in the dead book. The man is clearly working a little too hard at this and the fact that he hides the reason they want your dead body from you lets you know the moral ground being tread here is thin even in the world of Planescape. If you sign or not it doesn’t matter (since you are immortal) and you can even quote his scripture back to him to get him to wipe other citizens contracts. The Dustmen have a philosophy that restrict them from showing any attachment to their hollow living form so that they may ascend to the True Death when they die. This means letting go of ambitions both business and otherwise and the Dustman side project of free zombie labor is seen even in the eyes of the circle as not worthy of the time outside of their main duties as morticians. This interaction adds onto the already unlikable views of the Dustman.
You can talk to a Dustman woman hanging out at the bar who is having a crisis of faith. To me her story sticks out as the most interesting of the Dustman interactions. Sere the Skeptic had just recovered from a very serious illness in which she has almost passed away. Because of her imminent passing due to natural causes her closest friends and family from the Dustmen came to celebrate her passing and tell her congrats for making it to the True Death. She was upset that her loved ones would celebrate her passing and you have the option of suggesting whether she should drop the religion or if she should see this as a test of faith. Her delivery of this is fantastic in the games writing and she offsets a serious topic with bouts of humor and it can feel like a genuine interaction between friends at the bar.
On your way out of the bar you can talk to a young man standing by the exit that is contemplating suicide to rid himself of the pain of his existence. Now, because this is Planescape, the good alignment solution to this quest is to die yourself and report back to the young man that suicide is not going to calm his mind. You can actually talk him out of killing himself by reciting more of the Dustmen scripture to him. He will not find any peace and ascend to the True Death if he leaves this existence with strong emotion chains like hatred in him.
At this point whether you think the beliefs of the Dustmen are righteous or not, if you are trying for a good character than you have most likely just helped three people by debating with Dustmen about their own beliefs. I have a hard time believing that most people would feel that attached to the Dustmen that they would want to join but the Nameless Ones interactions with the Dustmen leave a lot to think about. The basic principles are as simple as Dhall puts it: exist in this life with minimal emotion and passion and you achieve peace through the True Death. But after talking to the Dustmen in the bar its hard for me to understand the true intention of these beliefs. Is the focus on the True Death a ways to limit thoughts on this life down to just a limbo or is the idea that you can’t actively seek death or show passion a way to highlight this life as something more than meaningless? Soego the fake missionary claims to be in the Dead Nation to get the inhabitants of the crypt to accept the True Death and Morte claims that it was because sentience after death scares them. Even though the Dustman circle didn’t actually send Soego to the Dead Nation for this purpose that doesn’t fully discredit Morte’s comment. Does the existence of sentient undead that live lives in a city underground denounce the beliefs that peace is only brought upon those that let go of this life, or does the very existence of skeletons, ghouls, and zombies give flesh inhabitants more ground to strive for the True Death?
I have more questions than when Dhall easily explained the Dustmen to me 10 hours prior and that to me is good fiction writing when creating a religion. In a world where necromancy and the idea of another life after the first death is as common as it is the idea of having your soul safe from tampering in the True Death seems comforting. However trying to sell people on a “void of nothing” as an option for places to go when you die is also a hard sell. The Dustmen work as a faction because their scripture clashes heavily with the games early themes of life and death and what it means to extend that life over and over. After witnessing bodies contorted into becoming all manner of slave and servant in Sigil the player may decide that believing in a True Death is what they want for their character in role play and that has everything to do with the great presentation of the Dustman and their strife.
If you’ve made it this far first of all thank you this one was long and I hope if you are still interested to give Planescape: Torment a shot as a classic in philosophical literature’s potential in interactive media.
