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Curst Prison is an important location in Planescape: Torment.

Notes[]

Critical bug: It is recommended that the player only leave the Curst Prison once, if they turned in the Gith politician or both politicians to the Guard Captain, as otherwise both An'izius and Siabha's executions will begin at the same time in Curst in Carceri.

Vhailor note: This is the area in which the potential Companion Vhailor can be found. If the party is full with six companions, then he can be recruited for the XP, but either he or another Companion will be lost forever in this area, as there is no coming back. Players should leave Sigil for Ravel's Maze with five or less companions.

Modded game note: However, with the component "Save Nordom!" from Qwinn's Tweak Pack installed, it is possible to leave the prison without abandonning a companion here. With a full party containing Nordom, Vhailor may be recruited and Nordom chosen to return to the Rubikon instead of being abandoned.

Inhabitants[]

Map[]

To view X, Y coordinates in-game, press L.

Click the map to enlarge it.

Curst prison map

Items[]

Trapped barrel (X=4090 Y=2050)

Crate (X=2570 Y=670)

Barrel (X=2920 Y=2270)

Broken crates (X=1500 Y=3420)

Barrel (X=300 Y=780)

Walkthrough[]

Previous Area:
Curst Underground
Next Area:
Outlands


Prison Trias

By belief Trias is chained, and by faith released, from his shackles of the mind

Where Dak'kon gets the spotlight in conversations with and about Githyanki and about Zerthimon, Fall-from-Grace gets to give her views on morality here; twice she enters the conversation with Trias and once with Vhailor, to defend her stance and correct theirs

Container Items

The guards here seem a little shortsighted, perhaps, and are clustered quite close together, so it will be a different challenge than usual to pull them one by one. The gate to Vhailor will be locked until the end, and the gate into the prison complex itself is also locked at the start. So it is fastest to just go south at the first opportunity to find:

  • Trias, the Deva 2580, 3260. There are not really any wrong things to say to Trias. There is at least one way to end up having to quit conversation with him, and many ways to end up missing conversation branches, so if the player wants to read all he has to say, and all Grace has to say to him, they must be patient. See the #Three Celestial Fires? section for a bug or exploit, whichever one prefers to call it, a fairly harmless example of either.
Fall-from-Grace: "A Deva. But those chains do not seem to bind him so much as smother his mind"
Dak'kon: "The chains do not hold him. Belief chains him."

Since seeing the Game Over movie is recommended, so is saving the game and attempting to steal from him. And since Annah is probably the best thief, that means TNO, since only a failed pickpocket results in the movie. Game Overs are hard to come by in a game where the main character always resurrects...

The player may find the Scroll of Greater Embalming at the northwest (top left) to be better loot than usual

First door and Outer Ring, Guards. One of them has a Finger Bone key needed to open the second door.

Second door and Middle Ring, more Guards. And if TNO accused her of a murder plot in Curst, Roberta Who Was Lonely and Vengeful and is now Still Lonely and Vengeful.

As the party prepares to go through the third wall gate of the prison complex into the Inner Ring, save someone 40 damage, by having Annah or TNO use the Detect Traps ability. The target trap, directly south of the third door, will then be illuminated as a 10-foot red square on the floor, and should be easy to disarm. 87,000 XP is given whether the trap is dismantled or merely triggered for damage, but it will continue to be a hazard and potentially do more damage until it is disarmed, and disarming it is required to go through the next gate. Also south of the third door is the final container with another of those nifty Dread Bond bracelets. Near that, if TNO accused him of plotting against Siabha, is Anizius, who breaks off conversation. On the way to the next door, if TNO told the Guard Captain that she was plotting against Anizius, is Siabha, who has fewer compunctions against telling TNO how she feels.

  • Cassius the rogue Weapon

Kill Cassius and he will drop a version of Celestial Fire that cannot be wielded, a roll of bandages, and a random piece of poor loot; this gives 10,000 XP. Fail at any part of the tests of Speed and Wit, or choose the test of Strength, and he will go hostile and must be defeated to get the sword. Defeat him at the tests without killing him and he fades away in green mist, so there is no way to beat get both the 5K and 10K XP

  • Speed: Cassius requires that you pickpocket him. If you are successful, you pocket a roll of bandages, and get 5,000 XP and the sword
  • Wits: Cassius asks three riddles
    • Players may be familiar with the first riddle, from Greek mythology, the Riddle of the Sphinx: "What walks on four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, and three at dusk?"" For every question, one of the dialogue choices contains the answer, which is "A man". The Nameless One will indicate that he knows the answer and be able to give the full reasoning with an Intelligence of at least 14: "A human, who crawls on all fours at birth, walks on two legs during youth, and leans on a cane during old age."
    • "I groan, but words never escape my lips. I may be empty, but never am I full" The answer is "Hunger"; if TNO has an Intelligence of 16, his dialogue choice will indicate the answer
    • "What flies, and cannot stand still? What devours all it touches, yet eats nothing? What can never be lent, yet is always wasted? What is always spent, yet never earned?" The answer is "Time", which TNO will indicate with an Intelligence of 17

After TNO uses the real sword from Cassius, or the imaginary one from conversation, see below, to free Trias, Trias gives him a length of chain which can transform the door at the northeast of the map into a portal. Click on a point past the portal to pass through it without activating it, and enter Vhailor's cell.

Vhailor

Vhailor the Mercykiller


Recruiting Vhailor[]

Main article: Vhailor#Recruiting Vhailor

It is not too hard to do; the better reason to save the game is the payoff for all that Lawful Goodness, the potentially +3 bonus to Strength (or +2; note that the +1 is not available due to a 'bug'). There are two possible Alignment changes in conversation with Vhailor. The way to get a shift to Law from both of them is to agree with him that 'Mercy is weak', which is Lawful Evil, and the other is a Lawful Good statement "Truth: I seek Justice too..." when recruiting him.

At no more than the -very edge- of Law, with only one of the two possible "Truth:"s in conversation with Vhailor shifting TNO to Lawful from Neutral, it is possible to get the 25 points of Law needed for the +2. 35 are needed for the +3.

There are two more shifts to Law left in the game, so if TNO has been Lawful for say, six or seven Alignment changes, then it is possible to get two points from Vhailor, and a point by Vowing not to kill Trias later, and if necessary, waiting until the very end for one more, to tell Deionarra the truth about her death. The player would then have to pick Vhailor out of the possible companions to resurrect (only he and Dak'kon get bonuses at resurrection time, and V's is a better bonus than D's), and converse with him as usual to get the +3.


Next Area: Through the portal to the Outlands


Three Celestial Fires?[]

..or maybe even four?

It is possible to...hmm...get Trias to believe that you have the Celestial Fire, and then he breaks free from the prison the guards made for his mind, with the power of imagination? At any rate, the player can go through the conversation with him once, using all the first, #1 responses. If TNO initiates conversation again, and again gives all the first, #1 responses, the option to say, "Is this the sword? We found it in the center of the prison", comes up. Continue with dialogue #1s until the #2 option comes up to 'use the sword to free him', and the portal is opened, for the same 306,250 XP. If Trias asks if TNO has the sword at the opening of the second dialogue, then TNO asked too many questions the first time around, as presumably most playtesters did, in order to miss this bug, and the player must reload the game to continue the trick.

This means a couple of fairly obvious things. Cassius will thenceforth give the player a sword they can keep. And the portal and the area behind it in which Vhailor's long vigil can be broken, is now open, before going through the Prison. However, sorry to say, the sword that Cassius gives is no good for anything but displaying on the wall; it cannot be wielded, even by a Lawful Good Fighter with five points in Blades. And it cannot be Used to change its weapon type.

Possible other significant factors required to replicate this: The above has been playtested on a v.1.0.0000 unpatched game. This seems the most likely reason. The other known bug, in Modron Maze, was party based; the additional party members in this case, were Morte, Dak'kon, Annah and Grace. Inventory contents seems a likely candidate for contributing to an item-based bug; Ravel's Fingernail was on the equipment bar, as were the Punch Daggers of Moorin. The Axe of the Jester and The Justifier were in TNO's inventory. All the types of magical items from Ravel's Maze except the Black-Barbed Seeds were in inventory. All of the characters' inventories were mostly full.

Assuming that the presence of one Celestial Fire does not make the other disappear, or some such, it should be possible to get a second one, one of the normal ways.

But there are yet other ways, and other potential copies of the sword to be had. The most obvious way does not work. Conversation in the unpatched v.10.0000 game is initiated by The Nameless One, so he can attempt to steal from Trias first. In the later patches of the game, conversation is initiated by Trias in a popup box, as TNO approaches him. But that does not stop Annah from stealing the sword from him...She can try, and succeed, but he has only a scroll of Force Missiles (possibly random loot). If either of them attempts to steal and fails, it is, almost inexplicably, "you have lost a piece of information vital to your quest"-Game Over. What? Trias is outraged because TNO tried to steal the thing he was supposed to kill Cassius for to give to Trias, that Trias is not supposed to have yet? Let's see...TNO putting his hand into the pockets of an angel to steal from him is just so bad, or Chaotic perhaps, that it opens up a wormhole to another plane and sucks him in? Trias is weakened already, and his pockets are his most vulnerable spot, so that was the end of him?

Anyway, there are really not that many ways to see this sequence, so it is worth a save and reload, and stealing is a far nicer way of getting a Game Over than hacking on a defenseless Angel.

Even if TNO cannot approach Trias in the second meeting, Annah can.[1] Qwinn's Fixpack announced plans to modify the game to make it impossible to steal from Trias in the second meeting, sometime after 2009.[1]

There are no visible bugs in the sequence of events in the Prison, following this trick. There was the possibility that the other triggers would not work properly when the penultimate trigger of the whole area had been activated. The prison break in particular, that follows Cassius giving the sword to TNO...but everything seemed fine, including getting Vhailor into the party.

Citations[]


The Hive
Mortuary Area (Mortuary | Gathering Dust Bar | Mausoleum) • Northwestern AreaMarketplace AreaSmoldering Corpse Area (Smoldering Corpse Bar | Fell's Tattoo Parlor) • Alley of Dangerous AnglesRagpicker's Square
Under the Hive
Trash WarrensBuried Village (Pharod's Court) • Weeping Stone CatacombsDead NationsWarrens of ThoughtDrowned NationsTomb of the Nameless One
Other Wards
Tenement of ThugsAlley of Lingering SighsLower Ward (Great Foundry | Bones of the Night) • Clerk's Ward (Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts | Civic Festhall) • Undersigil
Mazes
Player's MazeModron MazeBlack-Barbed Maze
Outlands and Hells
Outer Curst (Traitor's Gate Tavern) • Inner CurstCurst UndergroundCurst PrisonOutlandsBaator (Pillar of Skulls) • Curst GoneCurst in CarceriCurst Administration
Fortress of Regrets
Fortress EntranceFortress Main HallTrial of ImpulseMaze of ReflectionsFortress Roof
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