Brothel Sensory Stones

[Juunana]

*Possible spoilers.*

This post refers to the secret room in the back of the Grace's Brothel that contains the private sensory stones for all of the students. Is there anything you can do with them? I'm playing through the game again, and decided to look into this room more closely. It is beautifully designed, but from what I can tell there's nothing you can do with it. It seems like there should be, however, as there is one sensory stone - the first one going in a clockwise direction from where you enter - that is unmarked. It sort of goes along with the Grace saying before that there are ten students, but there are really only nine. So who, then, is this tenth sensory stone for?

[VonDondu]

As you might have figured out (and Fall-From-Grace confirms it), there really are ten students in the Brothel. It has been a while since I played the game, but I think I just assumed that the tenth stone was for the "tenth student" and regarded it as a clue to something that happened in one of the Nameless One's previous lives.

I'm deliberately being vague to avoid giving away too much information. But if you want something more specific, read the spoilers below.

SPOILERS (highlight to read)

The Nameless One used to be a Sensate. At least one NPC will tell you that. Among other things, your membership in the Sensates (inactive though it may be) will permit you to visit the private Sensatoriums at the Festhall. Once you're inside the private Sensatoriums, there are other clues to follow that will lead you deeper into the main storyline. That's one reason why I thought the tenth sensory stone at the Brothel was supposed to be a clue--it helps move the story along.

Also, if you haven't figured it out, the tenth student is the Nameless One.

[Juunana]

Spoilers:

I know that the Nameless One used to be a sensate, though I'm not sure exactly how that pertains to the Brothel sensory stones. I also know that the Nameless One is "the tenth student", thought I think that just means that anyone that attends the Brothel becomes a "student" there, as Grace feels everyone will learn from their experience there. However, I still don't really understand the point behind that secret back room in the Brothel. There's absolutely nothing you can do in what is one of the most colorful, beautiful rooms in the game. That just seems odd to me. I at first thought that the unlabeled sensory stone may have belonged to Grace, but perhaps not.

[Robnark]

the NO's former status as a sensate doesn't affect anything in the brothel, only some events that happen elsewhere.

and I agree that the hidden place with the stones is pretty useless.

[VonDondu]

You're probably right when you say that the unnamed sensory stone has nothing to do with the Nameless One's previous adventures with the Sensates. I can't remember all the connections I thought I made the last time I played the game in the first place, and in the second place, maybe I was just imagining things.

Sometimes I'm disappointed when I find out what something in the game "really means". For example, the game developers' official explanation of who the "enemies three" really are is a lot less glamorous than what I had imagined, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But there's no arguing with the official explanation, so I guess I can live with it.

In the case of the tenth sensory stone, maybe the fact that it's unnamed simply means that the identity of the tenth student is a mystery (which you already knew). The other nine sensory stones identify the other students, but the presence of the tenth stone makes you keep looking for a tenth student. If there were only nine stones, maybe you'd conclude that there were only nine students and stop looking. This is not a glamorous explanation (and the pretty room does seem to be wasted), but maybe that's all there is to it.

[Platter]

While it is never said in the game (and thus not canon, if that makes you feel better ), it has been stated by a Torment designer (I think it was Chris Avellone) that the tenth sensory stone is Deionarra's.

I'd love to show you the thread in which this was stated but the BIS forums are gone now, and I couldn't save a lot of the interesting threads before they closed them down because the search function was not working.

[Platter]

I just asked Scott Warner what the Brothel basement was for and this is what he said;

Quote:

The basement was originally (as a I remember it) an area of an intended elaborate puzzles and exposition, but as time starting running out, it was an area that we initially went choppity-chop to. However, the artist who handled that level (Chris Jones) did such a wonderful job on it that it was painful to let it go, and we (Dave) finally found a way to shove it back into the game. When I was designing for the Brothel, I originally wanted to have characters actually taking patrons down to the basement so that we could use the level more effectively, but that proved to be beyond what we could do with the scripting language at the time (and too much lower-level work for what it would have been worth).