Some of the neat things in Planescape are all the sorta folky stories and moral parables that are put in. Anyway, I thought I'd add some stories that I read elsewhere that reminded me of Planescape: Torment, writing them as they would be written in Torment, so to speak. Add your own if you want.
The Onion (stolen from the Brothers Karamazov, as told by Morte)
Once there was this chit from the Lady's Ward, daughter of some higher-up. She was rotten to the core, she was. Never did anything for anyone else in her life, except once. Well, when she died, she went to the Gray Waste, except some Deva felt pity for her, and told her that she'd performed one kind act in her whole life: she gave some hungry beggar -- a clueless prime without a bit of jink to his name -- an onion. So the Deva says, "Here's the chant: there's only one way out of this hell, and that's with this onion that you gave. If you can hold onto this onion, I'll pull on it and take you up to Elysium."
Well, she grabbed onto that onion and held tight, but all the other petitioners in the Gray Waste wanted to come to, so they started grabbing at her ankles. The onion held, but she had a real hard time going anywhere, so in frustration, she yelled "It's I who am to be saved! Not you! You are all damned to this place by your sins! It is my onion!" and at that very moment, the onion snapped, and she fell back into the Waste, and the deva left, in tears.
Now if you ask me, that's a bunch of addle-coved nonsense. I've been in hell, boss, and no devas come to let you pull yourself out by a damn onion. Best you can hope for is that some scarred barmy will come scouting for some new talent in the depths of Baator, and even that's a pretty slim chance, but hey, if you want to believe that Devas start towing people around on onions, be my guest.
The Last Flower (stolen from James Thurber, as told by Yves the Tale-Chaser)
It is said that on the Prime World of Athas, all was bleak and desolate. The great cities of the past had been ruined, by aeons of war, devestation, and dark arcana. Nothing grew, and barren wastes covered the land. All the forests, the meadows, the works of art, were destroyed. The people lived worse than beasts, and no children were born, for love had passed from the world.
One day, a young girl who had never seen a flower chanced to come upon the last one in the world. She told the others that the last flower was dying. The only one who paid attention to her was a young boy. Together, the boy and the girl nurtured the flower and it began to live again. One day, a bee visited the flower. Soon, there were two flowers, and then many. The forests regrew. The boy and the girl found pleasure in each other's touch, and love was reborn into the world.
The children of the boy and the girl grew up strong and healthy. They learned to run and laugh. They built shelters and grew gardens anew. Towns, cities, and villages sprung up. Music came back into the world, and bards and tailors, painters and poets, and warriors and hedge-wizards, and generals and archmagi, and liberators. Some people went to one place to live, and some to another. Before long, those who went to live in the valleys wished they had gone to live in the hills. And those who had to live in the hills wished they had gone down to live in valleys. The liberators, under the guidance of the powers, set stirred the longings of the discontented.
Soon the world was at war again. Wizards drained the power from the trees and the gardens to cast their spells of destruction, and soldiers burned down the crops of their enemies. This time, the destruction was so complete that nothing at all was left in the world, except one man, one woman, and a flower.
