A few nights ago I got real high, which sometimes leads into interesting thought trains. Somehow, this time, I ended up thinking about Planescape: Torment, one of my favorite games and commonly cited as one of the greatest games of all time. Originally released in 1999 and re-released in 2017 as part of the D&D Enhanced Classics Collection, the game follows The Nameless One, an immortal amnesiac on a quest through the planes to quite literally find himself. I highly recommend playing this game even though I'm going to be nutshelling the whole plot here, because it was one of the first games I can remember that truly offered some moral flexibility in the choices you make. There isn't one "right" way to finish the game, so it has immense replay value. Spoilers ahead!
Over the course of the game, you learn that you are The Nameless One, a near-legendary figure across the planes who cannot die. This isn't strictly true, as you can be killed (and there are some points where dying is necessary to advance the story)—but you don't stay dead.1 It turns out, you have lived many, many lives for gods know how long. Once upon a time, your original self committed such unspeakable crimes that, as punishment, he would be sentenced to fight in the Blood War, "a battle for supremacy of Law over Chaos and vice versa that has been raging since time immemorial on the Lower Planes. The war is massive and impacts the entire multiverse; few are those who have not heard of it or experienced its affects [sic]."2 Eager to avoid this fate and deeply remorseful for his actions, he approaches a night hag known as Ravel Puzzlewell to help him become immortal, which would hopefully allow him time to atone for his sins. The ritual she performs is flawed, resulting in functional immortality as described above, but with the awful effect of his mortality being stripped from his body and eventually corporealizing as its own entity known as The Transcendent One, who hides away on the Negative Material Plane.
Now, it's explained to you through your interactions with your companions and various NPCs that in the past, each time you've died you've come back with a different personality. Not only that, but you've also lost all memory of each previous life, leading to journals and memory stones and all manner of mnemonic devices—including scars and tattoos on your own body—scattered across the universe as each incarnation has made efforts for future incarnations to hopefully remember and eventually understand who they are and what happened to them, and, ultimately, how to fix it. However, this has been going on for so long that some of these resources are fading away or being destroyed. It turns out, your mortality rather likes being separated from you, and has been sending shadows to kill you and destroy what clues and artifacts remain so that it can never be found and made to rejoin with you (only one possible ending to the story). At one point, you find out that these "shadows" are the leftovers of other souls that have died in your stead. The mechanics of your separation from your mortality are such that a cosmic quid pro quo or equivalent exchange takes place: since you cannot actually/permanently die, someone else has to in order to fulfill the natural law. The Transcendent One's goal is to kill you so many times and make you forget so much, and eradicate all hope of reuniting with it, that you're no longer able to seek it out.
Something is significantly different about the incarnation you lead through the adventure though: you remember. Obviously this is because you, the player, remember, but it has great impact in the setting of the game. This is the one, the incarnation that will solve the mystery once and for all. It is this one aspect of "your" incarnation that gives your companions hope, not only to finally see you accomplish your goal, but also to be released from the chains you have bound them in.
Plot out of the way, then, here's some of the questions I've been pondering. It's been a while since I played it or read the novelizations, so I'm not sure if any of this is actually addressed in any official capacity, but as stated, other people have been dying in order to fuel your incarnation cycle. What if each new personality was actually the personality of the person who died for the next incarnation to come to be? And if that's the case, what could be the in-universe mechanics that allow you to retain both your personality AND your memories after death? Some intervention by the gods, perhaps? While we never find out what your original self's crimes were, it's mentioned a few times that whatever you did, the Planes have been dying ever since. Could it be the Planes functioning as a singular cosmic organism, and this cognitive preservation is the method of action by which the universe is trying to heal itself? Furthermore, is there some sort of system in place to determine who dies to revive you, or is it simply a lottery draw? Is this phenomenon only limited to sapient beings, or could the effect also be satisfied by the death of a creature like a dog, or a bugbear, or something else normally considered an "animal"? Prior to "your" incarnation, did the ties that bind you and your companions prevent them from being part of this pool, or was it possible that you might assume one of their personalities the next time you came back?
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also not strictly true. There are ways to permanently either "die" or DIE throughout the game.