Lies of P is a retelling of the classic, Adventures Of Pinocchio” in the form of a Soulsborne game. The player takes control of P who has to work through the dystopian city of Krat. Along the way, he’ll meet characters with familiar names to the original story, and learn what it takes for him to become a “real boy.”
Much like the FromSoft games Lies of P is based on, the story can be rather deep, and some of it will be told through side dialogues, item descriptions, and other pieces of hidden lore. In fact, some large hints will be hidden in NG+, since the player will retain access to the puppet language translator. Once you’ve beaten the game, the grim story of Krat starts to come into focus.
This article will go over the main story for Lies of P and omits side character stories and the endings which are explained in a different article. Also, spoilers will be discussed here.
Krat, Puppets, And Ergo
Krat was just a small port town until the discovery of Ergo below the town by a group known as the Alchemists. Ergo was a mysterious blue substance that worked as a powerful fuel source, and with it, the Alchemists elevated Krat from a small town to a bustling city filled with wondrous inventions. A man named Gepetto further aided Krat’s technological ascension by developing automatons known as puppets. These puppets were powered by Ergo and took over menial jobs in the city, like construction, police work, cooking, cleaning, and even entertainment. Practically every house had a personal puppet butler or a puppet maid. However, there would be a slight hiccup in Krat’s puppet industry when one of the puppets murdered a human being. After that, Gepetto implemented the Grand Covenant into every puppet. The Covenant had four rules every Puppet had to obey, and they were the following:
- Obey the orders of your creators.
- Don’t harm humans.
- Protect and serve Krat and its people.
- Never Lie.
With the Covenant installed, Krat flourished and became the thriving metropolis players get to explore in the game.
Simon Manus, Carlo, and Gepetto’s True Goal
Simon Manus takes control of the Alchemists and the first cases of the Petrification Disease begin to appear. Gepetto loses his son, Carlo, and his son’s best friend, Romeo, to this disease. Simon gets ahold of a relic known as the “Arm of God” that can help him achieve apotheosis. However, to activate this relic, Simon needs a vast amount of Ergo to power the arm. It was also during this time that Gepetto learned that puppets could have their ego awakened, allowing them to have some semblance of life. Still reeling from grief, Gepetto formulates a plan to use the “Arm of God” and a modified version of Carlo’s heart known as the P-device to revive Carlo. To achieve these ends, Gepetto turns Carlo’s original body into a Nameless Puppet and creates a new puppet that’s unbound to the Grand Covenant, P, who will act as a host to the P-Device and be a temporary container for Carlo’s memories and ego. P’s purpose is to collect ergo at any cost to charge the P-device and aid in the resurrection of Carlo. Its freedom from the Grand Covenant is to make sure P can collect Ergo through any actions P deems suitable.
Petrification Disease
Petrification Disease is what happens when a person is exposed to concentrated Ergo for too long. The spores from Ergo begin to take root and form crystals in the person’s skin, turning their flesh cold, their blood blue, and eventually, leading to the person’s death. In some cases, victims may even go mad and mutate into monsters. Once someone is presenting symptoms, it’s almost impossible to cure them.
Puppet Frenzy
Seemingly at random, almost every puppet in the city went mad and started killing innocent civilians. This would come to be known as the Puppet Frenzy. Citizens fled and barricaded themselves wherever they could while the puppets continued their grisly slaughter across every street in Krat. It’s later revealed through a transmission with the King of Puppets that this was only possible because of a secret Law 0 hidden in the Grand Covenant. This law clarifies the creator in Law 1 as Gepetto, implying that Gepetto himself set into motion the entire Puppet Frenzy. Additionally, the puppets themselves, while slaughtering citizens would say “Protect the humans!”
The reason this doesn’t violate the Grand Covenant is Gepetto had set anyone with the Petrification Disease to no longer count as human. As a result, the puppets would attack infected humans to generate Ergo for Gepetto’s plan to resurrect Carlo and still remain within the boundaries of the Grand Covenant.
It’s during this tumultuous time that P gets awakened.
P’s Journey
A blue butterfly named Sophia awakens Gepetto’s puppet and tells him to get to Hotel Krat so she can explain what is happening. After grabbing Gemini to help guide him, Gepetto’s puppet battles his way through the frenzied automatons skulking through the streets for more victims. He soon reaches the Hotel and meets Sophia and the other supportive characters who will help him in his journey.
He’s soon sent to rescue Gepetto, and successfully saves his creator’s life from an insane man known as the Mad Donkey. Once P safely escorts Gepetto to the hotel, P is immediately told to rescue Lorenzini Venigni, the man who helped Gepetto mass-produce puppets for the rest of Krat. P arrives in time to save Lorenzini and slay Fuoco, a massive robotic puppet that was attempting to break into the Saint Frangelico Cathedral on orders from the King of Puppets.
Saint Frangelico’s Cathedral And The Balum District
During the Puppet Frenzy, refugees fled to the Cathedral for sanctuary. When P takes a look inside, he finds people driven insane by the Petrification Disease murdering one another. Upon further exploration of the Cathedral, P would find the mutated monstrosity that had been Archbishop Andreus. Thanks to his relationship with the Alchemists and some human experimentation, Archbishop Andreas had become a monster and would be slain by P.
It’s during this time that all the Ergo released by P’s victims is collected by Simon Manus.
P would then be sent to check on the Balum district where he runs into the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, a group of Stalkers that were hired by the Alchemists to provide Gold Coin fruit for their experiments. During this fight, P would murder the Eldest Brother.
The King Of Puppets
According to Gepetto, the King of Puppets might be the one behind the Frenzy, and if that were the case, he must be stopped. P battles his way to the Opera House, slaying the White Lady along the way, and comes face to face with the King of Puppets.
The King of Puppets extends his hand in peace, but P knocks it away. A fight soon breaks out between the two, with the King of Puppets attempting to communicate in a language unknown to P. Once the King of Puppets is slain, a new puppet emerges from the body. This puppet is none other than Romeo, whose body was turned into a puppet by Gepetto. Sadly, Romeo still can’t communicate with his best friend in life, Carlo (aka P), and resolves to murder P instead. P gets the better of him, and Romeo embraces his death, hoping it will offer him the freedom he desires.
Just outside the Opera House, Gepetto waits for P and tells him to explore the Grand Exhibition Hall to find out what is happening with the Alchemists and whether there is truth in the rumor of a cure for the Petrification Disease.
Exhibition Hall, Victor, And Ergo’s True Nature
P heads to the Exhibition Hall and runs into Victor, a powerful wrestling Champion who had died of an incurable disease. However, through the Alchemists’ experimentation with Ergo and the Petrification Disease, Victor is brought back to life, stronger than ever, and closer to immortality than anyone else in Krat (save for Laxasia).
P sends Victor back to the afterlife and is congratulated by Simon Manus for accomplishing that task. Simon, like any good supervillain, monologues to P about the true nature of what Ergo is and how it works. Afterward, he offers an invitation to P to visit him on the Isle of Alchemists.
True Nature Of Ergo Thanks To Simon Manus
Ergo is revealed to be condensed, crystallized human souls. Within each Ergo crystal still exists the memories of the person it came from. This is why puppets can have their Ego awakened, ie the identity of the person inside the Ergo used to power the puppet becomes self-aware. It’s also later revealed that Ergo is made from victims of the Petrification Disease because the crystals that form in their bodies contain their purified “essence.” In turn, this is what drives them mad and turns them into Carcasses; some victims must endure the consciousness of the other souls residing in the crystals now growing in their bodies.
According to Victor’s devilish monologue, the Alchemists have discovered that conquering the Petrification Disease gifts the surviving human with “a strengthened body and a mind free of lies.” It’s through this idea that the Alchemists hope to push humanity into its next stage of evolution and Victor was a proof-of-concept for this idea.
Barren Swamp And The Attack On The Hotel
In order to reach the Isle of Alchemists, P would have to get a Grand Ergo shard which could only be found in the Barren Swamp, a dumping ground for puppet bodies. P defeats the swamp monster living there and gets the Shard. Sophia soon contacts him, warning him that the Hotel is under attack. P rushes back to the hotel and finds the Black Rabbit Brotherhood has kidnapped Gepetto on Simon’s orders.
P prepares to hop into a submarine owned by Vegnini when Sophia speaks to P and tells him about why she woke him up in the first place. She wanted someone to save Krat, but she also wanted someone to put an end to her misery. Sophia’s true body is on the Isle of Alchemists, and the person P was interacting with is an astral projection. Sophia is a Listener, a person who can hear and control Ergo. This gives Sophia a small amount of power over time and space through Ergo’s odd properties, and it’s what’s been allowing her to keep P alive no matter how many times he dies. However, Simon had strapped Sophia to a machine that would use her power to spread the Petrification Disease to people. Her constant exposure to Ergo mutated her body and left her in a constant state of agony.
P uses the hotel’s secret passage to the docs to access the submarine and is ambushed by the Black Rabbit Brotherhood. However, this time they’ve also brought a newly resurrected Eldest Brother. P dispatches all of them, hops into the Submarine, and journeys to the Isle. This fight is important to note since it’s the second time we’ve seen the Alchemists successfully resurrect the dead.
Isle Of Alchemists
Once he reaches the Isle, P is contacted by Sophia who discusses her ability to control time through Ergo. As P approaches the tower, he faces off against Laxasia the Complete, who is the closest out of all of Simon’s creations to perfection.
Once Laxasia is defeated, Gepetto’s Puppet climbs the tower and finds Sophia. Here, the player can choose to give Sophia peace or spare her. If the player chooses to give Sophia peace, they’ll be on track to receive the True Ending. It should be noted that with this choice, Gepetto’s Puppet will absorb Sophia’s Ergo and grow long white hair, signifying that they have become human.
However, if the player chooses to spare Sophia, they’ll be on track for the “standard” ending. No special effects happen with this choice, and P will look the same.
Simon’s Apotheosis
Waiting for P at the top of the tower is a heavily mutated Simon. Thanks to all the Ergo siphoned from P’s battles across Krat, the Arm of God is now ready to be used and Simon has seemingly fused it to his body. A battle ensues, and Simon mutates into an “awakened god” to defeat P.
P still defeats Simon despite Simon’s newfound godhood. In his dying words, Simon asks what’s become of Sophia and then warns P against Gepetto.
Gepetto’s Final Move
With the Arm of God, a massive quantity of Ergo, and a fully charged P-device all in one place, Gepetto is ecstatic. His long-term plans are finally coming to fruition. All he has to do is get P’s heart and implant it back into Carlo’s body to resurrect his son. From there, the player gets the choice of whether to hand over P’s heart or not. If they choose not to, then Gepetto will become angry and forcibly control the mutilated remains of Carlo to retrieve the heart. Once you defeat the Nameless Puppet, or if you choose to hand over P’s heart, you’ll reach one of three endings to the game.