History Literature / TheDeathGateCycle

* BatOutOfHell: Bloodsuckers, gigantic bats native to the Labyrinth whose fangs secrete a paralyzing venom that renders their prey immobile and helpless as the bat drains every drop of blood from their bodies.

* BlindIdiotTranslation: The Dutch version.

* WorldShapes: The elemental worlds created by the Patryn take some decidedly shapes:

* AsskickingEqualsAuthority: The Patryns pretty much work this way; Lord Xar is the most powerful living Patryn, and all of his immediate subordinates are also highly Badass. On the Sartan side of things, Samah is both the head of the Sartan Council and the most powerful Sartan in history [[spoiler: or so he thinks]], but it's unclear if the head of the Council is ''always'' the most powerful.

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Zifnab full stop. The Elves of Chelestra also have a reputation of being a more mild version of this, while the "ordinary" dead of Abarrach (who possess all their memories but not the consciousness to make sense of them) come off a a more deeply creepy version.

* IneptMage: Alfred has the distinction of being an inept mage with a tremendous amount of raw talent -- he's inadvertatnly ''raised the dead'' and ''turned himself into a dragon''. Haplo at one point remarks that Alfred's only talents are raising the dead [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and tailoring]].

In the backstory, [[ApocalypseHow nuclear war]] devastated Planet Earth, and several new HumanSubspecies mutated out of humanity: [[StockFantasyRaces elves, dwarves]] and humans with [[PhysicalGod demigod-like]] magical powers: the [[WellIntentionedExtremist Sartan]] and the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Patryn]]. These two races began to war over who would rule; eventually, the Sartan secured victory by remaking the Earth into four separate worlds, one for each element, which would then work together in harmony. (That's their children's catechism quoted above.) They imprisoned the Patryn within a "correctional facility", the Labyrinth, and built Death's Gate itself as the central nexus which made the whole PortalNetwork function. It was ASimplePlan. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong

In the backstory, [[ApocalypseHow nuclear war]] devastated Planet Earth, and several new races mutated out of humanity. The two most powerful were humans with [[PhysicalGod demigod-like]] powers: the [[WellIntentionedExtremist Sartan]] and the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Patryn]]. These two races began to war over who would rule; eventually, the Sartan secured victory by remaking the Earth into four separate worlds, one for each element, which would then work together in harmony. (That's their children's catechism quoted above.) They imprisoned the Patryn within a "correctional facility", the Labyrinth, and built Death's Gate itself as the central nexus which made the whole PortalNetwork function. It was ASimplePlan. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong

Well. The Labyrinth went OffTheRails in a big way, turning from a giant maze into a DeathWorld that took the Patryn untold generations to escape. Meanwhile, the four worlds descended into factionalism and chaos as humans, dwarves and elves began to fight amongst themselves. The sole exception was Abbarach, the World of Stone, where the mensch simply died out due to the world's volcanic atmosphere and the Sartan went their own way. None of this was according to plan, and the Sartan called to each other for help that never came. In the end, they [[BystanderSyndrome declared it someone else's problem]] and put themselves into HumanPopsicle beds to let things sort themselves out on their own.

* TreeTopWorld: Pryan, the world of fire, is a hollow sphere where intense humidity, constant rains, and the light and heat from the four suns at its center have caused its inner surface to become covered in miles-high jungles. The trees' branches support moss plains as large as countries and thick enough to bear the weight of regular-sized forests and small seas, while the forest floor is a lightless underworld of pillar-like trunks leading down to the mazelike tunnels of the humus layer. The elves and humans live in the canopies and on the moss plains, respectively, so far above the ground that stones are rare enough to serve as currency, while the dwarves dig their cities into the trunks of the trees much deeper down.

* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Samah's motivation in a nutshell. Taking the Sartan's idealism and emphasis on community to an unhealthy extreme, he's determined to build a perfect world - even if he has to pave over the rest of the cosmos to do it. This motivation is shared among the other Sartan of his faction, most obviously his son Ramu.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: With four inhabited worlds (five counting the Labyrinth and Nexus as one) each with their own cast, plus characters like Haplo, Xar, Alfred and Sang-drax who span multiple worlds, it's a given that this series has a ton of characters in it.

* FantasticSlurs: The elves often refer to the humans as "beasts".

* DeadlySparring: In the fifth book, [[ProfessionalKiller Hugh the Hand]] is given a [[MorphWeapon magical blade that can transform into any weapon]] by the Sartan. The oldest recorded use of the weapon involved two elven brothers going through their deceased father's treasures; one brother took the dagger while another grabbed a different blade. When they playfully sparred, the dagger suddenly changed into a longsword and impaled the one brother, much to the horror of the brother who was wielding it.

* WitchSpecies: Sartan and Patryns. All members of both races possess immense magical abilities far beyond what mensch wizards can accomplish, to the point that they are sometimes explicitly referred to as demigods.

* {{Expy}}: Zifnab bears a distinct resemblance (down to the letters of his name) to Fizban from ''Literature/{{Dragonlance}}'', though the two have very different backstories and motivations. According to Alfred, Zifnab spends his time after the series is done walking around and claiming he's {{God}}. Probably a nod towards [[spoiler: Fizban being Paladine]]. However, Weiss and Hickman have {{Jossed}} the theory that he's a deity, although he does demonstrate abilities beyond what anyone would expect from even an old and powerful Sartan, like living for thousands of years. There is an in-universe [[JustifiedTrope justification]] for his knowledge -- it's heavily implied that Zifnab read a great deal of fiction, [[spoiler:including the Literature/{{Dragonlance}} novels]], in his youth.