| 1 | [[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/death_gate_cycle.jpg]] |
| 2 | ->The Earth was destroyed.\ |
| 3 | Four worlds were created out of the ruin. Worlds for ourselves and the mensch: Air, Fire, Stone, Water.\ |
| 4 | Four Gates connect each world to the other: Arianus to Pryan to Abarrach to Chelestra.\ |
| 5 | A house of correction was built for our enemies: the Labyrinth.\ |
| 6 | The Labyrinth is connected to the other worlds through the Fifth Gate: the Nexus.\ |
| 7 | The Sixth Gate is the center, permitting entry: the Vortex.\ |
| 8 | And all was accomplished through the Seventh Gate.\ |
| 9 | The end was the beginning.\ |
| 10 | ''[in scrawled handwriting, possibly in blood]'' '''''The beginning was our end.''''' |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Series of seven HighFantasy novels by Creator/MargaretWeis and Creator/TracyHickman, generally considered one of their best works. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | In the backstory, [[ApocalypseHow nuclear war]] devastated Planet Earth, and several new HumanSubspecies mutated out of humanity: [[StandardFantasyRaces 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 |
| 15 | |
| 16 | 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. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | And then the Patryn finally got loose. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | The main character of the series is Haplo, a Patryn VillainProtagonist who, as of the first book, is sent out through Death's Gate to investigate the other worlds on behalf of his master, Lord Xar. His orders are a classic bait-and-switch: if Haplo causes as much chaos and death as possible, Xar can come in as the BigDamnHeroes later. The Sartan are also returning to finish their plan for [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans utopia]]... at least, in the worlds where they aren't dead. Alfred, [[{{Deuteragonist}} the other main character]], is the LastOfHisKind from Arianus, a Sartan whose power is equaled only by his clumsiness. Both races discover, however, that there are far more dangerous things in the universe than each other... |
| 21 | |
| 22 | The books are divided into two broad arcs; books 1-4 deal with Haplo's explorations of each of the elemental worlds in turn and the search for answers over the disappearance of the Sartan, while books 5-7 deal with the broader conflict that engulfs all the worlds. They are, in order: |
| 23 | #''Dragon Wing'' |
| 24 | #''Elven Star'' |
| 25 | #''Fire Sea'' |
| 26 | #''Serpent Mage'' |
| 27 | #''The Hand of Chaos'' |
| 28 | #''Into the Labyrinth'' |
| 29 | #''The Seventh Gate'' |
| 30 | |
| 31 | The series was adapted into a graphical AdventureGame called ''VideoGame/DeathGate''. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | ---- |
| 34 | !!This series provides examples of: |
| 35 | |
| 36 | * AboveGoodAndEvil: How the Patryns see themselves. Closer inspection, however, proves that they do have a (rather strict) moral code, no matter how cynically they try to justify it. |
| 37 | * AbusivePrecursors: The Sartan had definite shades of this -- at the very least, their opinion of the [[{{Muggles}} mensch races]] was low enough that they had no real issues with killing untold millions of them when they sundered the Earth. Not that the Patryn would have been any better, mind. |
| 38 | * ActionGirl: |
| 39 | ** Grundle comes from [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame a culture]] where a young girl of her social status is expected to be proficient at things like axe-fighting and hammer-throwing and is perfectly willing to charge into battle against foes that far outclass her to keep her friends safe. |
| 40 | ** All Patryn women are as fully capable of fighting as their men; the Labyrinth isn't choosy when it comes to victims, after all, and no Patryn will take that threat lying down. Marit is the most obvious representative of this. |
| 41 | * AffablyEvil: Kleitus, while alive. This largely disappears after he becomes a lazar (he's certainly still the most affable of the lazar, but that's not saying a whole lot...) |
| 42 | * AfterTheEnd: After ''two'' ends, actually -- an implied nuclear Armageddon that wiped out modern-day human civilization, and a definite magical one that destroyed the physical Earth and killed off millions of humans, elves and dwarves. |
| 43 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: The serpents, who pretty much ''are'' ChaoticEvil given shape, and the monsters in the Labyrinth, which were created by magic gone haywire. Subverted with the Sartan and the Patryns: each of those races sees the other this way, but both are shown to be just as capable of good ''and'' evil as any other race. |
| 44 | * AnimateDead: The basic spell used by the Sartan necromancers of Abarrach. The problem is, this is a universe based on EquivalentExchange -- for every corpse raised, someone of the same race dies untimely. This is theorized to be the cause of the decline of the Sartan. There's also the slight drawback to bringing someone back from the death too early. Instead of just a zombie, they come back as a lazar, which is far more intelligent and far more dangerous. |
| 45 | * AntiHero: Haplo is initially a borderline VillainProtagonist, fiercely loyal to his people and his lord but willing to ruthlessly use anyone else he comes across to accomplish his goals, while Hugh the Hand is a professional assassin who has his own standards and sense of honor but knows full well that you don't advance as far as he has in his chosen profession by having an overabundance of conscience. Both eventually get CharacterDevelopment moving them towards more conventionally heroic territory later in the series. |
| 46 | * AntiVillain: Lord Xar and Samah, as each other's {{Shadow Archetype}}s, both reflect this trope. Both men genuinely want to make the worlds a better place for their people -- and both are also driven by [[AGodAmI megalomaniacal pride]] and [[FantasticRacism bitter hatred of each others' races]] to do monstrous things in pursuit of that goal. [[spoiler: And both of them in their last moments recognize and repent of the evil they did, for the cost of their lives]]. |
| 47 | * ApocalypseHow: |
| 48 | ** In the backstory, a likely Class 2 (Planetary, Social Collapse) came about as a result of a nuclear war that devastated human civilization and destroyed the refuges where elves and dwarves had been hiding since the Middle Ages, leaving the Earth in anarchy until the rise of the Sartan and Patryn. |
| 49 | ** The Sartan-Patryn war ended up causing a Class X (Planetary, Physical Annihilation) as the Sartan destroyed the Earth and remade it into five new worlds in a gambit to defeat the Patryn, killing millions of mensch in the process. |
| 50 | ** A Class 2 bordering on 3a (Planetary Scale, Species Extinction via engineered causes) struck the Sartan after the Sundering, as the use of necromancy in Abarrach caused Sartan everywhere to spontaneously die to balance the resurrected dead, while a host of unforeseen issues made their civilization to crumble into nothingness. |
| 51 | ** Another Class 2 bordering on 3 occurs in Pryan over the events of ''Elven Star'', as the Tytans move through its inhabited lands, systematically killing and destroying anything they find. By the end of the book, [[spoiler:they have annihilated every nation in the setting and slaughtered the majority of their inhabitants, scouring that part of Pryan clean of civilization]]. It's stated that this has been going on since the Sartan civilization fell, with the Tytans migrating over Pryan's surface and wiping out all civilization they find. |
| 52 | ** A Class 3b (Planetary Scale, Species Extinction via natural causes) occurred in the backstory of Abarrach, due to the world's highly hostile environment killing off all the mensch populations that the Sartan had brought with them, and eventually began to kill off the Sartan as well. |
| 53 | * ArcVillain: Each of the first four books has a largely self-contained story with its own antagonist: |
| 54 | ** ''Dragon Wing'': Sinistrad. |
| 55 | ** ''Elven Star'': The tytans. |
| 56 | ** ''Fire Sea'': Kleitus, [[spoiler:who remains a supporting antagonist in the last three books]]. |
| 57 | ** ''Serpent Mage'': The dragon-snakes [[spoiler:who become the primary BigBad of the remainder of the series]]. |
| 58 | * AsLongAsThereIsEvil: The serpents will exist for as long as there is darkness in the mortal soul. |
| 59 | * AsYouKnow: Said almost word-for-word to Haplo by his benefactor at the start of the first book; in this context, because Xar is speechifying a bit to remind Haplo of the importance of their cause. |
| 60 | * AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: 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. |
| 61 | * AttackItsWeakPoint: |
| 62 | ** A Patryn's magic is centered around the heart-rune on their chest. As long as their rune-tattoos are active, they are nearly unkillable demigods. If the heart-rune is damaged or compromised, however, their entire being will begin to fall apart. |
| 63 | ** The dragon-snakes are completely immune to physical damage everywhere except for one spot -- in their forehead, right between their eyes, where a solid blow from a rune-inscribed weapon will kill them dead. |
| 64 | * AwesomenessInducedAmnesia: Alfred manages to pull off incredible feats of magic as he used to be a master wizard but adopted a bumbling, useless personality which took over to the point that he only shows his skills a few times and reverts to his bumbling personality with no memory of what he did. |
| 65 | * AxeCrazy: The Lazar exist in a state of constant torment which drives them to acts of incredible violence and bloodlust directed at the living. |
| 66 | * BadassNormal: Hugh the Hand -- even cursed, he's the one mensch Badass enough [[spoiler: to survive the Labyrinth]] |
| 67 | ** His curse renders him [[spoiler: incapable of dying]], so that isn't a good example. A better one would be his killing the single most powerful human mage on his world in single combat, even though he [[spoiler: temporarily]] died doing it. |
| 68 | ** The entire dwarven race of Abarrach. The elves and humans died so long ago they are considered myths, while the dwarves lasted almost as long as the Sartans-without magic to boot. |
| 69 | * BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: one of the main themes of the series, literally hard-wired into the metaphysics of its world; see FunctionalMagic below for more elaboration |
| 70 | * BaldOfEvil: Sinistrad, to the point of being completely hairless. |
| 71 | * BastardUnderstudy: [[spoiler: Bane]] is only ten years old, and already coming up with plans to rule Arianus [[spoiler: and off his father as soon as he no longer needs him]] |
| 72 | * BigBad: Lord Xar initially appears to be this; the situation later develops into more of a BigBadEnsemble with the addition of Kleitus, Samah [[spoiler: later replaced by Ramu]] and the serpents [[spoiler: who prove to be the greatest threat and the incarnation of evil and chaos]]. |
| 73 | * BigFriendlyDog: Haplo's dog, who, contrary to one of the trope's requirements, is quite smart. |
| 74 | * BlackAndWhiteMorality: The serpents versus the dragons, who are the literal embodiements of the good and evil within the mortal character |
| 75 | * BlackCloak: The Kir monks, Sinistrad, the necromancers of Abarrach, and sometimes Xar wear these. |
| 76 | * BlessedWithSuck: Hugh the Hand gets resurrected by Alfred and made immortal to boot, for the price of no longer being able to kill anything. Since he's an assassin, it's easy to see why he's not happy with this situation. |
| 77 | %%* BlindIdiotTranslation: The Dutch version. |
| 78 | * BloodsuckingBats: Bloodsuckers, gigantic bats native to the Labyrinth, are haemovores whose fangs secrete a paralyzing venom that renders their prey immobile and helpless as the bat drains every drop of blood from their bodies. |
| 79 | * CameBackWrong: The Sartan necromancer Jonathon tries to raise his recently killed wife Jera from the dead, but is too impatient to wait the requisite three days to allow her soul to safely depart. The result is a creature with echoes of Jera's personality, but is also completely insane, super-Sartanly powerful, and hellbent on revenge and making more of its kind. This is the origin of the lazar. |
| 80 | * CanineCompanion: Dog, who is always with Haplo even when it should be physically impossible. [[spoiler: Justified because Dog is the literal manifestation of Haplo's soul]]. |
| 81 | * CantArgueWithElves: |
| 82 | ** Subverted. The Elves certainly think they're the superior race, but the other races have no problem with strongly disagreeing. Of course, it's not that hard when the elves of Arianus are TheEmpire, the elves of Pryan are elitist snobs, and the elves of Chelestra wear the hat of being a bunch of [[GeniusDitz genius ditzes]] (Their magic is awesome, their diplomatic skills unrivaled. Their culture is... eccentric). |
| 83 | ** In any case, the true elves of this setting are the Sartans and the Patryns, who really don't like mere mortals arguing with them, but it's made pretty clear that they ''should'' -- both have major faults they refuse to acknowledge. |
| 84 | * CardCarryingVillain: Sinistrad. It's all in the name, which he actively chose as part of a deliberate effort to play up every EvilSorcerer stereotype in the book and get himself dismissed by the other mysteriarchs as a harmless eccentric. [[NotSoHarmlessVillain They learned better to their sorrow]]. |
| 85 | * CargoCult: This is what the religion of the dwarves/Gegs of Arianus boils down to. They were originally brought by the Sartans to serve the Kicksey-winsey, a continent-sized machine meant to supply Arianus with water and the other worlds with various goods, but since the Sartans vanished they have taken to literally worshipping the machine itself and the Sartans, whom they remember as the "Mangers", complete with priests known as "clarks". This is something the elves exploited by pretending to be gods, getting the Gegs to give them the precious water in exchange for shipfuls of garbage and refuse that the Gegs think is treasure. |
| 86 | * CastHerd: 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 each sub-chapter. |
| 87 | * CatFolk: Tiger-men, monsters native to the Labyrinth, resemble outsized tigers capable of walking on their hind legs and provided with opposable thumbs. They're capable of dropping to all fours when running and are skilled climbers, but rarely enter forests due to their longtime enmity with the local SavageWolves. They're also enthusiastic hunters and capable of crafting tools and using simple magic, but they rarely use this for more than crippling their prey -- they prefer to kill their targets with their own fangs and claws. |
| 88 | * ChariotPulledByCats: The humans of Arianus use a species of enormous flightless birds known as tiers as beasts of burden. |
| 89 | * CharmPerson: Bane was given an enchantment by Sinistrad that makes everyone dote on him. Not love him -- there's a significant difference between the two that becomes a minor plot point. |
| 90 | * {{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) comes off as a more deeply creepy version. |
| 91 | * TheCorrupter: Basically the serpents' hat, though Sang-drax does it the most on-page |
| 92 | * CreepyChild: Bane is precocious, brilliant and charming. He's also a budding sociopath who takes after his EvilSorcerer biological father in the worst ways. Even Count Tretar, EvilChancellor of the [[TheEmpire Tribus]] court, is unnerved when Bane shows his true colors. |
| 93 | * DeadlySparring: In the fifth book, [[ProfessionalKiller Hugh the Hand]] is given a dagger by the assassin's guild that was made by the Sartan during ancient times [[MorphWeapon and can transform into any weapon]]. The oldest recorded use of the weapon the guild has involves two elven brothers who found it among their deceased father's treasures; one brother took the dagger while the other grabbed a different blade. When they playfully sparred, the dagger suddenly changed into a longsword and impaled the other brother, much to the horror of the brother who was wielding it. |
| 94 | * DeadpanSnarker: Zifnab's nameless dragon. Haplo also does this at times. |
| 95 | * DeathWorld: |
| 96 | ** In the Labyrinth, ''everything'' will try and kill you. The land is barren, harsh and difficult to navigate, the plants yield little food and are filled with toxins and hidden thorns, and the native wildlife is composed of monsters ranging from SavageWolves and giant BloodsuckingBats to insectoid warriors whose every drop of blood turns into another of their kind and nearly invincible, sadistic dragons. Further, unlike other Death Worlds, the Labyrinth itself is literally, actively out to kill you, and can exercise considerable control over its monsters and its landscape to do this. Imagine yourself walking down a beach when you suddenly trip on a rock. The Labyrinth put it there when you weren't looking. Imagine yourself climbing up a hill when your handhold gives way, sending you rolling to the bottom. The Labyrinth did it. And imagine yourself camping out in a forest that's been cleared already when you hear the howls of a pack of wolfen closing in. Guess who called them in? The only reason the Labyrinth hasn't entirely wiped out its Patryn prisoners is that the magic that created it forces it to give them at least the merest fighting chance. |
| 97 | ** Abarrach is nearly as bad, although it's not actively malicious -- it's just extremely alien and inhospitable. There is no natural light besides its seas and rivers of lava, the air is thick with toxic fumes and the slow cooling of its core is slowly but surely freezing the entire world. Between one thing and another, the mensch all died out and so did most of the wildlife. Only the Sartan survived; even then, only two city states still exist at the time of the books, and their inhabitants have to spend so much of their magic on just surviving that they might as well be mensch in all other aspects. |
| 98 | * DecoyProtagonist: In ''Dragon Wing'', Hugh the Hand seems like the main character right up until [[spoiler:he dies]]. ''Elven Star'' has an entire cast of these, although this time you'd already be aware that the most important character in the book is actually Haplo. From ''Fire Sea'' onwards Haplo and Alfred are the obvious primary protagnists. |
| 99 | * DeusExitMachina: In ''Dragon Wing'', either Haplo or Alfred could solve all the problems of the book in about two minutes. Unfortunately, Haplo dares not use his Patryn powers for fear of alerting the Sartan, and Alfred passes out every time something important happens. |
| 100 | * DiscOneFinalBoss: Sinistrad is built up as BigBad in the first book, but cosmically he's a little fish, especially when compared to the ''real'' bad guys |
| 101 | * TheDragon: Haplo starts out as this to Lord Xar, ironic because he's still the main character. Sang-drax can be said to take this role; in a way he ''is'' the BigBad, but he's more the avatar it takes to communicate with mortals (one of many) than the core of its consciousness, and is himself subordinate to the Royal One who is the serpents' true leader. |
| 102 | * DragonRider: The humans of Arianus commonly use dragons as flying mounts in order to move between their world’s floating islands. However, these dragons are not fully tamed, and as such have to be bound with magic. If the spells fail, the dragon is very likely to turn on its rider. |
| 103 | * DysonSphere: Pryan is a hollow sphere with an internal surface covered by miles-high jungles and with four small suns at its center. As the suns never set or move, it has no true night, with the closest being storms that move over its surface at regular intervals and provide some measure of darkness. |
| 104 | ** It is the biggest world by far, having far more surface area than even the pre-sundering Earth, and as there has simply not been enough time in the setting's relatively brief history for the mensch population to grow enough to inhabit more than a tiny part of its surface it is very sparsely populated. This is also why Zifnab gets an elf inventor to start shooting rockets day and night to attract Haplo's attention when he enters the world -- it's all but stated that without some visual cue to head for, Haplo could have spent a lifetime flying over Pryan without ever coming across civilization. |
| 105 | ** Originally, it was designed by the Sartan to be essentially an enormous power plant for the same reasons that it's theorized high-tech civilizations would be driven to build such spheres -- its shape meant that all the suns' energy would be captured without any being lost, which the Sartan could then transmit to the other worlds. |
| 106 | * EccentricMentor: Zifnab. As [[spoiler: a pre-sundering Sartan and one of the only survivors who opposed Samah's plans]] he's one of the wisest, most powerful characters in the series. Because of his extreme age and [[spoiler: various trauma's he's suffered across the centuries]], he's also [[CloudCuckooLander completely loony]] and is as liable to quote old movies or have ridiculous arguments with his dragon as he is to actually offer useful advice -- but if you can listen to him long enough, there's still a huge amount of key information about the history and nature of the worlds locked away in that brain. |
| 107 | * ElementalPlane: The Sartan themed each of the main four worlds around a classical element: Arianus, a WorldInTheSky where people live on floating islands, is the world of air; Pryan, a HollowWorld of sweltering temperatures and towering jungles, is the world of fire; Chelestra, another hollow world but full of water, where people live in hollow spaces within artificial floating structures, is the world of water; and Abarrach, a massive volume of rock honeycombed with caverns and tunnels and highly volcanic, is the world of stone. |
| 108 | * EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: The key characteristic of the Labyrinth, to the point where the very geography can spontaneously alter itself just to screw its prisoners over. The only mercy built into it is that everything it throws at the Patryns is theoretically beatable, as it was at least ostensibly meant to be teaching its prisoners. From the perspective of the Patryns, as mercies go, that isn't one. |
| 109 | * EvilOverlord: Subverted with Lord Xar, who fully intends to take over the universe and rule it with an iron fist, but is beloved by his Patryn followers and genuinely cares about them. Played straight with Kleitus. |
| 110 | %%* EvilSorcerer: Sinistrad and Kleitus. |
| 111 | * {{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 disproved 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. |
| 112 | * EyeScream: A species of giant, birdlike creatures native to the Labyrinth will relentlessly attempt to peck out their prey's eyes, before devouring their target once there are rendered blind and helpless. |
| 113 | * FantasticRacism: |
| 114 | ** Hoo boy. Sartan and Patryns hate each other, the mensch races hate each other, the Sartan and Patryns look down on the mensch, and the mensch resent the "demigods". The serpents, of course, love all this. |
| 115 | ** This becomes a plot point in ''Elven Star'', where the racial hatred and prejudice between the elves, humans and dwarves is very strong and open. One particularly glaring example would be the elf Calandra, who considers all humans to be, so to speak, subhuman, and with the bad logic typical of racism she holds them to be barely more than animals but also highly devious, cunning and untrustworthy (which her own brother says to her makes no logical sense). This kind of virulent racism and accompanying violence was one of the reasons the original paradise the Sartan built for the mensch fell apart, and it's implied [[spoiler:one of the reasons the Tytans were able to slaughter them so easily: if the mensch has stood together instead of abandoning and turning on each other, they may even have had a chance to survive -- but they didn't, and they died]]. |
| 116 | ** The one aversion is the world of Chelestra, where interspecies rivalry amongst the mensch is strong... but their commitment towards alliance and peaceful coexistence is stronger. This leads mensch leaders to be present at the first contact between Patryn and Sartan in thousands of years... and, seeing their hostility, ''offer to mediate''. |
| 117 | * FantasticSlurs: The elves often refer to the humans as "beasts". The Elves of Arianus refer to the dwarfs as Gegs, which is short for gega'rega, which means "insect". |
| 118 | * FearlessUndead: The cadavers of Abarrach will always keep coming no matter how much danger they're in -- after all, they mostly live in their memories from life played on loop and barely register their actual surroundings, so why wouldn't they? [[spoiler: The lazar are even more like this -- they're aware of the world around them, but their existence by itself is such agony all other threats pale in comparison]]. |
| 119 | * FightingAShadow: You can't kill the serpents permanently: if you try, they'll just re-form in a few days, twice as powerful as before -- although it's implied that [[spoiler:Sang-drax's death somehow stuck]]. |
| 120 | * FlatWorld: While Pryan is technically a DysonSphere with miles-high jungles covering its inner surface, it gives this impression "on the ground". Most of its inhabitants live on the moss plains, vast expanses of moss stretching between the limbs of the world's titanic trees that are big and strong enough to bear the weight cities and even small seas. These plains tend to terminate rather suddenly, ending in enormous drops and chasms where the land suddenly stops and the waters of the moss seas thunder down into the seemingly endless darkness. |
| 121 | * FootnoteFever: The books have a fair amount of footnotes dotting their text, most commonly providing clarification and exposition on various bits of lore and worldbuilding that would not otherwise fit in the text itself without bogging down the narrative flow. As part of the FramingDevice, they are presented as authorial asides and clarifications inserted by Alfred and Haplo for the benefit of in-universe readers. |
| 122 | * FramingDevice: The seven books of the Death Gate Cycle were written by Alfred and Haplo themselves, and occasionally contain footnotes from the two to clarify various in-world concepts or provide elaborative details. |
| 123 | * FunctionalMagic: |
| 124 | ** Patryn and Sartan runic magic works by essentially "choosing" any of a number of possibilities and making that possibility reality, bound and directed using a complex system of interacting runes (which the Sartan draw in midair as needed and the Patryn tattoo on their bodies). For example, a Sartan or Patryn who wanted to move a heavy load to a given place would select a reality where the load happens to be where they want it to be. They could also theoretically choose one where it floats up and levitates to where they want it to go, but as this would require working against several laws of physics, this possibility would be more "distant" and more difficult to achieve. |
| 125 | ** Some mensch also have magical powers; human wizards have ElementalPowers and mental magic, while elven wizards make enchanted objects and {{Magitek}}. Even the most powerful of these, though, are said to be less than the lowest levels of Sartan/Patryn power. |
| 126 | * FungusHumongous: At one point, while very deep down in the jungles of Pryan, Roland, Rega and Paithan come across a massive fungus jutting out of one the trees, large enough to serve as a temporary support for their caravan. |
| 127 | * GardenOfEvil: Parts of the Labyrinth are like this; the rest is more like {{Mordor}}. Different flavors of lethal environment for everyone! |
| 128 | * GiantFlyer: |
| 129 | ** Among the numerous varieties of dragons in existence, the dragons of Arianus and of the Labyrinth are all able to fly. |
| 130 | ** The Labyrinth is home to very literal Leathery-Winged Avians who prefer to go after their prey's {{eyes|cream}}, blinding them and leaving them helpless before the avians swoop in for the kill. |
| 131 | * GiantSpider: Tyros are colossal spiders native to Pryan whose front pair of legs has become adapted for manipulating objects. They are commonly used as beasts of burden by the local civilizations, due to their ability to navigate the treetops of the miles-high jungles that cover Pryan. Their webs are also used to make bridges across gaps in the treetops. |
| 132 | * {{God}}: Implied to exist in some form, though it's left unclear whether there's a personal deity out there or if the impersonal force of cosmic balance is the Ultimate.[[note]]The rebel Sartan (and a few others) who claim to have made direct contact with the Higher Power perceive it as being loving and communicative, but confirmation of these attributes, perhaps appropriately, is left to faith.[[/note]] |
| 133 | * GrayAndGrayMorality: The Sartan versus the Patryn. Neither race is anything close to AlwaysChaoticEvil, but if you're a mensch, neither is exactly friendly, either... |
| 134 | * GreaterScopeVillain: The Royal One is the ultimate ruler of the serpents, but he only plays a major role in ''Serpent Mage''. He gets killed off by [[spoiler: Alfred]] at the end of the book, returns to life in ''Hand of Chaos'', and afterwards plays no meaningful role in the story, with Sang-drax taking over as TheHeavy and TheFace of the serpents as a faction. Haplo also speculates that the serpents are merely the minions of some even greater evil power, but if so, such a being's existence is never confirmed. |
| 135 | * HalfHumanHybrid: A notable aversion; the different races explicitly can't have children together, the only exception being Sartan and Patryns. This is strong proof that they are actually two factions of ''the same race'' with very different philosophies on magic... [[FantasticRacism just don't tell them that]]. That being said, the only explicit hybrid mentioned that his Sartan magic wasn't at the level of a pure Sartan, though whether this is due to his Patryn blood, Patryn tattoos, or Patryn upbringing is unclear. |
| 136 | * HealingFactor: Patryns can trance to heal most injuries. Having another Patryn on hand to lend their magic speeds the process up exponentially, although it requires the other Patron to literally give over some of their health. |
| 137 | * HiveMind: The gushni, jellyfish-like creatures the dragon-snakes use as spies, have a species-wide shared consciousness. This is what makes them useful as spies: once a gushni learns something, all other gushni everywhere also know it and can report it. |
| 138 | * HorseOfADifferentColor: |
| 139 | ** The natives of Pryan ride giant flying squirrels called cargans to navigate the treetops of their world’s colossal jungles. |
| 140 | ** The Sartan of Abarrach use mud dragons, large chameleon-like lizards, as mounts for their undead armies. |
| 141 | * HumanSubspecies: Sartan and Patryn all evolved out of basic human stock. |
| 142 | * HydraProblem: If a single drop of a Chaodyn's blood hits the ground, another Chaodyn will spring up fully formed alongside its regenerated progenitor. The only way to stop this is to deliver a wound that kills them before any of their blood hits the ground. |
| 143 | * IKnowYourTrueName: The true name of a Sartan holds power over them, which is why most Sartan never reveal their true names to anyone but family or closest friends, using mundane names in public. The only exceptions are Samah and his council, who are so powerful that they have no need to fear their names being used against them. |
| 144 | ** Patryns' true names have power too, but they generally don't have to worry about this form of attack, as their spoken names are just approximations of their ''real'' names -- the runes tattooed over their hearts, which they only let those who are close to them read. This does lead to another form of AchillesHeel, though, because if the "heart-rune" is attacked or damage, a Patryn's whole magical essence will begin to unravel. |
| 145 | ** Patryn magic is actually based on this concept. A Patryn enchantment works by identifying the Name of the object that the caster wishes to cast a spell on and altering it so that it becomes the Name of what the caster wishes to have. Said object then changes to match the Name. |
| 146 | * ImplacableMan: |
| 147 | ** The Lazar, which will keep coming even after they've ''been dismembered''. |
| 148 | ** The tytans, who slaughter their way across an empire, go around an ocean to the next part of civilization, then begin to kill everything there as well. The only things that have an effect on them are arrows in the shape of dragons, and even that only makes them scared. |
| 149 | * IneptMage: Alfred has the distinction of being an inept mage with a tremendous amount of raw talent -- he's inadvertently ''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]]. |
| 150 | * InstantMessengerPigeon: A version of this is used for long-distance messaging in Pryan using a species of fictional birds know as the faultless, which are intelligent enough for it to be possible to train them to fly back and forth between two specific locations. |
| 151 | * InstantRunes: Both Sartan and Patryns use runes to create their spells. Sartan summon their runes out of midair as part of their elaborate spellcasting rituals; Patryns avert this trope by simply tattooing the runes directly on their bodies for maximum ease of use. |
| 152 | * ItsQuietTooQuiet: When crossing the deep jungle of Pryan, Roland, Rega and Paithan realize that something is very wrong when they realize that the jungle has gone completely, utterly quiet [[spoiler:due to the Tytans approaching, a phenomenon that repeats itself whenever the Tytans show up]]. |
| 153 | * JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Lord Xar does this in the last three books [[spoiler: though it might be more fair to say that Sang-drax pushed him off. Haplo manages to stop him before he hits bottom]]. |
| 154 | * LiquidAssets: When two Patryns "join the circle", the uninjured one literally shares his/her strength with the other, leaving ''both'' of them half-hurt. |
| 155 | * LivingLabyrinth. The Labyrinth itself is a [[GeniusLoci sapient]] DeathWorld that actively has it in for its inhabitants and will actively manipulate its terrain and fauna to try and do them in. It's only restriction is that it has to give you a fighting chance -- every monster or obstacle in the Labyrinth ''can'' be beaten. Figuring out how before it kills you is the hard part. |
| 156 | * LotusEaterMachine: Alfred [[spoiler:defeats a serpent by trapping it ''in its own mind'']]. |
| 157 | * MadeASlave: Slavery exists in several places in the mensch worlds, and numerous examples show up in the books. Most commonly, the slaves seen tend to be humans enslaved by elves in Arianus and Pryan. |
| 158 | * MageSpecies: 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. |
| 159 | * MagicAIsMagicA: To the point where the authors actually wrote appendices to some of the books explaining in great detail how the magic system of the series works. |
| 160 | * MagicKnight: The Patryns are experts at combining their magic with physical combat skills. |
| 161 | * MagicMusic: Elven magic is mostly channeled vocally, and as such music can play a big part in it, usually by affecting their emotions or calling up ancestral memories. Due to the way it taps into the Elven psyche, it can be used this way by anyone, which is how the humans were able to defeat an elven army by singing an extremely nostalgic elven song. |
| 162 | * {{Magitek}}: Both the Sartan and the elves use this a lot; Patryns often use runes to enhance their tools and weapons, which might be considered a primitive form of Magitek. |
| 163 | * TheMagocracy: While the Tribus Empire of the elves of Arianus is officially ruled by the imperial family, it’s made clear that the wizards who keep the empire’s {{magitek}} running -- and more specifically the Council of the Arcane who oversees the elven wizards -- are the true rulers of the elven empire. |
| 164 | %%* ManipulativeBastard: Sang-drax, Sinistrad, Bane. |
| 165 | * MeaningfulName: Bane, Xar (Czar), Sinistrad. To be fair, the last two were names that were deliberately taken and the first was deliberately given. Also Haplo, which means "alone" or "lonely" in the Patryn tongue; its roots are in Greek where it means "single" or "simple". |
| 166 | * MegaDungeon: The Labyrinth is a mega-scale dungeon where the Patryn were imprisoned by their rival demigod-like beings, the Sartan. It took them generations to reach the final floor and the exit to the rest of the world(s). |
| 167 | * {{Mordor}}: Abarrach is basically a SingleBiomePlanet of subterranean Mordor. Parts of the Labyrinth are Mordor-like as well. |
| 168 | * MotiveDecay: Xar goes from wanting to build a better future for the Patryns to wanting to lead the Patryns to conquer the universe because it's their birthright to wanting to conquer the universe for his own benefit. This is spelled out in [[TearJerker tear-jerking fashion]] in ''The Seventh Gate'' when he wonders exactly ''how'' he got from "save my people" to "EvilOverlord" [[spoiler:--and then hears the sound of Sang-drax's laughter in his mind...]] |
| 169 | * {{Muggles}}: The mensch races. It's explicitly stated that the most powerful mysteriarchs -- human wizards from Arianus who are stated to be ''the'' most powerful mensch spell-casters around -- ''begin to approach'' the level of magic of a particularly unskilled Patryn or Sartan. |
| 170 | * MurderInc: The Brotherhood of the Hand, the guild of assassins of Arianus. |
| 171 | * {{Necromancer}}: What the Sartan of Abarrach have degenerated into. Xar learns the spells too later on, but isn't very good at them (much to his frustration). |
| 172 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: Jonathon. His planet was already on the way down but his accidental creation of the Lazar nearly finished off every living thing on it. |
| 173 | * ObfuscatingStupidity: Several times. Alfred's done it so much that even ''he'' no longer believes he's competent, Zifnab's dragon pretends to be a ravening beast when he's one of the wisest characters in the series, and even Zifnab's weirdness isn't ''all'' genuine (just most of it). Sinistrad is an odd variation: Rather than pretending to be stupid, he casts himself as a deliberately over-the-top CardCarryingVillain, causing the other mysteriarchs to dismiss him as a harmless eccentric. [[NotSoHarmlessVillain They are very wrong.]] |
| 174 | * OmnicidalManiac: Subverted twice. The tytans look like this [[spoiler: but all they want is to go home]]; Haplo mistakes the serpents for this, but as Sang-drax points out, they ''need'' mortal suffering in order to survive, so destroying the world is just about the one thing that would kill them too. |
| 175 | * OmniscientMoralityLicense: Many of the Sartan believe they operate under one of these. |
| 176 | * OnlySaneMan: Zifnab's dragon often has this sort of attitude. Seeing as it's coming from a several-ton green reptile who half the time acts like a butler [[spoiler: and might well be considered a minor deity]], this is distinctly humorous in and of itself. |
| 177 | * OrderVersusChaos: The Sartan, an entire culture of TheFettered, versus the Patryn, {{Ineffectual Loner}}s whose highest loyalty is to the family. Ironically, their magic systems reverse this trend -- Sartan magic is much more spiritual and mystical and is treated as an art, while Patryn magic is incredibly structured and treated like a science. |
| 178 | * OurDragonsAreDifferent: |
| 179 | ** The dragon-snakes and the dragons of Pryan aren't actually dragons, just immensely powerful shapechangers who prefer to appear in draconic form. The former resemble immense, slime-covered, limbless serpents, while the latter are equally large creatures resembling the traditional Western dragon but without wings. |
| 180 | ** Besides them, there are a number of flesh-and-blood dragon species inhabiting the various worlds, which are descended from the true dragons of ancient Earth that were carried to the new worlds by the Sartan: |
| 181 | *** There are a couple of different dragon species on Arianus, which are intelligent but not sapient and often enspelled and trained by humans as flying mounts between the floating islands (they're not domesticated, though, and the spells have to be periodically renewed to make sure they stay tame). Elves, whose magic cannot replicate the necessary spells, instead hunt and kill them, and use their remains to make their flying ships. The quicksilver dragons of the High Realm are wingless but can still fly (for that matter, they're faster fliers than any winged dragon) and are the most intelligent of the Arianus dragons. Quicksilver dragons can only be controlled by the most powerful of wizards, and even then the mage is in constant mental struggle with the dragon. |
| 182 | *** The fire dragons of Abarrach are basically giant, sapient black serpents that live in lava. They're intelligent and telepathic, but have few interactions with civilized beings -- the mensch and Sartan hunted them to near-extinction in the past, and the surviving fire dragons despise them for it. |
| 183 | *** The blood dragons of the Labyrinth are some of the most powerful creatures in the series, the most feared and dangerous natives of the Labyrinth -- which, given the many varieties of monsters that live there, is saying something -- and actively evil and sadistic. They make a point of keeping captured prey alive as long as possible, torturing it all the while for their own enjoyment. In terms of appearance they're fairly classic Western dragons, with blood-red scales. |
| 184 | * OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame: While they vary from world to world like the other mensch races, all dwarves share a couple of characteristics, including a natural propensity to be {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s (although they never war against each other if they can help it), a deep love of music and song and a preference for living underground (which manifests in Arianus’s WorldInTheSky by them living ''inside'' their floating island and never going outside if they can help it, and in Pryan’s towering jungles by living in cities burrowed into the lower trunks of the trees, with miles of canopy and moss plains between themselves and the suns). |
| 185 | ** Averted with the "Gegs" of Arianus, a race of peaceful and unimaginative factory workers oppressed by the Tribus elves. Their ancestors played it straight, and it’s stated in the first book that they are oppressed by the elves because the elves are afraid of what would happen if they realized they're actually a Proud Warrior Race. [[spoiler:They later realize it. The elves don't like it a one bit.]] |
| 186 | ** Played straight with the dwarves on the other two mensch worlds, which are much more in line with traditional stereotypes. |
| 187 | * OurElvesAreDifferent: Elves (with the exception of the Chelestran ones) tend to be quite racist and see themselves as the most superior race, the humans as beasts and the dwarves as less than beasts -- a largely unwarranted attitude: for all their airs, they're no less {{muggles}} than the humans and dwarves compared to the Patryn and Sartan. |
| 188 | ** The elves of Arianus rule the Tribus Empire that rules much of the world and is served by the Gegs (dwarves), whom the elves have essentially scammed into revering them as gods in exchange for garbage. They also used to rule the human islands, until a rebellion threw them out. |
| 189 | ** The elves of Pryan are more or less a FantasyCounterpartCulture of England at the height of the British Empire but with slavery, generally being a culture of very stuck-up and casually racist fops and dandies. |
| 190 | ** The elves of Chelestra are generally benevolent, but a bit odd and airheaded. |
| 191 | ** In an inversion of how this trope is usually played, the elves (whose magic is mostly suited to making {{Magitek}} and enchanted objects) are actually ''less'' attuned to the natural world than the humans (who instead tend towards elemental and mental magic): it's a great irritation for the Arianus elves that they cannot replicate the magic humans use to tame and ride dragons, while the humans of Pryan are better farmers than the local elves, who have yet to master basic crop rotation. |
| 192 | * OurGiantsAreBigger: The Tytans, giant humanoids with a gaping hole where their eyes should be who were artifically created by the Sartan to operate their {{Magitek}} and police the mensch. With their creators gone, the Tytans now rampage across Pryan, annihilating everything in their path. |
| 193 | * OurHumansAreDifferent: Humans have a natural affinity for mental and elemental magic, in contrast to the elves' affinity for {{Magitek}} and the creation of enchanted objects and the Sartan and Patryn's powerful probability-based magic. In something of a twist, this makes the humans, as a species, considerably more closely tied to natural life than the elves are -- their mental magic, for instance, allows the humans of Arianus to [[DragonRider tame dragons]], which the elves cannot, while the humans of Pryan are better farmers than the local elves, who have not even mastered basic crop rotation. The humans of Chelestra are also notable in-universe for their dark skin, which the elves and dwarves of their world do not share, to the point that black skin is considered as characteristic of humans as the pointy ears of elves and the beards and short stature of dwarves. |
| 194 | * OurMermaidsAreDifferent: Mermaids are mentioned in passing in one of the appendices as being among the creatures imported by the Sartan to populate Chelestra's waters. Nothing else is mentioned of them, but as they're counted in a series of animal species and are never referenced among the sapients of the setting, it's likely that they're not especially intelligent creatures. |
| 195 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: The cadavers of Abarrach represent the "mindless servant" type (mostly). The ''lazar'', on the other hand, are basically what you get by combining OurZombiesAreDifferent with OurLichesAreDifferent and a little bit of OurVampiresAreDifferent on the side. They're extremely intelligent, retain the magical powers they had in life (and are capable of learning new ones) and are completely AxCrazy, driven by a need to kill the living and create more of their kind. |
| 196 | * OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: The Sartan and Patryns have outgrown the "silly superstition" of gods, and the Sartan at least discourage any mensch under their influence from believing in such beings either. [[spoiler: Of course, the series proves them very wrong when actual divine beings show up, and unfortunately the most proactive of them are the vile serpents...]] |
| 197 | * PetTheDog: Literal, with Haplo. |
| 198 | * PhysicalGod: Sartan and Patryns are this compared to the mensch, and are generally referred to as "demigods" throughout the books |
| 199 | * PlanetOfHats: Played straight with the mensch races, all of whom are rather hatty (though which race his which hat varies from world to world). Deconstructed with the "demigods" |
| 200 | * PowerNullifier: The seawater of Chelestra, created by the rules of the universe to counter the imbalance caused by Sartan and Patryn magic. Any "demigod" who gets dunked in it will find him or herself all too mortal until they dry out. |
| 201 | * PowerGlows: Patryn and Sartan runes both glow when magic is being used, as do Patryn tattoos when their wearer is in danger. |
| 202 | * PreciousPuppies: Why Dog is, well, a dog, [[spoiler:given that he's actually a familiar of Haplo's]]. |
| 203 | * PressXToDie: Among the spells you learned along the way was 'Self-Immolate', which does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin -- using the spell would instantly kill you. It did, however, turn out useful when fighting a mirror image of yourself. Just scribe a mirrored version of the spell's runes -- which does nothing -- and your copy would dutifully flip it and kill himself. |
| 204 | * ProfessionalKiller: Hugh is an assassin, and is later revealed to be part of an assassin's guild (well, they mostly do assassinations, but have a hand in a lot of other crime on Arianus as well). |
| 205 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Patryns can be quite brutal and ruthless enemies, but they take great pride in their cultural identitity and combat skills, and follow an uncompromising code of honor -- [[DoubleStandard at least among each other]]. Several of the mensch cultures also qualify. |
| 206 | * ReptilesAreAbhorrent: And the Serpents are GenreSavvy about it. This trope is the ''reason'' their default form is giant snakes. |
| 207 | * RuleOfSymbolism: A part of the uniform of the [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame Geg]] High Froman is a cape made of tier feathers, a gift from the elves representing the Gegs' desire to symbolically fly up to heaven and literally ascend to a paradise island higher in Arianus once they become worthy of living alongside the elves. The tier, as noted earlier in ''Dragon Wing'', is a flightless bird that the elves consider repulsive and unclean. If the cape represents anything, it is the contempt the elves hold the effectively enslaved Gegs in and the lies they tell them. |
| 208 | * SapientCetaceans: The dolphins and whales of Chelestra are sapient, capable of speech and allied with the mensch who live there. The whales don't show up much, while the dolphins are enthusiastic gossips. |
| 209 | * SavageWolves: Wolfen, wolflike monsters the size of a man that hunt in packs thirty to forty strong, are one of the many kinds of monsters that the Labyrinth uses to torment its Patryn prisoners. |
| 210 | * SealedEvilInACan: |
| 211 | ** How the Sartan see the Patryns. The Patryns in turn see themselves as a SealedGoodInACan. They are unquestionably [[SealedBadassInACan Sealed Badasses In A Can]] |
| 212 | ** The Serpents too, though their can was a block of ice that formed around them naturally rather than a deliberate act of imprisonment. |
| 213 | * SecretRelationship: King Stephen and Queen Anne, who entered an ArrangedMarriage to end a feud between the Kingdom of Uylandia (his) and the Volkaran Isles (hers). ZigzaggedTrope: they are married ''to each other''. They have bitter shouting matches in court... which keeps the {{Evil Chancellor}}s off-balance. Behind closed doors, they are very HappilyMarried. |
| 214 | * SlaveGalley: Humans made prisoners by the Tribus elves of Arianus are often forced into flight harnesses to move the wings of the elves' flying ships, a very difficult and dangerous task. Later, after the human/elven war ends, the need to move galleys still remains and the elves resort to paying volunteer rowers instead -- and a lot of former galley slaves, having built up quite a bit of practice and without many other career options, sign up for this job. The narration notes that, somewhat paradoxically, many become quite proud of their career, now that they are doing it by choice as paid professionals. |
| 215 | * SoulFragment: [[spoiler: Haplo's dog]] is actually an externalization of part of his soul which he inadvertently created in the Labyrinth to give himself something to live for. [[spoiler: Not coincidentally, Haplo's character development can be tracked by the current state of his relationship with the dog]]. |
| 216 | * SquishyWizard: Many Sartan, ''especially'' Alfred |
| 217 | * StandardFantasyRaces: Humans are the most overtly mundane race in the setting, elves are long-lived, magical and aloof, and dwarves are stout, strong, like living underground and are good with machinery. There are also dragons, which depending on the specific kind are either ravening animals or powerful, intelligent beings who remain aloof from the humanoid civilizations. |
| 218 | * StandardFemaleGrabArea: Only it's a dwarf doing the grabbing, so it's lower than usual. |
| 219 | * StarterVillain: Sinistrad is the main villain of the first book and dies at the end of it, but the consequences of his scheming -- especially in how they bring Haplo, Alfred, Bane and Hugh into contact with each other -- would indirectly set much of the rest of the plot in motion, even as villains much bigger and badder than he is take center stage. |
| 220 | * TheUndead: Two basic kinds exist: |
| 221 | ** The first, just called "cadavers", are semi-sentient and can be trained to do simple tasks (and complex ones if they have an overseer). They resemble basic shambling corpses, with their indistinct, mist-like soul hovering behind them. |
| 222 | ** A corpse raied too quickly, however, becomes a Lazar -- its soul hasn't had time to fully depart and the process of raising it fuses the soul and body in a single tortured whole. The resulting creature is completely sapient and quite insane. |
| 223 | ** There's also [[spoiler: Hugh the Hand, who was turned into an undead by Alfred's improvising and is apparently unique]]. |
| 224 | * TooBrokenToBreak: The Lazar are [[CameBackWrong undead monsters]] whose souls are fused with their bodies in [[TorturedMonster unimaginable torment]]. They can shrug off almost anything, [[ImplacableMan even dismemberment]], and ''do'' because every instant of their existence is far worse. |
| 225 | * TooDumbToLive: One family member of the elven main character of ''Elven Star'' is this, as she's so fixated on running the family business that she repeatedly dismisses alarm horns as drills and even with omnicidal, giant magical creatures practically at the house's doorstep just thinks everyone else is being crazy. Unsurprisingly, she dies. Then comes a subversion when she has a final conversation with her brother from behind a closed door as the Tytans approach and he comes to the realization that deep down she ''does'' realize the truth, but can't find the strength to cope with it. |
| 226 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: Dog ''loves'' sausages. |
| 227 | * TreeTopTown: In Pryan, the elves prefer to build their cities among the very tops of the world-jungle's canopy, with homes and shops built on the larger branches and connected by mazes of rope bridges, in contrast to the humans (who mostly settle the moss plains stretched between the giant tree limbs) and the dwarves (who inhabit cities carved into the trunks of the trees deeper down). |
| 228 | * 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. |
| 229 | * TrueCompanions: Patryn culture is pretty much made of this. They're not a friendly or openly affectionate people by any stretch, but if they accept you as part of their ''family'', they ''will'' remain loyal practically to their dying breath (and expect the same in return). |
| 230 | * UpsettingTheBalance: a major theme of the series. To wit, ''both'' the BigGood serpents of Pryan and the BigBad dragon-snakes of Chelestra were spawned in an attempt to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong... And that's just the start. |
| 231 | * 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. |
| 232 | * VillainProtagonist: Arguably Haplo in the first two books; starting in book three he becomes a more solid AntiHero as he starts to question his Lord and be pitted against people ''far'' worse than he is. |
| 233 | * VillainsNeverLie: Sinistrad outright told his wife to be that he is evil, and that she would regret her decision to be with him. "If you marry me, you marry darkness." She thought he was being romantic and mysterious. Possibly a TakeThat at the more rabid [[Literature/{{Dragonlance}} Raistlin]]-fangirls. |
| 234 | * VoluntaryShapeshifting: Serpents and dragons can change their form into whatever they want (Sang-drax, for example, is fond of appearing as an elven aristocrat). [[spoiler: Alfred can also change his form to that of a green-and-golden dragon.]] |
| 235 | * WarmBloodbagsAreEverywhere: The Lazar have this problem, though it's not so much that they need to ''feed'' on the living as the presence of living beings simply sends them into AxeCrazy fits. Jonathon can resist this; Kleitus can too, but only when it suits his purposes. |
| 236 | * WeAreAsMayflies: Humans are easily the shortest-lived of the major races. Elves and dwarves both have a couple of centuries in them, it's never explicitly spelled out how long Sartan and Patryns live beyond that it's a ''really'' long time, and dragons and serpents are functionally immortal. |
| 237 | * WeHaveReserves: One of Hugh's early contracts (shown in a flashback) is against a mercenary commander who abandoned his men to die over and over again so he wouldn't have to share the contract fees. His client was a collection of widows and relatives of people he'd gotten killed who couldn't afford Hugh's services individually. |
| 238 | * WeirdCurrency: The natives of Pryan use stones as others would use coins. This is because Pryan is a TreetopWorld where civilization exists primarily in the canopies of immense rainforests, separated from the ground by miles of branches, epiphytic mosses, and tangled masses of roots and humus. Actual stones reach the canopies so rarely that their scarcity makes them an effective form of currency. |
| 239 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: Samah; Balthazar in ''Fire Sea'', though he grows into a more purely heroic character by ''Seventh Gate'', Xar [[spoiler: until his [[RedemptionEqualsDeath murder]] for refusing to disastrously reunite the worlds]]. |
| 240 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: |
| 241 | ** Jera; she was specifically mentioned to have [[spoiler: remained a lazar and left with Kleitus]] at the end of Book 3 but is never mentioned again aside from one blind-and-you'll miss it reference in ''Into the Labyrinth''. |
| 242 | ** While all the natives of the four elemental worlds do not appear in the books about the other elemental worlds and get downgraded in importance in the last three books which involve multiple worlds, Grundle and her friends on Chelestra end up dropping out of the story entirely, as there are a grand total of two scenes taking place there after Haplo leaves. |
| 243 | * WindsOfDestinyChange: The universe is encompassed by "the Omniwave", which is the set of all possibilities in existence and is constantly working to keep itself in balance. Rune-magic works by allowing the user to select a new possibility and weave it into the extant fabric of the universe. In other words, the Patryn and Sartan literally alter probability until what they want comes into being. (It also leads to less extravagant spellcasting than usual; while summoning a fireball might work, opening a hole in the floor to escape through is closer to the current reality and thus easier to invoke.) |
| 244 | * WorldInTheSky: Arianus, the world of air, is a series of islands and small continents floating at different heights in a world-sized volume of air. Some thought was put into how this kind of world would work -- the islands are made of "coralite", a substance excreted by worm-like animals that contains many small bubbles of lighter-than-air gas (actual stone is very rare and precious). Drought is also an issue, as rain soaks straight into the porous coralite and out of reach, and as such water is a very valuable resource, while most native plants have specialized adaptations for storing or producing water. Transportation is mainly by flying ship or [[DragonRider dragonback]]. Unusually for this trope, it's an explicitly vertically oriented World in the Sky, and changes in air pressure are noted to be an issue as one moves between its Low, Mid and High Realms. |
| 245 | * WorldShapes: The elemental worlds created by the Patryn take some decidedly unusual shapes: |
| 246 | ** Arianus, the world of air, is a WorldInTheSky where people live on floating islands above the eternal storm of the Maelstrom, which fills the lower third or so of its volume. Water is scarce, since the island's spongy substrate doesn't retain it well. |
| 247 | ** Pryan, the world of fire, is a HollowWorld with a much larger surface area than the modern Earth. Its inner surface is covered by jungle of miles-high trees, and humanoid civilizations exist primarily in their canopies and on country-sized mats of epiphytic moss. |
| 248 | ** Abarrach, the world of stone, is a solid mass of rock honeycombed by tunnels and caverns. Its core is highly volcanic and its outer areas deathly cold; civilization can only exist in a Goldlilocks zone between them, and even there is struggles to survive. |
| 249 | ** Chelestra, the world of water, is an egg-shaped mass of ice within which a "seasun" orbits, cyclically thawing out and re-freezing floating islands within which people live. |
| 250 | ** The Labyrinth, a prison-world created for the Sartan, the ancient enemies of the Patryn, is a circular flattened world consisting of an outer, mazelike area divided by a large number of geographic gates and an inner, safe area containing a paradisiacal city. |
| 251 | * WorldSundering: A major part of the backstory. In a successful attempt at winning the magical war between themselves and the Patryn, the Sartan sundered the Earth and remade it into the four elemental worlds and the Labyrinth. |
| 252 | * YourSoulIsMine: Among the elves of Arianus, it’s traditional for the members of the royal family to have their souls captured and bound after death, continuing to serve their realm by helping to power their wizards’ magic. |
| 253 | * ZombieApocalypse: The Lazar cause one of these on Abarrach. |
| 254 | --> [[MadnessMantra "In order to free the dead, all of the living must die."]] |
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FollowingContext Literature / TheDeathGateCycle
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