The Death Gate Cycle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Death Gate Cycle is a series of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
Contents |
[edit] Overview
Many years ago, the powerful Sartan ended a war by sundering the world into four elemental realms, and imprisoned their enemies, the Patryns, in a 5th world: the labyrinth, a self-aware prison that became lethally cruel. Shortly afterwards, the Sartan mysteriously disappeared. Centuries later, the first Patryns escaped the Labyrinth, and have just learned how to access the other worlds. The books follow the fiercely independent Haplo, a Patryn agent sent to scout the four worlds in preparation for conquest by his master.
[edit] The books
- Dragon Wing (February 1990)
- Elven Star (November 1990)
- Fire Sea (August 1991)
- Serpent Mage (April 1992)
- The Hand of Chaos (April 1993)
- Into the Labyrinth (December 1993)
- The Seventh Gate (September 1994)
[edit] Before the books
- The Earth was destroyed.
- Four worlds were created out of the ruin. Worlds for ourselves and the mensch: Air, Fire, Stone, Water.
- Four Gates connect each world to the other: Arianus to Pryan to Abarrach to Chelestra.
- A house of correction was built for our enemies: the Labyrinth.
- The Labyrinth is connected to the other worlds through the Fifth Gate: the Nexus.
- The Sixth Gate is the center, permitting entry: the Vortex.
- And all was accomplished through the Seventh Gate.
- The end was the beginning.
- Into The Labyrinth, page 9
These words are a catechism taught to young Sartan children, and have been found written down in many caches of Sartan knowledge. In at least one location (Abarrach, the World of Stone) a hand-written scrawl follows: The beginning was our end.
[edit] Earth
The story begins long ago when humans unleashed a nuclear war on Earth that killed millions, leaving the survivors struggling in the Age of Dust. Elves and dwarves, who had gone into hiding during the Renaissance, also suffered from what the humans had wrought with their science. In this chaos, a mutant strain of humans emerged who were once again able to feel the Wave— that which maintains balance and order in the universe. Recognizing its potential for magic, they developed runes to harness it. Originally, there was only one group, the Sartan. The Sartan used magic by drawing runes on the ground and in the air, augmented by singing and spoken word; they believed that their power gave them responsibility and stewardship over the lesser races, whom they called mensch (German for "people"; both the Sartan and the Patryns use "mensch" to refer to humans, elves, and dwarves equally). The Sartan believed in community, unity, and family, the basis of Order. However, in their self conceitedness, they forgot about the Wave's tendency to balance everything. As the Sartan became too powerful, the Wave shifted and the Patryns came to be. Unlike the Sartan, the Patryns were loners, volatile and destructive; they believed that their powers gave them the right to do as they would. Generally, they were a chaotic version of the Sartan. Patryns tattooed the runes on themselves and chose their name ("Those Who Return to Darkness") to mock the word Sartan ("Those Who Bring Back Light"). These two races came into conflict over control and influence of the mensch. The Sartan had a "we know what's best for you" view of power over the mensch, while the Patryns were more interested in simple personal power. Both came to think of themselves as gods, though Sartan believed themselves rather self righteously to be the "good guys".
It is of note that the "war" between Sartan and Patryn was not war in the conventional sense. Certainly there were battles along the way, primarily between opposing armies or groups of mensch-servants armed by their masters, but there was in fact very little in the way of pitched battle between Sartan and Patryns. In no small part due to the loner and isolationist nature of the Patryns, they simply never organized together as a force. It was not, in fact, very difficult for the Sartan to group together to capture Patryns (or their own dissidents as in the case of Zifnab and others). Actual fights between them were short, spectacular, and were generally one-on-one affairs. Battles usually took place away from mensch onlookers, as both sides felt it would be a bad precedent for the lesser races to see one of their gods die.
Of further note is that the "war" was not a long protracted series of battles, as we understand war in the modern sense. The great fear of the Sartan (which ultimately led Samah, and them, to their tragic end) was the growing influence the Patryns had over the mensch races.
Eventually the Sartan, led by Samah and his Council of Seven, and driven by their own fear, undertook drastic measures. They broke the planet Earth into four separate worlds, each one focusing on a separate element (air, earth, fire, and water). This cataclysmic moment of destruction and re-creation is known as the Sundering. Millions of mensch died, with only chosen populations magically isolated for resettlement. The Patryns were captured and imprisoned in the Labyrinth which the Sartan created for their "rehabilitation". The Vortex (or the Sixth Gate) was the entry point, where the Patryns were initially placed along with Sartan who had disagreed with the Sundering, and where the mensch were temporarily housed during the Sundering itself. In the center of the Labyrinth was the Nexus, a paradise city for the Patryns to live in once they had become civilized through their living in their prison; the Nexus, the Labyrinth, and the Vortex are arranged in concentric circles. All of these worlds are connected by Death's Gate, and smaller, one-way gates called Rifts which allow each elemental world to transmit materials to one another. The Sartan were left in stewardship of not just one world, but many, all designed to work in perfect harmony. The Plan of the Council of Seven was the grand construction of interconnected worlds, each with a specific function that fed into the whole. Almost immediately, however, things began to go wrong.
[edit] Chelestra, the world of water
Chelestra was to be the primary world where the mensch and Sartan would live. A great orb of liquid (not actually water, but a hyper-oxygenated fluid both air- and water-breathing creatures can breathe), populated by great drifting beasts used as habitats for the mensch, with is own "Seasun" at the center. It was also intended as a tremendous waste management and recycling plant, with the great floating habitat-beasts being biological recycling stations for the detritus from the other worlds. However, to their horror the Sartan discovered that the 'water' of Chelestra had a neutralizing effect on their rune magic, rendering it and them utterly powerless. Strange serpents that the Sartan had not created appeared, creatures of great power and corruption. Surrounded by water that took away their power, no longer in control of the mensch, and faced with the serpents, the Sartan of Chelestra sealed themselves behind a shield in their grand city Chalice and waited for help from the other worlds. Samah, fearing what would happen if the serpents spread to the other worlds, felt forced to shut Death's Gate; this effectively cut communication channels completely between the worlds. The Sartan then placed themselves into a stasis sleep, expecting it to only last long enough for the other worlds to finish their parts of the grand plan and come help.
[edit] Arianus, the world of air
On Arianus, intended as an industrial and manufacturing world of floating continents, the Sartan had other problems. Cut off from communication with the other worlds (Chelestra specifically and the Council), the Sartan were slowly dying of some unknown cause, quickly becoming vastly outnumbered by the mensch. The Sartan settled into hibernation, hoping for help from the other worlds. The Kicksey-winsey, a grand machine intended to align the floating continents and provide them with water (water being a direct byproduct of its production cycle), as well as manufacture all the processed goods desired by the other worlds, never became properly active. The dwarves, not truly understanding its purpose, effectively became slaves to the machine, worshipping it after a fashion as an artifact of their gods (the Sartan) whom had placed them there as its caretakers. The elves became tyrannical lords of much of the world through manipulation of the dwarves to obtain a monopoly on water, and waged war with the humans constantly.
[edit] Pryan, the world of fire
Pryan was created as a great inverted globe (imagine living on the inside surface of a basketball) with 4 small suns at it center. It was to be the power plant and center for all 4 worlds, but it too fell into chaos. Great Citadels collected the energy from Pryan's four suns and beamed it through conduits to the other three worlds (the Colossi on Abarrach, the Kicksey-winsey on Arianus and the seasun on Chelestra). Covered entirely by miles-thick jungle (only the dwarves had ever seen the legendary 'ground') the Citadels were to be the bastions of civilization, where the Mensch would live a life of plenty and comfort. However, as with the other worlds, the Sartan mysteriously began to die. In fear, some citadels banished the mensch to the jungle. The Tytans, great blind giants of immense power created by the Sartan to manage the power systems of the citadels, were also banished because of fear they could no longer be controlled by the remaining Sartan. The Tytans went on to be an unstoppable terror as they searched for the citadels, trying to get home.
[edit] Abarrach, the world of stone
Finally, and most desperately, Abarrach was a huge volcanic asteroid-like world. The Sartan and mensch lived inside its honeycombed tunnels—designed to provide minerals and metals to the Kicksey-winsey—but they turned out to be loaded with poisonous volcanic fumes. The mensch were wiped out swiftly—the dwarves hung on the longest—and the poisons taxed the magic of the remaining Sartan to create breathable air. Huge columns called Colossi had been created by the Sartan to purify the air and keep the world warm in the long run, but they began to fail almost immediately because they did not receive the necessary energy from Pryan. With all the mensch dead and Sartan's own magic stretched to the limit, the Sartan of Abarrach turned to the forbidden arts of necromancy, using the corpses of the dead to supplement a lost workforce. While at the start it seemed a logical (if desperate) move that would help, it proved to be the most critical and tragic mistake of the whole Sartan race.
[edit] The Labyrinth
In the Labyrinth, the Sartan who should have been monitoring the prison realm either died, or left, and the Labyrinth was slowly evolving from a temporary correctional facility into a sadistic and self-aware prison. Instead of forcing a hard existence upon the Patryns and teaching them to care for others through relying on one another, it created a lethal, murderous hell where survival was the cruel torture of having hope dangled in your face, only to have it ripped away.
[edit] Plans of conquest
In the end the plan was a total collapse. All of the Sartan on Pryan and Arianus mysteriously died, save one. With no one left to go to their aid, the Sartan on Chelestra (unknowingly protected by their shield, and possibly the nullifying water) never awoke. Abarrach was a pale, dying shadow. In the meantime, the mensch lost all knowledge of their past; the lost Sartan of Arianus and Pryan became mythical god figures to the dwarves and elves of those worlds. This left the imprisoned Patryns as the only ones who still remembered some of their heritage.
After uncounted generations of struggle, Lord Xar (a word/name presumably made of the Russian word tsar = emperor) become the first Patryn to escape from the Labyrinth. Zifnab, a Sartan who had been cast into the Labyrinth for challenging the Sundering, apparently reached the Nexus well before Xar. There, Lord Xar discovered a wealth of books (written in the Sartan language by Zifnab) that detailed events preceding and following the Sundering. From these, he devised a way to partially open Death's Gate and send through an emissary. Haplo, Lord Xar's favored servant, becomes this emissary; his two missions are to learn what has happened to the Sartan, and to subtly generate chaos among the mensch so that Lord Xar can come and "save" them. It is Xar's intention to rule all the four worlds, and Haplo is his willing servant.
[edit] Races
[edit] Humans
The humans are your classic humans, of no distinct modern-day nationality. "Dark-skinned" humans populated Chelestra, while both "dark-skinned" humans and "caucasians" populated Arianus and Pryan. Humans are of standard height and physical prowess, and a small subset possess magical capability. Human magic is considered part of the Spiritual Masteries, tending towards "the emotional and mental manipulation of the world about the magician."[1] A human of sufficient magical talent can perform a variety of feats, including but not limited to manipulating the elements, creating illusions, healing, compelling other life-forms, transforming shape and size, translocation and overcoming physical limitations such as gravity. While some magicians can mentally construct their magic rather than speaking it, most need to use physical gestures and in some instances physical objects (e.g bells) or incantations to perform their magic.
[edit] Elves
Elves are generally taller and more slender than humans and have a greatly extended lifespan. Their longer lives tend to breed a lack of urgency in their outlook, sometimes problematic in dealings with the comparatively impatient humans. Elven magic is considered part of the Physical Masteries, which "tend to use and make use of physical objects in the world about the wizard."[1] For instance, this allows for the creation of "smart" self-targeting arrows, flying dragonships, magical submarines, protective charms against human magics, fabric which increases lifespan and other mechanical devices with enhanced capabilities. They can also weave magical messages into songs. Elves must both speak and gesture to cast their magic, and the magic contained in songs can be triggered by anyone capable of singing it since the magic is not dependent on a wizard—thus making it possible for humans to trigger elven magic in this form. It is because of this that humans have been able to use songs to trigger a nostalgia so intense that the elves of Arianus have formed an open rebellion against their ruler.
In contrast, the Kenkari, an isolated group of powerful elven magi on Arianus, also employ a very specialised form of magic based on the spirit which allows them to communicate with the souls of others, living or dead and on one occasion have been shown to change their forms into their order's symbol; the butterfly, which is a glaring exception to the mechanical focus. However, this can possibly be explained by their use of song in these communications, as well as their use of a special box to transport souls and a cathedral designed to contain the captured souls.
[edit] Dwarves
Dwarves are short and stocky compared to the other races, such that humans and elves would have to go down on one knee to converse with a dwarf eye-to-eye. In fact, doing so is considered a mark of respect towards a dwarf. Dwarves prefer to live in dark, underground areas, and they possess an innate sense of direction superior to that of humans or elves. Dwarves have no magical abilities of their own, however the dwarves of Pryan make very rudimentary use of Sartan magic through songs and runes carved onto amulets. While the dwarves themselves are not magically capable, they, like any of the mensch, can trigger the magic contained in these runes with the proper training.
[edit] Patryns
Patryns are of the same height and build as humans, but their current generations are all in excellent physical shape due to the hardships of the Labyrinth, and they are possessed of excellent magical ability to varying degrees, also a necessity for their survival. All Patryns are capable of using rune magic, which manipulates the Wave of probabilities, allowing Patryns to view a myriad of probable outcomes and select one to occur. The more unlikely the probability, however, the more difficult to conjure. Patryn use of runes seems less elegant than Sartan, as it relies more on physical representations such as their tattoos, the use of voice, and drawing the runes in air or on a surface. Patryn runes complement Sartan runes, and can sometimes be used to accomplish the same tasks. Patryns also tend to be loners, but are intensely passionate and due to the hardships of the Labyrinth. They will aid one another without question, but generally put their own survival above that of others. Patryns who form groups tend to follow a single ruler, such as the Headman of tribes in the Labyrinth and Xar of the liberated Patryns.
[edit] Sartan
Sartan are of the same height and build of humans, but unlike the Patryns, they have not been hardened by generations of violent life. All Sartan are capable of using rune magic. The Sartan use of runes seems more elegant than the Patryn, involving singing and dancing in prescribed tones and movements to affect the Wave. In some instances, Sartan inscribe runes, mainly to permanently enchant an object or location, such as when creating barred gateways or magical weapons that can then be used by mensch. Sartan runes complement Patryn runes, and can be used to accomplish the same tasks. Sartan tend to act as a community, making decisions as a group rather than as individuals, and they generally have a ruling Council. The Sartan on Abarrach, however, were more fractured due to their hardships.
[edit] Trivia
- The character Zifnab is a play on the character Fizban from Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance novels. He makes a few references to Fizban during the series (such as the importance of a Wizard's Hat) and he is described with a similar appearance. Zifnab seems to break the fourth wall constantly, making references to the Pern series of books, The Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, Star Wars, Star Trek, James Bond, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Arthurian legend, and soul music, however, this story takes place in Earth's far distant future, so it is also possible that he could somehow have stumbled across these old bits of late 20th century literature and pop culture and somehow incorporated them into his view of reality. He appears again, in a similar capacity, in the Starshield novels, this time as Zanfib.
In addition to a wide variety of appendices, the back of each novel contains a musical score (typically for piano), often directly related to a song mentioned in the book (rf. Elven Star).
- Patryn and Sartan languages seem to borrow words from real languages. Aside of the already mentioned "mensch", for example, the name "Haplo" means "single" in patryn language, but "haplo-" is a greek root word with the same meaning.
[edit] Behind the books
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were coming off of the wildly successful Dragonlance and Dark Sword series. The Death Gate Cycle was their most ambitious work yet, to create five fully realized and distinct worlds. The Death Gate Cycle showed Weis and Hickman maturing as writers; in comparison to the Dragonlance books, their grasp of fundamental elements such as characters and plot movements improved significantly in this series.
As in their previous works, the authors continued to explore the theme of balance, and how the universe naturally works to correct imbalances. Unlike in Dragonlance, where the universe's balance was a greater force than even the gods, the existence of a god or gods in The Death Gate Cycle is unknown; a universal balance is the closest thing to divinity. Along a similar line, the authors continued to explore the theme of men becoming gods -- in this case with the entire Patryn and Sartan races clamoring for that throne. Finally, as in both Dragonlance and the Darksword series, they explore the effects of sweeping changes to the fundamental nature of a world (in this case worlds) on both the day-to-day life and the fate of nations.
[edit] Game adaptations
Legend Entertainment released a computer adventure game called Death Gate based on the series. The game is based roughly on the first four books, although at the end it also contains an interpretation of the final confrontation from The Seventh Gate.
There is also a text adventure based on the Death Gate Cycle called "The Deadly Labyrinth". It can be downloaded here[1].
Tracy Hickman has indicated that Margaret Weis Productions hopes to someday produce a Death Gate Cycle roleplaying game[2].
