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THE LAND OF THE DEAD

Based on the Dry Land from the 'Earthsea' books by Ursula K. Le Guin.


The land of the dead appears to be an afterlife that underlies all of shadow in The Last Enemy universe. The soul or spirit of everyone - every sentient entity - who dies anywhere in shadow seems to go there, even from Chaos and the depths of the Abyss. Death does not have to be physical - brain death, even though the body still lives, is enough to send one's soul to the land of the dead. Those whose minds are strong may get a sense of flying over a blasted landscape at great speed as they die, then over a wall of rough stones as they enter the land of the dead itself. This wall is the true barrier between the realms of the living and the dead. One cannot reach the wall from the land of the dead - the closer one comes to it, the more it recedes.


When arriving in the land of the dead, one wakes up in a bone-chillingly cold and dark place, lying on a cold, hard stone floor, in a dark ten-foot square room, with black mist swirling on the floor. There is a correlation between where one dies and where one ends up in the land of the dead; if more than one person dies in the same place at the same time they end up in the same place in the land of the dead. The place is utterly cold, the cold cutting to the bone. All sounds fade away more quickly then they should. There is a window hole in one wall on the room, and a doorway, but no glass, frame or door. People appear in the land of the dead wearing whatever they consider to be their normal clothes, and carrying any equipment which is part of their Personal Reality. This does include Trump decks and the like, but does not appear to include things that are living or sentient in their own right (such as Castle Corvallin).

Outside there will be a narrow, winding street lined with houses like the one that one has just appeared in - small and square, stone-built, one storey tall, flat-roofed. It is very dark, the only light being starlight. There are a few people visible, in windows or doorways, or moving very slowly down the street, who react very slowly if spoken to and who just stare blankly at one. The houses go on as far as one can see in the starlight. The land rises very slightly in one direction.

Many of the people in the land of the dead have visible wounds on their bodies, some of them clearly fatal. However, there is no blood, or sign of blood. The people can be sensed to have minds, but there is no emotion or life in them. They have lost their life force, the animating 'spark', all the life and all the passion, leaving only their memories behind; it feels as if all the memories are there, but there is nothing remembering them. The only inhabitants of the land of the dead are the remains of sentient beings; there are no plants or animals there.

Looking up at the cloudless, utterly black sky, with its blazing, un-winking stars in patterns no-one recognises, is a horrible sensation, as if someone is dancing on your grave.

Simply existing in the land of the dead drain's one's life force; this is visible as a thin black mist seeping from oneself and joining the black mist that swirls on the ground. The use of any powers, or any other great exertion, seems to drain one's life force more quickly (and thus make one seep black mist more quickly), so that one can be seen to visibly age as one, for example, holds a Trump link open. This ageing seems to be permanent; one appears the age one did when one left the land of the dead if one returns to the land of the living then comes to the land of the dead again later.

The few flames in the land of the dead are monochrome, and give no heat.

To those who can sense such things, the place feels Real - certainly as real as Amber. There is some magic there; it feels a little strange, but useable. And there is a real power source - a black mist flowing slowly over the floor.

Only people with Advanced Pattern abilities seem to retain the use of any Pattern powers at all.

To Trump Artists there is a very slight, but perceptible, difference between the Trumps of people who are in the land of the dead and those who are not. The stars provide enough light to use Trumps. When the Trump of someone who is in the land of the dead is used, it glows with a silver light that then arcs away in a thread, up and across the land of the dead towards it target, who becomes aura'd with silver light as the thread comes down. The target then feels a Trump call coming on as normal. The Trumps of those who are not in the land of the dead do have a silver light glow around them but no seeking silver thread arcs out towards the subject of the Trump. Place Trumps do not even develop the silver glow.


The land of the dead slopes down towards the centre, the black mist flowing down this slope. In the centre is a mountain somewhat like Kolvir, with a black pillar of mist rising from the top, the life and passion of all of the dead being recycled back to the land of life.

Around the base of this mountain, at the lowest point of the land of the dead, is a city of the dead, which has a dry harbour with a few black boats lying on their sides in it. The city, and the harbour particularly, bear some resemblance to Amber itself. On a plateau partway up the mountain is a huge castle, not unlike Castle Amber, built of the black stone of the land of the dead, with large vaulted halls and corridors dimly lit by monochrome flaming torches, many rooms, and glass-less windows giving views out in different directions. There are mirrors on the walls in some places, but no paintings. In one part of the castle is a vaulted circular chamber fitted out as a magical laboratory by Brand. It has several doors, the place is brightly lit by monochrome torches, and a large nonagram (like a pentagram, but with nine points) is carved into the floor.

Visible in one direction from the castle, and from other places in the land of the dead (though not from everywhere) are what look rather like single-coloured rainbows, braided columns of light arcing into the sky from far away. They seem to come from beyond mountains far off in the distance, which visible only by their being silhouetted against the light. There are four such 'rainbows' rising up into the star-filled sky from one side. One is blue-silver, one blue-green, one silvery-white and one gold-pink. A greenish glow is visible below them, too. They fade away about halfway up the sky. On the other side (where there also seem to be mountains) there is the greenish glow and four more glows, the same colours as the 'half-rainbows' on the other side. Much further away an entire arch is visible. This one is silvery in colour.


At another point in the land of the dead is a black beach with no sea, cold and silent under the terrible stars of the land of the dead.


The Chaos end of the land of the dead is shattered and fragmented, appearing to be made up of jagged, irregular slabs of flat stone in a sea of black nothingness, sparsely scattered at various angles in space, vaguely like ice floes.


Deep under the land of the dead's equivalent of Castle Amber there is a vast sigil in place of the Pattern in the equivalent of the Pattern room - hugely complex magical circles, some concentric, some set around others, carved into the floor. This seems to channel the black mist; at least it seems to flow through the carvings on the floor. In overall form it is a nonagram. There are nine obelisks around it, one at each point of the sigil. Near the centre are a number of smaller circles, each one just about big enough to hold two people.

When the obelisks are manipulated in the correct manner the black mist begins to flow faster, and its level rises. As the user of the nonagram chants in an unfamiliar language (not a shadow of Thari) the mist rises higher, making walls of black mist until all of those in the centre are enveloped. All sound cuts off as this happens. The mist rises upwards, blowing around and through those on the design; this feels as if one is being blown away, and it hurts. Then one feels oneself dissipate into the black mist and it feels as if one is being blown upwards, into the sky. Below, one sees a view of the castle, the city and the dead lands spreading out below; anyone else who was on the nonagram is not visible. At this point the stars do not seem so terrible to look at.

One swirls upwards, towards a star, and into it. There is blinding whiteness then hideous screaming agony in one's head and though one's body as one returns to one's real, physical body...

The process of returning from the land of the dead seems to be automatic once one is on the nonagram, and appears to completely heal any damage taken by one's body, even to the level of beheading or being burned into charcoal. However, if one's original body has been destroyed (such as by falling into the Abyss) and one's spirit needs to return to a different body, then a much longer and more complicated ritual, with assistance from people in the land of the living, seems to be required.

Being on the nonagram but not in one of the central circles when it is used appears to utterly drain one's life force, and so is to be avoided...

Note that returning from the land of the dead damages the barrier between the lands of the living and the dead and seems to allow the lifeless 'memory-sparks' of dead souls to leak through into the land of the living, carried back by the flow of life force at the point where the person returned from the dead. These memory-sparks then seem to latch on to the souls of foetuses developing in the womb, turning them into 'cold babies' which, though living, have some characteristics of the lifeless dead, and the memories of the lifeless soul. The memory-sparks do not seem able to move through shadow, and do seem susceptible to the effects of magic (they can be contained by, for example, wardings). These 'holes' between the lands of the living and the dead can be greatly shrunk by the use of the Jewel of Judgement, but so far there seems to be no way to fully close them. Returning from the land of the dead to one's own body seems to create quite a small hole. However, the ritual to bring a soul back into another body seems to create a huge hole and allows back enough memory-sparks to devastate the society of a shadow (such as shadow Renaissance)...

The 'memory-sparks' can be destroyed by, among other things, Pattern blades. If this happens then all their memories - all the memories of the person they were - are released at once and quickly fade away along with the black spark. However, those close by will sense the memories, and information can be gained from this, though as the emergence of the 'memory-sparks' is essentially random the likelihood of this being useful information is not terribly high. In most places the 'memory-sparks' will naturally fade and dissipate unless they find a developing soul to merge with; in Amber this dissipation happens particularly rapidly.


It is possible, with time, to work out a correspondence between the stars in the land of the dead and shadows in the living universe so that one can work out where people end up as they return, based on the star towards which they went.


Brand and Deirdre were in the land of the dead for more than a hundred years, although they had no idea how much time had actually passed until told (there is no real way to tell time in the land of the dead).

While there, Brand seems to have constructed the nonagram to carry souls back to the land of the living, a Trump-like device to allow communication with him in the land of the dead from the land of the living, and a device to prevent the ageing process and loss of life-force involved in simply existing in the land of the dead, let alone in using any powers.

These last are carved silvery spikes, pointed on one end with a flat disc on the other (like a long carved nail) one of which is inserted into one's chest. This insertion feels like a burning cold mass of razor blades going in, and keeps hurting even once it is in up to the disc. As it goes in one feels one's strength returning, although the effects of any ageing one has suffered is not reversed by the spikes. The power source for the spikes is the late King Oberon, who lies in an open coffin, with a big spike in his chest, radiating out power. Apparently Brand found him comatose and was able to keep him so. Precisely where Oberon is kept at present is a secret only Brand (and perhaps Deirdre) knows...


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