Death Gate Books

[Kathleen Denson]

TheDeath Gate Cycle is a seven-part series (heptalogy) of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The main conflict is between two powerful races, the Sartan and the Patryns, which branched off from humans following a nuclear/anti-matter holocaust. Centuries prior to the events of the series, the Sartan attempted to end the conflict by sundering the Earth into four elemental realms, and imprisoning the Patryns in a fifth prison world, the Labyrinth. The Sartan took up stewardship of the elemental realms, but soon mysteriously lost contact with each other and disappeared. Centuries later, a Patryn known as Xar escaped the Labyrinth, and started returning to the Labyrinth to rescue others. He learned how to access the other worlds, using the eponymous portal called the Death Gate, and dreamed of freeing all his people from the Labyrinth and conquering the other worlds. The books follow the fiercely independent Haplo, a Patryn agent sent to scout the elemental worlds and throw them into chaos in preparation for his Lord's conquest of them. Weis and Hickman created five distinct fantasy worlds during the course of the series, along with developing the cultures of five major races: the unique Patryn and Sartan, and the common fantasy races of dwarves, elves, and humans.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman had finished their Dragonlance and Darksword series prior to The Death Gate Cycle, which may be considered their most ambitious work yet,[1][2] as they created multiple fully realized and distinct worlds. The series also displayed Weis and Hickman's continued command of the fantasy genre.[3]

Similar to the central concept of The Lord of the Rings, which J. R. R. Tolkien claimed was a translation of a real tome in his keeping (the Red Book of Westmarch), The Death Gate Cycle claims to be documentation of the events revolving around Death's Gate, authored after the fact by its primary characters. Even more than that, it is a scholarly document, with footnotes containing definitions of terms, references to past adventures and authorial asides. Each novel contains appendices giving further detail on various aspects of the story and its world, often summarizing (or occasionally laying the groundwork for) information related in the narrative proper. Finally, most of the novels also contain a musical score at the end, documenting a song (or sometimes a Sartan music-based rune-construct) featured in that particular volume.

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 to the Labyrinth, where the mensch were temporarily housed during the Sundering itself and where the captured Patryns were eventually placed. The books later reveal that certain members of the Sartan population had objected to The Sundering; these too were consigned to the Vortex and the Labyrinth. In the center of the Labyrinth was the Nexus, a paradise city for the Patryns to live in once they had become "civilized." 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 Conduits which allow each elemental world to transmit materials to one another.[5]

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.

Chelestra was to be the primary world where the mensch and Sartan would live. A great orb of liquid, the world was populated by great drifting beasts used as habitats for the mensch, with its own "Seasun" at the center. An appendix for Serpent Mage describes this liquid as not actually water, but a fluid which can be breathed through lungs and gills. Chelestra was also intended as a tremendous waste management and recycling plant, with the great floating habitat-beasts called "durnai" serving as biological recycling stations for the detritus from the other worlds. However, strange serpents, creatures of great power and corruption - that the Sartan had not created - began to appear. The Sartan could not account for their existence, but their danger was undeniable. Even worse, the emulsion fluid of Chelestra had a neutralizing effect on Sartan rune magic, rendering it and them utterly powerless. Surrounded by water that took away their power, no longer in control of the mensch, and faced with the serpents, the Sartan of Chelestra retreated into their capital. Samah, fearing what would happen if the serpents spread to the other worlds, shut Death's Gate, cutting communication 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. This contributed to the disappearance of the Sartan from the mensch worlds, setting up the main series' events.

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. These Sartan also 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, known on this world as Gegs, not truly understanding its purpose, effectively became slaves to the machine, worshiping it after a fashion as an artifact of their gods, the Mangers, (known to others as the Sartans) who had placed them there as its caretakers. The elves became tyrannical lords of much of the mid-realm through manipulation of the dwarves to obtain a monopoly on water, whilst constantly waging war with the humans.

Pryan was created as a great inverted globe with four small suns at its center. It was to be the power plant and center for all four 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.

With all the mensch dead and Sartan 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, as the dead eventually escaped from Sartan control. But the use of necromancy had an even worse result, one far more disastrous for the Sartan: For every life brought back, every soul prevented from passing on, another life ends untimely. For each dead body resurrected, another member of the species, somewhere, dies. The continuous restoration of dead Sartan on Abarrach resulted in the mass deaths among the Sartan populations of other worlds. Only on Chelestra, apparently due to either the Barrier protecting the Sartan city, or the properties of the water itself, did the Sartan survive relatively unscathed.

In the Labyrinth, the Sartan who should have been monitoring the prison realm either died or left. And without its caretakers, the Labyrinth slowly evolved from a temporary correctional facility into a sadistic and sentient 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. Setting out on journeys that lasted generations, the Patryns traveled and fought in nomadic bands or simply alone. They became even more warlike as they fought against incredible odds to push farther and farther towards escape. Though some Patryns did eventually escape, they did so only by climbing on the corpses of those who had come before.

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, elves and humans of those worlds. This left the imprisoned Patryns as the only ones who still remembered some of their heritage.

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