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Death Gate Cycle is an ambitious fantasy septuplet written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
Years ago, to end a war, the powerful Sartans sundered the world into four elemental worlds, and their enemies, the Patryns, were imprisoned in a demonic labyrinth. Shortly afterwards, the Sartans mysteriously disappeared. Centuries later, the first Patryns have started to escape from the labyrinth, and have just learnt how to access the other worlds.
The books follow the fiercely independent Haplo (a Patryn) as he scouts the four fantastic worlds to prepare them for conquest by his master.
The books
- Dragon Wing (October 1990)
(from the book jacket) "In Arianus, Realm of Sky, humans, elves, and dwarves battle for control of precious water - traversing a world of airborne islands on currents of elven magic and the backs of mammoth dragons. But soon great magical forces will begin to rend the fabric of this delicate land. An assassin will be hired to kill a royal prince - by the king himself. A dwarf will challenge the beliefs of his people - and lead them in rebellion. And a sinister wizard will enact his plan to rule Arianus - a plan that may be felt far beyond the Realm of Sky and into the Death Gate itself."
- Elven Star (July 1991)
(from the book jacket) "On steamy Pryan, never-ending sunlight and plentiful rain have created a jungle so vast that humans and elves dwell high in the trees and only dwarves live anywhere near the ground. From the treetops the aristocratic elves sell weapons to the other races, whose incessant warfare sends a steady steam of profits and essential resources skyward. Now, generations of dissent and race hatred will not heal - not even under the threat of annihilation at the hands of legendary tytans. Armed with little more than their wits and prophecy, an elf, a human, and a dwarf must unite to try to save the world from destruction."
- Fire Sea (February 1992)
(from the book jacket) "Abarrach, the Realm of Stone. Here, on a barren world of underground caverns built around a core of molten lava, the lesser races - humans, elves, and dwarves - seem to have all died off. Here, too, what may well be the last remnants of the once powerful Sartan still struggle to survive. For Haplo and Alfred - enemies by heritage, traveling companions by necessity - Abarrach may reveal more than either dares to discover about the history of Sartan ... and the future of all their descendents."
- Serpent Mage (March 1993)
(from the book jacket) "After searching the four worlds Alfred has at last found his people on Chelestra, the realm of sea. But his travels have taught him to be cautious ... and Alfred soon realizes his caution is justified, even among his own kind.
"The one person Alfred can trust is, strangely, Haplo the Patryn. But Haplo's lord has decreed all Sartan to be the enemy, and Haplo dares not go against his lord. Now the companions have arrived in a land where humans, elves, and dwarves have learned to live in peace. Unaware of an even greater threat to all the realms, it is Sartan and Patryn who will disrupt this alliance of the lesser races in their struggle to gain control of all four worlds. Only Alfred and Haplo realize that they have a much older - and more powerful - enemy than each other ..."
- The Hand of Chaos (November 1993)
(from the book jacket) "Chaos is everywhere as the Lord of the Nexus orders his servant Haplo and the human child known as Bane to further their master's work on Arianus, the realm of air. But their onetime companion Alfred has been cast into the deadly Labyrinth. And somehow the assassin Hugh the Hand has been resurrected to complete his dark mission. More important, the evil force that Haplo and Alfred discovered on Arianus has escaped. As Haplo's doubts about his master grow ever deeper, he must decide whether to obey the Lord of the Nexus or betray the powerful Patryn ... and endeavor to bring peace to the universe."
- Into the Labyrinth (July 1994)
(from the book jacket) "From his army of the undead, Xar, Lord of the Nexus, learns of the existence of the mysterious Seventh Gate. It is said that this gate grants whoever enters it the power to create worlds - or destroy them. Only Haplo knows its location - but he doesn't know he knows it. Now an ex-lover has been sent to betray Haplo and bring back his corpse. Meanwhile, the assassin Hugh the Hand is also after Haplo, wielding the Accursed Blade. With his old companion Alfred, Haplo must seek sanctuary in the Labyrinth - a deadly prison maze whose inhabitants are condemned to death."
- The Seventh Gate (December 1995)
(from the book jacket) "Mortally wounded, Haplo finds himself at the mercy of Lord Xar, facing a fate worse than death. Xar plans to resurrect Haplo - bringing him back to life as one of the tormented living dead - to force him to reveal the location of the legendary Seventh Gate. In Haplo's darkest hour, the only hope for his rescue lies with Marit, Hugh the Hand, and Alfred.
"But a terrible decision awaits them: To save Haplo they must enter the forbidden Seventh Gate. If they do so, they risk betraying its location to Lord Xar, who will use it to claim his terrible dominion over the worlds. Suddenly all their lives - and the fate of the sundered realms - hang in the balance. The final chapter is about to unfold in the apocalyptic struggle between good and evil ..."
Characters
- Haplo - The Patryn protagonist, and a scout for Xar.
- Dog - Haplo's dog who never leaves him.
- Alfred - The only Sartan in Arianus to wake up alive. He's hides his identity as a nursemaid for Bane.
- Zifnab - An old befuddled wizard from Pryan who's always accompanied by his watchful dragon, who is eventually revealed as far more than he seems.
- Xar - The first Patryn to ever escape from the Labyrinth and into the Nexus. He works tirelessly to free his people, and is the only Patryn mentally strong enough to go back inside the labyrinth.
- Hugh the Hand - A very accomplished human assassin from Arianus.
- Bane - A bratty human prince from Arianus who's taken as Lord Xar's disciple.
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Worlds
Arianus
The Realm of Air.
Arianus made up of islands floating in air over a fierce maelstrom. They were originally aligned and centered, but since the gates were closed they have been drifting apart. Over time the dwarves, who all live in the lower islands, became slaves to the elves (called Welves) and humans, who live in the middle islands. Curiously enough, the lower islands are the only ones that have water, the humans and elves regularly raid the dwarven lands for this precious commodity. The upper islands were home the secretive Mysteriarchs, powerful human wizards (although still far less powerful than a Sartan or Patryn).
The dwarves tend never ending to a machine they call the Kicksey Winsey. This machine originally is what would've powered all the of the transfer of materials through the gates and between the different worlds. Since the gates were closed, it does nothing but wait.
Pryan
The Realm of Fire
To its inhabitants, Pryan is a regular planet with four suns that never set, and a field of blinking stars behind it. Actually Pryan is an extremely large hollowed out planet, where all of the people live on the inside, the four giant suns are in the center of the world, and the blinking lights are actually cities on the other side of the hollowed out world.
Pryan is an extremely lush world, the constant sun has produced a rainforest that has grown so tall and thick, that all of the humans literally live on the leafy canopy on top of the trees, and never see the ground that lies hundreds of feet below. The leaves have become so dense that lakes and even oceans have been formed from collected rainwater. The further down the trees one goes, the more dangerous the beasts become, until finally at the bottom there live great wingless dragons.
Recently Pryan has come under attack from giant blind Tytans, who are mindlessly searching for "the Citadel," and kill everything in their way.
Abarrach
The Realm of Stone
Abarrach is a harsh world with no sun and a poisonous atmosphere. To find heat, it's inhabitants delved underground towards the magma core, where a network of giant monoliths called colossi provide heat. The elves and humans eventually died off, unable to cope with the hard environment. The dwarves, even living in their natural environment, died off shortly after.
This left only the Sartans, who had woken up and had powerful magic to let them survive, but even they eventually forgot their heritage after long years of fighting each other over every scrap of food. The Sartans soon started practicing the forbidden art of necromancy, and now the undead outnumbers the living.
Chelestra
The Realm of Water
Chelestra is a world of nothing but water, where the inhabitants live on various landmasses that produce their own air pockets. These landmasses are actually giant beasts called Durnai. The Seasun that floats through the water provides heat and light.
With the closing of the gates, the Seasun started to drift. The Durnai are supposed to hibernate until the seasun starts to drift away, then wake up and follow it. However they've never woken up from their hibernation. As the seasun moves, the waters furthest away from it start to freeze, along with any durnai in the area. One significant city that was frozen due to the drifting Seasun was Chalice, the chosen home of the Sartans.
Unlike the other worlds, all the mensch races live in harmony in Chelestra, and they all work together to follow the seasun to keep from getting trapped on a frozen Durnai.
The seawater of Chelestra is very unusual for two reasons. First, is actually breathable by the humanoid races. Second, it completely nullifies all magic.
The Labyrinth & the Nexus
The Prison Maze
The labyrinth was built to rehabilitate the reform the Patryn. It was designed to intelligently present a series of challenges and character-building puzzles, and once they've all been completed, the labyrinth would release the Patryn out into the beautiful Nexus. After the Sartan left, the labyrinth mutated into a grotesque and sadistic prison, which used it's intelligence to kill the Patryn and keep itself alive. The only rule it lives by is that it must give the Patryn a chance of making it past each challenge.
Patryn society has formed in two directions, runners and squatters. Squatters band together in tribes to protect themselves from the labyrinth. Runners constantly move forward towards the distant dream of the exit. It took several generations of runners constantly moving forward before the first Patryn reached the exit, a very powerful man named Xar.
There does exist one city in the Labyrinth, Abri. Built by squatters right near the entrance, it has grown over time into a well-defended city.
The Seventh Gate
The seventh gate was a special place built beyond the other worlds, designed to house enough magic and energy to assist the Sartans in performing their great sundering. Typical of extremely powerful objects and places in fiction, it's location was then lost and became legendary.
The timeline before the books
The world of the Death Gate Cycle started long ago when a nuclear war in our world gave rise to a fantasy world with elves and dwarves and magic. Certain humans evolved into very powerful magic users, but along two different paths: the Sartans used magic by drawing runes on the ground and in the air, Patryns used magic by tattooing runes on themselves. These two races fought constantly for control over the non-magical races, whom they called mensch. The Patryns were much less organized and tended to be far more destructive.
Eventually the Sartan undertook drastic measures to win, and sundered the earth into four separate worlds, each one focusing on a separate element (air, earth, fire, water). In addition they also created the Labyrinth, where they imprisoned the Patryns for rehabilitation. At the end of the labyrinth was the Nexus, a paradise city for the Patryns to live in once they were peacefully rehabilitated. All of these worlds are connected by death gates, where each elemental world feeds the other elemental worlds with whatever they're lacking.
Immediately after the sundering everything started to go wrong. Strange dragons appeared that the Sartan never created. The necessary interactions between the worlds didn't work correctly, the water world never provided the necessary water to other worlds, the earth world never provided the energy, etc. The labyrinth evolved itself from a temporary place of rehabilitation into a sadistic and almost self-aware prison. The Sartans, not knowing what to do, decided to close the gates and let the worlds heal themselves, and then the Sartans all went into a stasis sleep.
While the Sartans slept everything continued to get worse. They never awoke from their sleep to repair things and free the Patryns from their prison. Most of the Sartan simply died while in stasis. As often happens with great cataclysmic events in stories, the mensch of the worlds lost all knowledge of their past. The Patryns, trapped in their prison, were the only ones who still remembered their heritage.
After many generations of struggle, Lord Xar become the first Patryn to escape from the Labyrinth, and was the first person to step foot in the Nexus. Afterward he dedicated himself to helping his people, and he eventually learned how to partially open the gates to allow a small ship to pass through. Haplo, one of the later escapees, is sent by Lord Xar to see what's become of the other worlds and to learn what has happened to the Sartan. In each of the first four books he travels to the four elemental worlds in turn, the last three books take place over the entire multi-verse, although the sixth book takes place mostly in the Labyrinth.
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, their handle over the basics such as characters and plot movements had improved significantly since their first book together with Dragonlance.
Similar to their previous works, they continued to explore the theme of balance, and how the universe naturally works to correct imbalances. However, unlike in Dragonlance where they 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, and universal balance is the closest thing to divinity. Along a similar line, they also continued to explore the theme of men becoming gods, in this case with the entire Patryn and Sartan races clamoring for that throne.
The computer game
There is also an computer adventure game based on the series. The game is based roughly on the first four books, although at the end it also contains the final confrontation from the last book in the series.
External links
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