The Land/the Night Land

[Nerdanel]

This is an entirely rewritten version of an earlier topic of mine that I think just wasn't any good. I couldn't let the idea languish behind the shabby treatment I had given to it.

Warning: the wild speculation ahead is based on a hunch and a bunch of circumstantial evidence. On the other hand, if I'm right, I expect to be called a genius. If I'm wrong, somebody could write a cool AU fanfic of this.

Besides SRD, there is one other author who has written about a place called "the Land". He is William Hope Hodgson and the book in question is The Night Land. (You can read it online by following the previous link, as the book is in the public domain. This is significant.) In the Night Land, the titular setting is often shortened simply as the Land. It's not like the characters have some other land to confuse it to.

Despite the similarity in names, the Land and the (Night) Land are practically opposites of each other, at least if we consider the Land during one of its better times. The Land: beautiful nature, friendly people who wield Earthpower for good, Giants, wonders like the Wraiths of Andelain. The (Night) Land: darkness and volcanism, people huddling in a fortress arcology powered by dwindling Earth-Current, vicious monsters and depraved things whose ancestors were men, evil Giants, doorways in the air, horrors that eat souls. A recipe for despair.

Lord Foul's Winter << the Sunbane << the Night Land

If you think what Lord Foul in his evil might do to the Land in the Last Chronicles as he's getting smarter and the narrative laws force increasing escalation, the Night Land would be a none-too-shabby effort. Consider that in the First Chronicles Lord Foul turned the moon green. In the Second Chronicles he turned the sun into various colors. If he goes the Night Land route, in the Last Chronicles he will put out the sun, the moon, and the stars. That's definetely not too shabby. It also fits wonderfully well with the title The Last Dark and would bring upon the Land the Hell of Darkness. Interestingly, of all the Seven Hells Darkness is the one that hasn't really shown itself. Linden even specifically notes late in WGW that unlike the day, the night remains uncorrupted. This certainly feels like a setup to me...

Perhaps the (Night) Land could come into being as a fulfillment of the ur-vile's view of the Weird. We know they like the Waynhim are alien creatures and they have been working through millennia for their Weird. I've been hypothetizing that the ur-viles are interested in the Staff of Law because they want to make a Stave of Weird. I certainly don't think they are serving Linden any further than their own benefit leads them to.

A Stave of Weird could potentially have far-reaching effects. Like the Staff of Law, the Stave would work to establish its own set of (un)natural rules and there is nothing to suggest that those would be amenable for humans. I think if the Stave ended up on top, we could end up witnessing a radical reversal like the turning of a Day (Land) into a Night (Land). After all, none of the Demondim-spawn have eyes.

Also of consideration are the wisps of darkness that we have seen near the Demondim and the Mahdoubt. It may be that these wisps are connected to the caesures. There are signs that if these wisps are allowed to gather in great enough numbers, they would cause a permanent artificial night. Certainly the corridors of Revelstone seemed suspiciously dark.

In the early days of the (Day) Land the Law ruled supreme and only Mount Thunder was the domain of the Demondim and later the ur-viles. Now in the (Night) Land where the Weird rules and things are generally hostile to creatures of the Law, we could very well see humans not living all around the place like they used to but in enclaves where lore can keep things livable. I think Mount Thunder could be a very viable choice to be the great and last redoubt of humanity, a mountain-size artificial pyramid in Hodgson's novel. (Could Mount Thunder end up looking like that after extensive modifications?) To continue the mirror relationship, I think Revelstone is lost for the good guys and is destined to become the equivalent of the dreadful House of Silence. Hodgson's House of Silence was originally inhabited by humans too.

An important background detail in Night Land the novel is that the Earth-Current - a mystical form of energy akin to electricity that gives health and vitality and protection from the monsters of the Land, as well as the ability to power machines - is ever diminishing with use and its end would mean the ultimate fall of man. I maintain that in the Last Chronicles the Earthpower is similarly a finite resource although Linden doesnt' know it yet. (As this subject deserves a whole thread for itself, you'll have to just take me on faith or research this for yourselves for now. I've got a really good theory coming. I'll try to post it soon.)

Reincarnation is a fact in Hodgson's novel. In the Last Chronicles, the consequences of the breaking of the Laws of Life and Death are not yet fully explored. I can well imagine Lord Foul bringing people back to life so that they could not find peace in death. The only final death would be brought by soul-destruction, which is known to be possible in Hodgson and for which there is strong evidence in SRD.

Now, for all of this to become reality there would have to be some considerable passage of time while SRD has said that the Last Chronicles will take place over a matter of days. However never forget SRD is the guy who writes Lord Foul's dialogue. I expect that the Last Chronicles will take a few days Linden-time and many millennia Land-time. As Linden is confirmed dead by SRD, her waking up in the real world is not an issue. As for how to get Linden to the future, she could simply get swallowed by a caesure and pop out downstream. (For reasons of completeness, it's not outside the realm of possibility that she dies and is resurrected much later, although I feel the previous option is more likely to be conductive of a good story.)

I love the public domain. With it SRD can make this thread come true.

[Nerdanel]

I'll bump this thread back from 2005 to the front page now that the starting post is from 2007 instead from 2005...

EDIT - As this thread is once again going over like a lead balloon, I added a poll so that I might get at least a little feedback this time...

[danlo]

I'm one of the few, as you know from the Hangar, who has read The Night Land...ages ago. I didn't even know there was a second book until you told me. This is a rather interesting discourse--I need to compile a notebook of questions to ask SRD when I see him. I'm still interested in the status of the DVD Disney filmed of him and other fantasy authors commenting on how the Narnia books effected their writing. I would assume, if they are ever to release it, it will come with the second Narnia movie; Prince Caspian, May '08. I'll have to remember to ask him if he has read it, and what he thinks of it...The Night Land, that is...

[dlbpharmd]

I'm completely confused.

[danlo]

...and this is new?

The Night Land is a really cool and very weird book that was written, I think, in the late '30s/early '40s. The language is a bit archiac, but the imagery is fantastic--other gods, alien beings gliding by on invisible roads suspended in void, etc...for some reason I've always envisioned the "Earth-Current" as a benevolent nuclear reactor--but it does pop up in pockets of the Land itself, it doesn't just lie under the pyramid. I thought of it more like Walter Jon Williams' "plasm" (-geomancy from the intrinsic power of the world-city structures) in Metropolitian & City on Fire, rather than Earthpower...

I read The Night Land (in '73), along with alot of Lovecraft and all four E. R. Edison books 6 years before Covenant-I thought little of the connection at the time-being so stunned by SRD and encased in serious 'weirdness' by Hodgson and Lovecraft, and others--I'll have to read it again, one of these days.

[Nerdanel]

Wow, after all of these years (well, more than one) a first post in this thread by someone non-me!

I've noticed that SRD has been talking in the GI about the role of entropy in the series. The Night Land has been described as an "Entropic Romance", which is hardly a widespread subgenre. (I can think of some stuff by Clark Ashton Smith that fits the bill and - arguably - Oliver Johnson's Lightbringer Trilogy would qualify, but both of those have Hodgson influences. The Lord of the Rings is an even more arguable case with its small but detectable Night Land influences.) Nevertheless, this still might not imply that SRD has read The Night Land, as the entropy thing might be from Tolkien or SRD's own observation.

I'm interested in how the role of entropy will play out if SRD indeed makes it a key plot point. According to SRD the Last Chronicles will be the last because the Land will no longer exist (or something, I'm paraphrasing here). Will it be Tolkien-style (the Land ends up all boring and mundane and not really the Land anymore) or Hodgson-style (things get really, really horrible in a basically irreversible and deteriorating fashion)? Based on the story so far, I'm leaning on the latter + a final end to the Land's universe and the start of a new one, to provide a somewhat happy ending. Because of this, I voted "Maybe" on the poll.

Hey people, read The Night Land. It's free on the Internet. If that book looks hard to get into (= the language or the romance annoys you - you can always skim the worst bits of the romance, though), read The House on the Borderland by the same author. (I don't think the latter is as much of a masterpiece as the former, but on the other hand I don't consider the latter a flawed masterpiece but just a plain masterpiece. The language is cleaner and less pseudo-archaic, the romance is almost completely offscreen, and the pacing is better.)

Or try out first a great short story: The Voice in the Night (which, by the way, seems to take place in the same cosmology with everything else William Hope Hodgson has written, although the characters and the specific menace are unique to that story)

[Nerdanel]

Ok, I'll give an overview of what The Night Land is about:

The story is a mix of fantasy and science fiction and takes place millions of years in the future. The sun and the stars have all burned out. (At the time the book was written fusion hadn't been discovered yet and estimates of the sun's remaining lifetime were vastly shorter than now.) On Earth's surface it's already so cold that the air itself freezes, but in a deep rift valley[*] (The Night Land) the conditions, though extremely harsh, are still amenable to life due to the proximity to the Earth's still-molten core.[*2]

The last millions of humans live in a vast pyramid-shaped arcology that gets its power from geothermal energy/telluric currents/a nexus of ley lines. It's never explained in modern language. The energy in question can be used to power machines, but it is also a mystical force of goodness and life. People who live with too little of it lead their lives like ghosts, it can dispel evil magic and restore health, and a warding circle powered with it is used on a permanent bases to keep evil at bay from the arcology.[*3]

The warding circle is strictly needed, as there is seriously bad stuff outside. Flesh-and-blood monsters are actually the relatively harmless ones. In the past people have dabbled with intelligent and malicious demonic (no connection to Christianity implied) forces[*4], and now those are on the loose and (apparently) running the show. There appears to be some sort of intelligent command structure in the Night Land but we know little about it except what we can learn by observing its effects. It seems to be interested in getting people into situations where their souls can be eaten and also in promoting despair.[*5]

The plot begins when the main character hears his reincarnated soulmate's voice calling telepathically from what turns out to be another, smaller arcology from which there had been no contact in many ages. But it soon turns out that the other arcology is about to fall to the Night as its energy source is failing swiftly. The main character leaves on a mission to rescue his beloved, even though the chances of succeeding appear infinitesimal and the mission is what the evil forces have been all along trying to get him to do...

[*] Caesures weaken and destroy stone. I expect to see sudden and unexpected rifts forming all over the Land and the Earth if the current situation continues long enough to weaken the Earth's basic structure badly enough. We may already be close...

[*2] The skurj/volcanism connection is potentially interesting here.

[*3] The connection to Earthpower is masked by a more science-fictional terminology and the fact that none of the characters are Lords. However I think the similarities are larger than it may appear.

[*4] There is some Raver-like possession/telepathy capability, and certain things remind me of the little we know about the Viles. I can imagine the hooded-from-head-to-toe Silent Ones as the Demondim except that they seem to be more cold-based. Perhaps they in their self-loathing made a deal with Lord Foul to get rid of the fire touch and got ice touch instead... It might be very significant that in Runes the Demondim never once made a sound. It might also be significant that while the Demondim don't appear to like Linden, their motivations have been intentionally left dark. Perhaps their better nature has been overshadowed by the Illearth Stone's influence. Perhaps they can decide that the whole serving Lord Foul thing was a bad idea to start with. The Silent Ones - though they have been known to kill people - appear to be the best approximation of a neutral, non-malicious force in the Night Land.

[*5] I can easily imagine Lord Foul at the top. It fits his character perfectly.

[Nerdanel]

I found this relevant quote in the GI.

In the context of "The Chronicles," magic is a nonrenewable resource--in the same sense that *sunlight* is a nonrenewable resource. Sure, our sun is burning itself out. But humankind may very well make itself extinct many millions of years before dwindling sunlight becomes a problem. I think of Earthpower (and even wild magic) in the same terms.

Fact: If the Land's Earth remains undestroyed, eventually the sun will burn itself out and Earthpower dwindle away.

Fact: We have timetravel. The kind of timetravel which goes forward unless it's controlled, and Linden has not always found it easy to control it. The kind of timetravel where if Linden finds herself in the distant future she cannot go back to change the past of that future without breaking the Arch of Time and ending the world in the process.

Fact: SRD in the previous quote uses language that does not reflect modern scientific thinking but rather The Night Land, which is a very old book. For example, the sun is currently getting brighter, not dimmer, and will become a red giant that will swallow Mercury and Venus and thoroughly boil Earth. The timescale for this is billions, not millions, of years, and it's only after that that the sun will become a white dwarf that gradually dims away into a black dwarf.

[MrKABC]

Excellent point that "darkness" is the only one of the Seven Hells not to be manifested.

The Waynhim, however, have served the Law for millenia - witness the Waymeets, dukkha's sacrifice, the Waynhim's cavern of plants and animals in defiance of the Sunbane, (not to mention their sacrifice against the destruction of the arguleh/croyel), and finally their preservation of the new Staff of Law at their expense.

It seems too much of a stretch to think that the Waynhim would pervert the Staff of Law into the "Weird-Stave" when the Staff is a tool not meant for their touch and would gradually warp and kill them like Drool Rockworm.

Even Lord Foul chose not to misuse the Staff personally "...lest he share the fate of Drool Rockworm..."

So I think you are off base there.

Lord Foul's goal was to get white gold to get off that rock (the Earth) - damaging the Land is only a by-product of that desire.

[Reave the Unjust]

Interesting thread, thanks Nerdanel!

Food for thought indeed..........

I'll have to check this story out as soon as I've finished my current read.

Sounds like a nightmarish romance (or a romantic nightmare?!)

[matrixman]

A new achievement in impossible speculation.

But you're eloquent as ever in your ideas, Nerdanel.

Interestingly, of all the Seven Hells Darkness is the one that hasn't really shown itself. Linden even specifically notes late in WGW that unlike the day, the night remains uncorrupted. This certainly feels like a setup to me...

That is interesting, at least. We'll see.