Ruler: Necrotis, the Deathmaiden Centerpoint: The Last Tower Inhabitants: Dead souls, lawful demons, Unseen Places of Interest: The Ruins, the Last Tower, the River, Tirindel, Alansrodel, the Sign of the Hanging Man Tavern.
The Deadlands are the final resting place of all souls that come to Halcye. Or, at least, that is what Horizonites believe. Finding the way in is as easy as dying. Of course, if an adventurer wants to take a look at the place before getting stuck there for eternity, there are occasional caverns and misty patches of ocean that lead directly into the Deadlands. The only problem, once a living mortal has entered, is getting back out...
No matter where a soul enters from, it always starts out in the same place: the Ruins. Shattered monoliths and cathedrals stand under a storm-dark sky, the remnants of civilizations long-dead. Strewn across the landscape are shards of pottery, twisted armor, broken weapons, broken toys; shreds of cloth flutter in the chill, metal-scented wind. Rust-colored puddles dot the landscape, and beneath the detritus the ground is scorched black. Here and there, a twisted and blackened tree stands, extending its bare branches to the sky. The clouds are tinged with a faint orange glow in the distance, sulphurous. The Ruins stretch as far as the eye can see in all directions except one: in that direction lies a vast expanse of dark water, mist rising from it a little way out to obscure anything that may lie beyond it.
If a soul chooses to spend too much time in the Ruins, it will regret that decision. After a little bit of dallying, it will begin to hear the sound of wings in the distance, great slow sweeps like steady thunder. If it looks around, it will see a dark speck in the sky moving toward it from the direction from which the sulphurous light comes. If the soul does not hurry down to the water immediately, the dark speck will draw closer until it reveals itself to be a titanic black-scaled dragon, the headless corpse of the Shadow Dragon that the demonlord Dyschord used to steal Oretcht'ke away from the Shadowlord. Headless or not, the Shadow Dragon will swoop down upon the unwise soul unerringly, sweeping it up in great black talons and carrying it back off to where it lairs, in the burning lands on the very fringe of the Deadlands. It is impossible to escape the Shadow Dragon.
The wise souls that choose to wait at the edge of the water are not disturbed by the Shadow Dragon. Instead, a great dark ship glides out of the mist and up to the shore, manned by armor-clad skeletons. The souls are taken aboard, and the ship disappears back into the mists.
Things are slightly different when living mortals descend into the Deadlands. The Shadow Dragon starts his approach immediately, giving the mortals almost no time to reach the edge of the water; once they do that, though, they are safe. The ship that comes for them is not the huge barge that comes for the dead souls, but rather a small fishing boat, poled along by a shortish, balding and spectacled man in dull-colored work-clothes. He greets them mildly and beckons them to join him in the boat, then poles it off into the mists as well.
When the mists clear, the souls find themselves sailing up a narrow channel through deserted, blackened land. Ahead, a huge wall looms toward the roiling sky, with white skeletal figures patrolling the top; a massive gate wrought with twining black roses and thorns creaks open as the ship nears.
Butted up against the wall, right on the outside of the true Deadlands, is the Sign of the Hanging Man Tavern, a true oddity in the dark realm that is the Deadlands. Its walls and roof gleam with a patchwork of color, each brick and shingle a different rainbow shade; light spills from the windows and the crack of the doorway, and now and then people wander out of it, often pausing to wave up at the dead souls in the passing ship. The sign hanging out in front of the tavern depicts an Arcana card, the Hanging Man, which gave the place its name. The typical dead soul will never see its inside.
Once the ship (or boat) has passed the Sign of the Hanging Man and the outer wall, it is truly in the Deadlands. The land is dark and shadow-shrouded, dotted here and there with spots of orange fire. Spindly black trees stand about like sentinels, their bare branches hung with white paper strips and folded figures. The terrain rises slowly--which makes many Deadlands-travellers uneasy, since the canal ignores the incline and continues to flow steadily uphill--until it peaks out at the Last Tower, a thick, soot-black spire surrounded by a maze-garden of dead flowers. The ship docks a bit below the tower, at a flat stretch of land with a thin grey road winding up the hill. The canal itself continues to flow on by the tower, rippling down the hill and out into the vastness.
The tower's massive main door is black iron, cast into the image of a huge rose surrounded by thorns. To the left of it, half-hidden by dead grey bushes, is the only spot of color in the area: a tiny but living garden plot, full of delicate pastel pansies, golden chrysanthemums and blood-colored roses.
The entire ground-floor of the Last Tower is Necrotis's court. The ground is covered in deep red rugs that are not quite rugs; every now and then they flux and scintillate, as if a current of some sort were running through them. The ceiling is undetectable in the darkness. Armored skeletons line the walls, silent and still. Tables of jet-black stone fill much of the room, where the souls of those awaiting judgement sit. A single pathway runs between them all, from the main doors to the foot of Necrotis's throne.
A broad area is left empty before Necrotis's throne; this is where each soul stands alone to face her, and where the bespectacled man leads any mortals that come to ask something of her. The throne itself is more a judge's seat, towering over the hapless beings that stand before her. The seat of it is set a good ten feet up, and the tops of it are lost in the darkness. Her typically-black gown cascades down the stone to pool on the floor; she appears much larger when upon her throne, like an ethereal giantess, and her eyes burn with an unholy radiance. She judges the dead souls with a simple lift of a hand. If she raises the right, the soul is directed through the white, rose-wrought door to the right of her throne. If she raises the left, the soul passes through the red, thorn-chased door on her left. One way goes to Alansrodel, the other to Tirindel...supposedly a sort of Heaven and Hell, but no soul has returned to tell of either place.
When mortals come to petition, the bespectacled man leads them forward to plead their case. The man, it may be discovered, is the legendary Jason of Aragon, one of the first-comers of the human race to Horizon, an Ascendant and a martyr. He will do his best to assist the mortals in their pleas, if he believes they are worthy.
Sometimes Necrotis does not lift either hand in judgement of a dead soul, but both. In that case, some of the armored skeletons step away from the walls and escort the soul out the main doors and down another grey path, following the dark canal until it spills back into a body of black water. This time, the water is not mist-cloaked and not very vast at all, but beyond it the only things that can be seen are the shore fringe and the mouth of a tunnel, curving upward and away as if the entirety of the Deadlands were closed within the planet. The soul is urged--at spear-point, if neccesary--down to the bank and forced into the water, commanded to swim across. Simply called the River, these waters wash away all memories and semblance of self from the soul, leaving it stripped of all personality once it reaches the other side. Only the command remains in its head: go into the tunnel and back up into the world. In this way, Halcye souls are reincarnated.
The typical soul does not see much of the land around the Last Tower, but the demons who work there do. There is a small city there among the spindly trees, where the Halcye-spawned demonics and angelics live when they are not at work in Tirindel and Alansrodel. Some few of the Discordant demonics live there too, converts snatched away from Dyschord Godsbane. The Unseen are often found there as well, in that nameless city, and Thanatos--the demon who calls himself Harper Aleie when he roams Horizon--is nominally in control of overseeing disputes therein.
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