Death's Domain
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Death's Domain is a fictional dimension in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. It is shaped by human expectation and Death's own attempts to have a life beyond his allotted task. Death's Domain (ISBN 0552146722) is also a Discworld Mapp, drawn by Paul Kidby, with additional material by Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.
The first thing visitors notice is that the Domain is black. Everything in it is black (or a very deep shade of blue or purple approximating black), except the things that are bone-white. The exceptions are purple mountains in the distance and, since Reaper Man, golden cornfields between the mountains and the Domain proper. Very few living people have entered the Domain, but among the notable exceptions are Albert, Ysabell, Mort, Rincewind, Twoflower (and, arguably, the Luggage).
Things that are black include all the plants in the garden, the house, the peacocks (although they have white skull-shaped "eyes" on their tails), the cats (Death likes cats) and the bees (Death also likes bees, possibly because a hive mind has no fear of him). Things that are bone-white (and indeed skeletal) include the trout in the pond, some of the birds and the garden gnomes.
Although nearly everything in the Domain is black, it is not all the same colour. On the Discworld, and congruent dimensions, splitting darkness with an eight-sided prism produces different colours of black.
The Domain gardens also include a hedge maze and a golf course. Since Death finds it impossible to get lost, or have any difficulty hitting a sphere so it goes exactly where he wants, he doesn't really see the point, but they are part of his efforts to be more human.
To one side of the Domain is the Well of Souls, which spirits briefly pass through on their way to wherever they think they're going.
At the centre of the Domain is Death's house. It looks like a fairly average detached house, apart from being black and having an omega door knocker. Inside it is infinite. Most humans who have stayed in the Domain can only deal with the size of the rooms by ignoring them, and staying on small patches of carpet surrounded by immensity. Although the interior maintains the black-on-black, skull-and-scythe motif (Death's grandfather clock has a scythe for a pendulum, and his mirror is in a skull-and-bones frame because anything else would look silly around his reflection) it is, like its outside, very ordinary and average in its design. Some assume that Death's house would look like a mausoleum or a crypt, but in fact Death knows little of cemeteries, as very few people actually die in them.
As well as the "ordinary" rooms, maintained for appearance and the benefit of Albert, the Domain contains the life-timer room, where the sands of everyone's lives drain away, and the Library, where everyone's "autobiography" is being written by itself. Both of these rooms are even more conceptual and arbitrary in dimension than the rest of the Domain, and the clearest example of its status as a reified metaphor.
| The Discworld | |
|---|---|
| Characters: | Albert - Angua - Carrot Ironfoundersson - Cohen the Barbarian - Fred Colon - Death - Detritus - Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler - Gaspode - Greebo - Igor - Bloody Stupid Johnson - Leonard of Quirm - The Librarian - Lu-Tze - The Luggage - Mort - C.W.St J. Nobbs - Susan Sto Helit - Rincewind - Twoflower - Havelock Vetinari - Samuel Vimes - The Witches - Ysabell - Discworld gods - more... |
| Locations: | Ankh-Morpork - Agatean Empire - Borogravia - Death's Domain - Dungeon Dimensions - Ephebe - Genua - Klatch - Lancre - Muntab - Quirm - Sto Lat - Überwald - Unseen University - XXXX - more... |
| Other: | Calendar - City Watch - Clacks - Guilds - Magic - Post Office - Stealth Chess - Minor Discworld concepts |
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