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The Descent

120 statements
22 feature instances
12 referencing feature instances

The Descent	type	TVTItem
The Descent	label	The Descent
The Descent	page	TheDescent
The Descent	comment	The Descent is a 1999 science-fiction/horror novel by American author Jeff Long focusing on the discovery and exploration of an extensive labyrinth of tunnels and passages stretching throughout the sub-surface of the entire world, inhabited by several species of alternately-evolved troglobitic hominids who have adapted to their underground condition. While presently degenerate and brutal, the "hadals" had once possessed a high level of civilization, having reached the Iron Age as far back as 20,000 years ago and mentored subsequent human civilizations. Their fall from grace formed the basis of the historical belief in demons.The book is split between two storylines. The first concerns an ill-fated expedition into the sub-planet. The other about the Beowulf Club, a group of highly-determined scholars who set out to find the historical figure who inspired the legends of The Devil. Eventually, these two stories intersect as the expedition comes face-to-face with Satan himself.Has nothing to do with the video game series Descent. Nor the 2005 British horror film The Descent written and directed by Neil Marshall, although there are certainly similarities. The novel was followed by a sequel, Deeper.
The Descent	fetched	2023-03-31T18:12:47Z
The Descent	parsed	2023-03-31T18:12:47Z
The Descent	processingComment	Dropped link to JourneyToTheCenterOfTheEarth: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Descent	processingComment	Dropped link to TheDivineComedy: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Descent	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Descent / int_1b75eaec	type	TheDevil
The Descent / int_1b75eaec	comment	The group of scholars looking for The Devil are called the Beowulf Club.
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The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_1b75eaec
The Descent / int_1ba09c9d	type	Human Resources
The Descent / int_1ba09c9d	comment	Human Resources: An artifacts exhibit shows hadal weapons made of human bones. The hadals also make clothing and other objects out of human leather, and sometimes use their human slaves as a food source.
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The Descent / int_1bdf0319	type	Physical Hell
The Descent / int_1bdf0319	comment	Physical Hell: It turns out that there's an underground world under ours, inhabited by cruel demon-like humanoids. There's also a Satan... of sorts.
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The Descent / int_1e584efa	type	Cruel and Unusual Death
The Descent / int_1e584efa	comment	Cruel and Unusual Death: Rampant, and generally inflicted by the hadals. Some of the mercenaries they capture are gutted and tied to pillars with their own entrails, after which their eyes are torn out and replaced with pebbles and their lower jaws ripped off. They're still alive at this stage, although they mercifully die eventually.
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The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_1e584efa
The Descent / int_2022e66d	type	Invasion of the Baby Snatchers
The Descent / int_2022e66d	comment	Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: About a quarter of the way through Deeper, the hadals kidnap dozens of young children across the United States on Halloween night. They brutally kill anyone who tries to stop them; this amounts to about a hundred people, mostly parents who tried to defend their children, although they also murder the entire staff of a haunted house. Perhaps the most effective portrayal of the incident's horror is a police log from Tucson, which starts off normal but rapidly racks up murders and child abductions one after another until the Amber Alert system crashes.
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The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_2022e66d
The Descent / int_22071825	type	I'm a Humanitarian
The Descent / int_22071825	comment	I'm a Humanitarian: One of the defining characteristics of Homo hadalis. Justified by the fact that they live underground, where there are no plants and no animals bigger than the hadals themselves. People are the only big animals readily available for hadals to eat.
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The Descent / int_22071825	featureConfidence	1.0
The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_22071825
The Descent / int_424c9a9b	type	Cold-Blooded Torture
The Descent / int_424c9a9b	comment	Cold-Blooded Torture: Humans captured by hadals are subject to an "initiation" that essentially amounts to this, involving beatings, crude forced tattooing, and ritual mutilation.
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The Descent / int_4832a3bb	type	Always Chaotic Evil
The Descent / int_4832a3bb	comment	Always Chaotic Evil: Reconstructed. Lip service is paid to the idea that the hadals simply act out of a culture with a different set of expectations about good and evil. None of that changes the fact that hadal behavior towards outsiders involves hefty doses of what humans would consider slavery, rape, mutilation, torture and cannibalism.
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The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_4832a3bb
The Descent / int_5077c424	type	The Morlocks
The Descent / int_5077c424	comment	The Morlocks: The pale cave-dwelling cannibal hadals fit this trope.
The Descent / int_5077c424	featureApplicability	1.0
The Descent / int_5077c424	featureConfidence	1.0
The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_5077c424
The Descent / int_50ed1af4	type	Our Demons Are Different
The Descent / int_50ed1af4	comment	Our Demons Are Different: First off, they are not demons. They are cave-dwelling hominids with a culture that makes the Aztecs look like the Amish. Also, they are revealed to be able to transmit the consciousness of their dead into other sapient lifeforms via electrical currents.
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The Descent / int_7568eb84	type	Human Subspecies
The Descent / int_7568eb84	comment	Human Subspecies: The hadals, aka Homo hadalis, a human species that lives Beneath the Earth in the caverns of the sub-planet. Descended from Homo erectus, they once had a relatively advanced Iron Age civilization millennia before humans did, but they have since degenerated into vicious underground savages with a penchant for abducting people as slaves and food.
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The Descent / int_8437cb10	type	Made a Slave
The Descent / int_8437cb10	comment	Made a Slave: The fate of the hadals' captives, with protracted torture to boot.
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The Descent / int_8437cb10	featureConfidence	1.0
The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_8437cb10
The Descent / int_851dda8f	type	Humanoid Abomination
The Descent / int_851dda8f	comment	Humanoid Abomination: The hadals are just another species of human, but the Angel/Satan/Older-than-old is definitely something of this nature.
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The Descent / int_86d4f985	type	Doing In the Wizard
The Descent / int_86d4f985	comment	Doing In the Wizard: The novel goes to great lengths to show that seemingly supernatural phenomena observed in the sub-planet are rooted in science. Weird Science but science nonetheless. Averted in Deeper when Satan turns out to be a real, immortal entity whose existence has no explanation behind it.
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The Descent / int_91e894b4	type	Apocalypse How
The Descent / int_91e894b4	comment	Apocalypse How: At the end, the hadals are decimated by a man-made plague. Deeper also finishes with the very strong implication that China and the United States have started a nuclear war.
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The Descent / int_9620c3a1	type	God-Emperor
The Descent / int_9620c3a1	comment	God-Emperor: The hadal view of "Satan." Their "Satan" is actually a proxy of the real one. Whether the hadals know this is unclear.
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The Descent / int_99298c71	type	Better to Die than Be Killed
The Descent / int_99298c71	comment	Better to Die than Be Killed: Considering that hadal captivity often leads to cannibalism and trauma-induced psychosis among humans, many characters choose to commit suicide instead.
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The Descent / int_a7544a0f	type	Beneath the Earth
The Descent / int_a7544a0f	comment	Beneath the Earth: The discovery and exploration of the sub-planet drives the plot of the novel.
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The Descent / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
The Descent / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: Where to begin. The expedition into the sub-planet is called The Jules Vernes Society. The group of scholars looking for The Devil are called the Beowulf Club. An entrance into the sub-planet inspired Dante in his depiction of Hell.
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The Descent	hasFeature	The Descent / int_c75df49a
The Descent / int_d59d06c4	type	Breeding Slave
The Descent / int_d59d06c4	comment	Breeding Slave: Generally what happens to women captured by the hadals.
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The Descent / int_ff7f34c5	type	Pet the Dog
The Descent / int_ff7f34c5	comment	Pet the Dog: Given their nigh-unimaginable treatment of adult captives, the hadals treat captured children surprisingly well. They feed and care for them as best they can, and go out of their way to keep them safe from harm and abuse. It's implied that the hadals' own birth rates have been declining for centuries, and surface-born children are taken to round out their own depleted numbers.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Descent	hasFeature	Beneath the Earth / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Demon Works / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Doing In the Wizard / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Evil Jesuit / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Genetic Memory / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Genuine Human Hide / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Human Subspecies / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Physical Hell / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Satan / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Sci-Fi Horror / int_68cc4d6
The Descent	hasFeature	Shoulders of Doom / int_68cc4d6
TheDescent	seeAlso	The Descent

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