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The Night Land

402 statements
78 feature instances
38 referencing feature instances

The Night Land	type	TVTItem
The Night Land	label	The Night Land
The Night Land	page	TheNightLand
The Night Land	comment	Millions of years into the future, the Sun has died, plunging the Earth into darkness. The remaining millions of the human race have moved downward into deep ravines, where volcanism still provides enough heat to keep the air in a breathable form. They live within a colossal pyramidal Redoubt, lit, heated, and defended by the mysterious Earth Current, and besieged by the incomprehensible creatures of darkness who have overtaken the rest of the Earth. They await the inevitable day when the Current fails and the monsters gathering outside swarm their defences.Then, one day, they learn that a second Redoubt exists, one smaller, weaker, and on the verge of destruction...William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land was first published in 1912. On the most basic level, it's a heroic fantasy in which the Knight in Shining Armor braves terrible monsters and overcomes formidable challenges to rescue the Damsel in Distress. In practice, its main appeal is not the somewhat tedious hero's quest, but the vividly-described and extraordinarily imaginative creatures and horrors of the Land itself, prompting H. P. Lovecraft to describe it as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written" even in the face of its ludicrous pseudo-17th-century writing style. A rewrite of sorts, titled The Night Land: A Story Retold follows the exact same plot but does away with the Purple Prose in favor of a rather faithful recreation of the writing style many 1950s scifi authors had, making the book a far more enjoyable experience without altering the plot.The complete work is available here at Project Gutenberg, or here. It also got some other works set in the same universe, like Awake in the Night Land.
The Night Land	fetched	2024-04-06T19:45:20Z
The Night Land	parsed	2024-04-06T19:45:21Z
The Night Land	processingComment	Dropped link to God: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Night Land	processingComment	Dropped link to NighInvulnerable: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Night Land	processingComment	Dropped link to Utopia: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Night Land	processingUnknown	NighInvulnerable
The Night Land	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Night Land / int_116a941b	type	Applied Phlebotinum
The Night Land / int_116a941b	comment	Applied Phlebotinum: The Air Clog; food pills; a powder that creates drinkable water when exposed to air.
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The Night Land / int_13ad64d6	type	DeflectorShield
The Night Land / int_13ad64d6	comment	Deflector Shield: The Air-Clog, a circle of force generated by running the Earth-Current through a conductor which encircles the Last Redoubt. Given that The Night Land was published in 1912, this may be the first fully-realized technological force field in all of literature.
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The Night Land / int_154f340	type	The Obstructive Love Interest
The Night Land / int_154f340	comment	The Obstructive Love Interest: She alternates between absurd obstructiveness and considerable competence.
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The Night Land / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
The Night Land / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: The Sun has gone out. The Earth has become a breeding ground for all sorts of vicious monsters. The last remnants of humanity have holed themselves up in a giant structure, and it's all but stated that their defenses will fail eventually and the creatures outside will rush in to finish them off.
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The Night Land / int_263bb4ec	type	Wave-Motion Gun
The Night Land / int_263bb4ec	comment	Wave-Motion Gun: The blast of Earth-Current at the end of the novel used to take out the Night Hounds is one of these, with an emphasis on the 'slow recharge' - it uses up almost all of the energy of the Redoubt (a habitat holding millions) to the point where elevators, pumps, etc. shut down. These attacks are used VERY rarely, both because of the power drain and because there are just too many monsters, and some are way too powerful.
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The Night Land / int_294df577	type	Dark World
The Night Land / int_294df577	comment	Dark World: Plunged in eternal darkness, and haunted by things beyond mankind's imagination.
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The Night Land / int_2ae29c0d	type	The Dreaded
The Night Land / int_2ae29c0d	comment	The Dreaded: The Night Hounds, as they are faster and far more persistent than most other night creatures. Of all the non-material evil forces, the Doors of Silence and the House of Silence are the most terrifying things in the Night Land, considered far worse than all the flesh and blood monsters because they have the power to trap and devour the human soul in eternal torment.
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The Night Land / int_2bbe31c9	type	Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant
The Night Land / int_2bbe31c9	comment	Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: The protagonist is this to the night land itself. Many times, he comments on how the horrors of his world would drive the reader insane, but he is used to them because they are what he has always known.
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The Night Land / int_3016de81	type	Reincarnation Romance
The Night Land / int_3016de81	comment	Reincarnation Romance: The main plot.
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The Night Land / int_334e48a1	type	After the End
The Night Land / int_334e48a1	comment	After the End: Several ends: the cataclysmic explosion that blew a 100-mile-deep valley into the Earth; the experiments that let the soul-eating Eldritch Abominations get to Earth; the death of the Sun, which may also have been a side effect of those experiments.
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The Night Land / int_3b4185fb	type	Stalker without a Crush
The Night Land / int_3b4185fb	comment	Stalker without a Crush: The Giant Slug.
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The Night Land / int_3bc88a7f	type	Foregone Conclusion
The Night Land / int_3bc88a7f	comment	Foregone Conclusion: Averted in regards to the story itself. Even though the hero is narrating his own story, said story is about a dream he had of something that will happen to him in the future; therefore, until the ending, the reader has no way of knowing whether the hero will survive or not. Played straight with regards to mankind's fate. The Earth Current will eventually run out, but the Night will last forever. All mankind can do is enjoy the millions of years left before they are overrun.
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The Night Land / int_3bce9346	type	RagnarÃ¶k Proofing
The Night Land / int_3bce9346	comment	RagnarÃ¶k Proofing: There are aircraft which would still work, except that the air has gotten too thin to support them - they've remained in functional condition for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
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The Night Land / int_3c5ae1a1	type	Schizo Tech
The Night Land / int_3c5ae1a1	comment	Schizo Tech: Despite super-strong metals, electric Deflector Shields, Energy Weapons, and the like, men still fight monsters in armor and carrying a melee weapon rather than a gun. Aircraft used to exist, but the air has become too thin for them. While it's true that this looks like Schizo Tech to the modern reader, almost every single one of these is explained in-story. In particular, the main power source for everything is the Earth-Current, which is most efficiently used in melee weapons (and also, see above on Fantasy Gun Control.)
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The Night Land / int_3fca462c	type	Deus ex Machina
The Night Land / int_3fca462c	comment	Deus ex Machina: Partially subverted, as the mysterious and unexplained Shining Powers of Goodness don't always succeed in saving the day.
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The Night Land / int_414388fb	type	Prehistoria
The Night Land / int_414388fb	comment	Prehistoria: The Country of Seas and Volcanoes is based off of popular ideas of the time about the prehistoric world (the idea being that similar conditions produce similar creatures).
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The Night Land / int_41dd77d	type	Zerg Rush
The Night Land / int_41dd77d	comment	Zerg Rush: The main reason the Night Hounds are The Dreaded. There are simply too many to kill, and gaining the attention of one always gains the attention of others.
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The Night Land / int_4604fd4d	type	Worthy Opponent
The Night Land / int_4604fd4d	comment	Worthy Opponent: The Silent Ones are the only Night Land inhabitants that the hero doesn't feel hatred toward; instead, he views them as something to be respected, while at the same time feared and avoided. He even theorizes that they aren't evil, just enigmatic and dangerous.
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The Night Land / int_4c7e2c2d	type	Heroic Fantasy
The Night Land / int_4c7e2c2d	comment	Heroic Fantasy: Despite the bleakness of the setting, the main character is a morally upright hero whose bravery and resourcefulness allow him to triumph.
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The Night Land / int_4c8d7e0b	type	Forgotten Framing Device
The Night Land / int_4c8d7e0b	comment	Forgotten Framing Device: The book starts with a 17th century gentleman mourning the death of his beloved in childbirth. He has a vision of a distant future where their souls will be reunited, and sees that world through the eyes of his future incarnation. The end of the novel doesn't mention anything about this.
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The Night Land / int_51c28ba3	type	Non-Action Big Bad
The Night Land / int_51c28ba3	comment	Non-Action Big Bad: The Evil Forces, particularly the House of Silence.
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The Night Land / int_53b6ab6a	type	Jumped at the Call
The Night Land / int_53b6ab6a	comment	Jumped at the Call: When news of the plight of the Lesser Redoubt becomes known, a large group of young men break the rules and sally forth to try to go to their aid. This is the absolute worst possible idea because large groups of humans cannot travel in stealth through the Night Land. And there are two ways to travel through the Night Land: in stealth, or metaphorically ringing a large dinner bell. Averted when the "Hundred Thousand," the more-or-less standing army/rapid reaction force of the Last Redoubt, realize that only the Power of Good hovering over the protagonist and Naani is protecting them from the massive throng of hideous creatures which are trying to prevent their safe escape into the protected area around the pyramid. If any of them step foot over the periphery of the Air-Clog, they will immediately be Destroyed. Despite this, many of them have to be physically restrained by their comrades from trying to help the apparently doomed couple.
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The Night Land / int_551d3457	type	Food Pills
The Night Land / int_551d3457	comment	Food Pills: The narrator takes these along to eat when he travels through the Night Land. He doesn't need to eat anything else on his journey, but they don't remotely fill the stomach.
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The Night Land / int_55ec42d7	type	Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe
The Night Land / int_55ec42d7	comment	Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The entire novel is written in comically butchered 17th-century English. People were quick to call this out even shortly after it was written.
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The Night Land / int_560fd3cb	type	Fan Sequel
The Night Land / int_560fd3cb	comment	Fan Sequel: Some critics believe that the book is meant to be this to H. G. Wells' The Time Machine.
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The Night Land / int_5791e14f	type	The Future
The Night Land / int_5791e14f	comment	The Future: And a very crapsack one.
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The Night Land / int_5a40d6a	type	Adaptation Distillation
The Night Land / int_5a40d6a	comment	Adaptation Distillation: The Dream of X, which Hodgeson himself wrote in order to secure its copyright in America, compresses the original 200,000-word novel into a mere 20,000 words.
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The Night Land / int_5bdcc85a	type	Disney Villain Death
The Night Land / int_5bdcc85a	comment	Disney Villain Death: The Giant Slug.
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The Night Land / int_5fcb9ad1	type	Time Skip
The Night Land / int_5fcb9ad1	comment	Time Skip: A huge one. We start in Victorian times and skip ahead to millions of years after the Sun has died.
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The Night Land / int_605cf3f	type	Something Only They Would Say
The Night Land / int_605cf3f	comment	Something Only They Would Say: While any human can speak the Master-Word and prove they're human, only the narrator/hero of The Night Land knows that Naani is the reincarnation of Mirdath, and only he knows that name or the story of their love in that previous life so many millions of years ago. He describes what he remembers of it to her to prove that he is the reincarnation of her lost love. (And that she's not crazy for remembering it.)
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The Night Land / int_6114a875	type	Lost Technology
The Night Land / int_6114a875	comment	Lost Technology: The redoubt has existed for so long, entire eras of technology have been completely forgotten. This is probably for the best, as it was at the height of their advancement that mankind, in a moment of weakness, performed "The Unforgivable Experiments" that led to the hellish state of the world. Some technology is best left forgotten.
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The Night Land / int_61ff365d	type	Deflector Shields
The Night Land / int_61ff365d	comment	In the climactic scene, the main characters are nearly to safety but the hideous creatures of the Night Land are almost upon them. Millions of people are about to watch them die a few hundred yards from the shelter of the Air-Clog. Cue the Master Monstruwacan authorizing the activation of the Last Redoubt's main energy weapon emplacements, which have not been used for tens of thousands, maybe millions of years. They still work; though the power drain nearly shuts the entire pyramid down and the backblast almost kills the main characters, the pursuing hordes are obliterated. This almost counts as a Superweapon Surprise, but the main character knows perfectly well that the energy guns exist, he just doesn't think that the people in charge will use them, as the risk to the entire citadel is too great.
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The Night Land / int_63557923	type	Death World
The Night Land / int_63557923	comment	Death World: Everything living that exists outside of the redoubt ranges from merely life-threateningly violent, to downright malevolent and evil to the core. Even though humanity numbers in the millions and could probably raise an army large enough to destroy the flesh and blood monsters inhabiting the Night Land, they would lose most of their numbers doing it - and would also fall prey to indestructible evil forces of will that would sap their resolve to fight and draw their souls towards certain oblivion.
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The Night Land / int_6363937b	type	Cyanide Pill
The Night Land / int_6363937b	comment	Cyanide Pill: Anyone who ventures outside the Redoubt has a poison capsule implanted in one arm for emergencies, because being out there threatens not only your life but your soul as well. Killing yourself before a Power does ensures that your soul, at least, passes on.
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The Night Land / int_6627695f	type	Author Appeal
The Night Land / int_6627695f	comment	Author Appeal: Hodgson had much to say on bodybuilding, domination, submission, and gender roles, and it shows.
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The Night Land / int_6977c45e	type	Purple Prose
The Night Land / int_6977c45e	comment	Purple Prose: The entire text is written to emulate 17th century literature, and overshoots the mark by several measures, though it largely avoids Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
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The Night Land / int_6a1c2a6	type	Cosmic Horror Story
The Night Land / int_6a1c2a6	comment	Cosmic Horror Story: This novel is an example of the trope before H. P. Lovecraft codified it. Mankind cannot hope to defeat the horrors. They can do nothing but wait out the Aeons for their last defenses to fail, all alone in a darkened wasteland haunted by things beyond comprehension, and that can never be reasoned with.
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The Night Land / int_6a696742	type	The Power of Love
The Night Land / int_6a696742	comment	The Power of Love: It's what differentiates mankind from the monsters.
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The Night Land / int_6b27162d	type	The Remake
The Night Land / int_6b27162d	comment	The Remake: The Night Land: A Story Retold. It's the same story, but with a more reader-friendly writing-style, extra scenes, and more detailed characterization. It was written by James Stoddard, a contributor to the previously-mentioned fan site, http://nightland.website.
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The Night Land / int_6bcfbc7e	type	Fantasy Gun Control
The Night Land / int_6bcfbc7e	comment	Fantasy Gun Control: Despite being set thousands of years in the future, humans don't use firearms, only the Diskosâ€”a circular, spinning sawblade on a stick. The basic explanation is that knowledge of the workings of still-extant ranged weapons was lost ages ago; besides, the humans' philosophy is that if a monster is too far to be struck with a melee weapon, then it's better to avoid it rather than provoke it into attacking. (The narrator also suggests that, perhaps, the laws of chemistry don't work the same way in the future. The Last Redoubt used to have fearsome energy weapons, but they were Awesome, but Impractical (their use diminishes the power available for the Last Redoubt's exterior defensive field, the Air-Clog) and were ultimately abandoned. Well, mothballed.) While the creatures of the Night Land can and do prey on each other, they will all come a-running at the prospect of human flesh and human soul for dinner. Any use of a weapon which makes a lot of noise is tantamount to suicide. Also, you will run out of bullets before they run out of monsters.
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The Night Land / int_75b53c77	type	Arcology
The Night Land / int_75b53c77	comment	Arcology: The story has an early version of this in The Great Redoubt (more than 7 miles high, holds millions of people) and The Lesser Redoubt (more than a mile high). They're both sealed off from the outside world by necessity and are completely self-sufficient.
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The Night Land / int_7fbb2a3	type	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!
The Night Land / int_7fbb2a3	comment	Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Aschoff. Sure he meant well, but...
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The Night Land / int_814632ad	type	Last Bastion
The Night Land / int_814632ad	comment	Last Bastion: The Last Redoubt, the gigantic fortress-city housing the remnants of humanity, constantly besieged by the horrors in the dark and doomed to fall once the Earth Current dies out. The Lesser Redoubt served this purpose also, before its own Earth Current faded.
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The Night Land / int_874176be	type	Psychic Powers
The Night Land / int_874176be	comment	Psychic Powers: A form of telepathy using "brain-elements". The text is unclear as to whether these elements are natural parts of the brain or some kind of implant.
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The Night Land / int_8774fb47	type	Eldritch Abomination
The Night Land / int_8774fb47	comment	The Master-Word. Only humans can say it, either aloud or in their minds. Nothing which cannot speak the Master-Word can pass the Air-Clog, though it is not necessary to say or think it to do so. Any entity which tries to communicate with a human, psychically or otherwise, claiming to be one itself can easily be identified as a Night creature if it will not say or think it. It is not clear whether the Master-Word was something coded into humans genetically at some point, or if its properties are one of the few things the Good Powers have managed to keep the Eldritch Abominations from screwing with. It appears to be related to the "brain-elements", but they have the same ambiguity.
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The Night Land / int_87f943a7	type	Holding Back the Phlebotinum
The Night Land / int_87f943a7	comment	Holding Back the Phlebotinum: Using a super weapon is a good way to provoke the monsters outside.
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The Night Land / int_8c16c5d	type	Powers That Be
The Night Land / int_8c16c5d	comment	Powers That Be: The "Forces Of Good" are a vague but benevolent force that tries their best to defend what little remains of mankind. It's not strong enough to actually defeat the horrors of the Night Land, and it cannot save them from the inevitable victory of the night creatures, but its actions have bought mankind millions more years.
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The Night Land / int_8dd7a356	type	Long Last Look
The Night Land / int_8dd7a356	comment	Long Last Look: After he finds Naani, she and the protagonist begin the long journey back to the Last Redoubt. Before beginning to ascend the gorge which separates the land of the Lesser Redoubt (where Naani grew up and which is now utterly destroyed, along with everyone she has ever known) from the area between it and the Last Redoubt she takes a Long Last Look back. This is about as "last" as looks ever get: as the narrator observes, no other human being will ever see the place again, for the rest of eternity.
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The Night Land / int_9be7c205	type	Giant Spider
The Night Land / int_9be7c205	comment	Giant Spider: Enormous, burrowing, yellow, and venomous.
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The Night Land / int_9bee1a7f	type	Eldritch Location
The Night Land / int_9bee1a7f	comment	Eldritch Location: Many, but special mention goes to the House Of Silence (detailed below), the never expanded upon Dark Palace, and the Silent City which changes when no one is looking and appears to be both fully populated and completely devoid of life simultaneously.
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The Night Land / int_9c1d1e31	type	Black Box
The Night Land / int_9c1d1e31	comment	Despite being set thousands of years in the future, humans don't use firearms, only the Diskosâ€”a circular, spinning sawblade on a stick. The basic explanation is that knowledge of the workings of still-extant ranged weapons was lost ages ago; besides, the humans' philosophy is that if a monster is too far to be struck with a melee weapon, then it's better to avoid it rather than provoke it into attacking. (The narrator also suggests that, perhaps, the laws of chemistry don't work the same way in the future. The Last Redoubt used to have fearsome energy weapons, but they were Awesome, but Impractical (their use diminishes the power available for the Last Redoubt's exterior defensive field, the Air-Clog) and were ultimately abandoned. Well, mothballed.)
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The Night Land / int_9d72d632	type	Fanfic
The Night Land / int_9d72d632	comment	Fanfic: Numerous works are collected at http://nightland.website, including many of high quality. Unfortunately a number of them are only partially online, requiring you to buy a printed collection to read the end.
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The Night Land / int_9f63d4f1	type	Our Vampires Are Different
The Night Land / int_9f63d4f1	comment	Our Vampires Are Different: Yellow skin, 4 arms, may not actually be undead (it's really hard to say, considering the story's setting). None of these traits scream typical vampire, now do they?
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The Night Land / int_a2cbad1	type	Half-Human Hybrid
The Night Land / int_a2cbad1	comment	Half-Human Hybrid: The Giants are an extremely unpleasant type, between unspecified monsters and 'bestial humans'. Many of the lesser horrors are the result of mankind breeding with the original night horrors. Particularly the ab-humans, who will inherit the Earth, only to be consumed by greater evils in turn.
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The Night Land / int_aa2bd65c	type	Mordor
The Night Land / int_aa2bd65c	comment	Mordor: What the Earth has become after the death of the Sun—a lightless waste home to monsters, nightmares and worse.
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The Night Land / int_ac2094ca	type	Red Shirt
The Night Land / int_ac2094ca	comment	Red Shirt: Numerous characters who leave the Redoubt. Many suffer the Fate Worse than Death.
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The Night Land / int_b0155044	type	Always Night
The Night Land / int_b0155044	comment	Always Night: The sun died a long time ago. Note that this story was written before it was understood that the Sun's power source is nuclear fusion, which should keep it burning for a few billion more years (not to mention it will expand at the end of its life, either engulfing the Earth outright, or if it doesn't get that far, burning it to a cinder). Also, the Eldritch Abominations don't like light and may very well have had the power to mess with this process. In Wright's Awake in the Night Land, it is specifically stated that they have essentially eaten all the other stars and they're only allowing Earth to remain habitable and the Last Redoubt to stand so they can watch the remains of humanity squirm a while longer.
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The Night Land / int_b116ac06	type	Weapon of Mass Destruction
The Night Land / int_b116ac06	comment	Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Redoubt has powerful weapons that can destroy many monsters at once. Unfortunately there are too many monsters, some of them are too big, and these weapons drain the all-important Earth Current.
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The Night Land / int_b1346878	type	Fate Worse than Death
The Night Land / int_b1346878	comment	Fate Worse than Death: Literally so, hence the poison capsules. The many variations are referred to collectively as capital-D Destruction. One notable example is when the House Of Silence puppets some souls it had ensnared earlier in a bid to bait the loved ones of the deceased out into the Night Land. The narrator, with his psychic sensitivity, said that the agony, despair and sorrow those ensnared were feeling were so deep it quite literally was too much for his brain to even remotely fathom and sent him into a panic attack.
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The Night Land / int_b5b4b077	type	The Ace
The Night Land / int_b5b4b077	comment	The Ace: The protagonist's future self (named Andros in Retold) is bodybuilder strong, extremely smart, brave, a gifted Monstruwaccan, a master Diskos fencer, and has a kind heart. Justified in that anything less than The Ace would have been chewed up and spat out by the Night Land. Even with all his skill and strength, he has to fight with everything he has to survive.
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The Night Land / int_b7e1dcc8	type	Empathic Weapon
The Night Land / int_b7e1dcc8	comment	Empathic Weapon: The Diskos reacts to its user's emotions, and is especially effective when combined with righteous fury.
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The Night Land / int_bc74ef27	type	Berserk Button
The Night Land / int_bc74ef27	comment	Berserk Button: The narrator, when his love-interest Naani is attacked and put into a coma to the point where she is thought to be dead; he runs for 3 days without sleeping to bring her to safety, slashing giants and mutants out of his way. He even cuts a clawed giant in two with a single, one-handed swipe.
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The Night Land / int_bd6834a3	type	Vibroweapon
The Night Land / int_bd6834a3	comment	Vibroweapon: The Diskos works on this principle, but rotating rather than a back-and-forth vibration. It can also provide light.
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The Night Land / int_cafdaf4e	type	Trust Password
The Night Land / int_cafdaf4e	comment	Trust Password: The Master-Word. Only humans can say it, either aloud or in their minds. Nothing which cannot speak the Master-Word can pass the Air-Clog, though it is not necessary to say or think it to do so. Any entity which tries to communicate with a human, psychically or otherwise, claiming to be one itself can easily be identified as a Night creature if it will not say or think it. It is not clear whether the Master-Word was something coded into humans genetically at some point, or if its properties are one of the few things the Good Powers have managed to keep the Eldritch Abominations from screwing with. It appears to be related to the "brain-elements", but they have the same ambiguity. In one of the stories in Awake in the Night Land, it is strongly implied that if someone who is inside the Air-Clog invites someone outside it to pass through, they can do so, regardless of whether either of them can speak the Master-Word.
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The Night Land / int_cdfe12c3	type	Nothing Is Scarier
The Night Land / int_cdfe12c3	comment	Nothing Is Scarier: The fact that the Hero doesn't know exactly what happens to the red shirts after they enter the House of Silence freaks him out all the more. It gets to the point that the noises of the other abominations become a comforting distraction. Despite the verbosity, many of the Evils of the Night Land get only a vague description, sometimes only a noise, leaving much to the imagination. Part of this is because many of the creatures are psychic and know when someone is thinking about them, which can give them a way to influence that person's mind. Descriptions of the creatures are therefore purposefully limited to "roughly where it is" and/or "some prominent but not unique feature of it."
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The Night Land / int_cedeae6a	type	Wacky Wayside Tribe
The Night Land / int_cedeae6a	comment	Wacky Wayside Tribe: The sheer hostility of the setting means that most of the enemies the hero faces seem to be these.
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The Night Land / int_cf9b131f	type	Muscles Are Meaningless
The Night Land / int_cf9b131f	comment	Muscles Are Meaningless: Our hero reveals at one point he had been a strong trained athlete during his life in the Pyramid (only because the girl was impressed by his muscular bulk) but he never thought physical strength was something to brag about or rely on, since all monsters evolved or devolved from humans are far too strong to be beaten in close combat and had to be fought by cunning, agility and Diskos fencing.
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The Night Land / int_d10d5eb5	type	Made of Indestructium
The Night Land / int_d10d5eb5	comment	Made of Indestructium: The Great Redoubt and the Underground Fields are covered with a nearly-indestructible grey metal which could withstand dozens of millions of years untarnished.
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The Night Land / int_d29a6629	type	Death by Childbirth
The Night Land / int_d29a6629	comment	Death by Childbirth: The book opens with Naani's first incarnation, Mirdath, dying this way.
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The Night Land / int_d303e45e	type	Citadel City
The Night Land / int_d303e45e	comment	Citadel City: The Last Redoubt, essentially a gargantuan pyramidal skyscraper which houses the last hundreds of millions of humans left. Since the Earth Current the humans need to repel the monsters only covers a certain patch of land, the humans built vertically.
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The Night Land / int_d40e1a9f	type	Break Out the Museum Piece
The Night Land / int_d40e1a9f	comment	Break Out the Museum Piece: In the climactic scene, the main characters are nearly to safety but the hideous creatures of the Night Land are almost upon them. Millions of people are about to watch them die a few hundred yards from the shelter of the Air-Clog. Cue the Master Monstruwacan authorizing the activation of the Last Redoubt's main energy weapon emplacements, which have not been used for tens of thousands, maybe millions of years. They still work; though the power drain nearly shuts the entire pyramid down and the backblast almost kills the main characters, the pursuing hordes are obliterated. This almost counts as a Superweapon Surprise, but the main character knows perfectly well that the energy guns exist, he just doesn't think that the people in charge will use them, as the risk to the entire citadel is too great. Averted when the airships stored in the Last Redoubt, which are perfectly preserved and almost certainly still operational, cannot be used to go to the aid of the Lesser Redoubt, because the air is no longer thick enough to carry them safely. Also, as the hero learns during his journey to the Lesser Redoubt, there are plenty of flying Night creatures and it's very unlikely any airship could get past them.
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The Night Land / int_d51553de	type	Our Wormholes Are Different
The Night Land / int_d51553de	comment	Our Wormholes Are Different / Negative Space Wedgie: The "Doorways in the Night", holes in the universe which open up and let in soul-eating things.
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The Night Land / int_da8c447e	type	Unobtainium
The Night Land / int_da8c447e	comment	Unobtainium: The miraculous super-hard, super-strong grey metal.
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The Night Land / int_dea715d	type	True-Breeding Hybrid
The Night Land / int_dea715d	comment	True-Breeding Hybrid: In an intentionally horrifying example of this trope, numerous of the Night Land's monstrous inhabitants arose through the intermingling of humans with the entities that entered it many millennia in the book's past, as the Sun slowly went out and the Earth began to die. The Giants are the example most focused on in the book, described as a species of hideous, towering, warty humanoids "fathered of bestial humans and mothered of monsters".
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The Night Land / int_e567510d	type	Determinator
The Night Land / int_e567510d	comment	Determinator: Despite all the horrors he experiences, the protagonist never wavers from his journey.
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The Night Land / int_f9439c84	type	Haunted House
The Night Land / int_f9439c84	comment	Haunted House: Taken to Eldritch Location levels with the House Of Silence. An impossibly large ornate home on a hill, which seems to be abandoned but whose interior is lit by pale lights, and whose door is always unlocked. It is always sending intoxicating psychic messages out to anyone outside the Redoubt, and if you aren't properly trained you will run right through its doors and into its horrid embrace, never to be seen again. It is considered the absolute worst of all the horrors of the Night Land, since it always inflicts Destruction on those it successfully ensnares.
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The Night Land / int_ffd816e7	type	Everything Trying to Kill You
The Night Land / int_ffd816e7	comment	Everything Trying to Kill You: All the monsters and forces of evil in the Night Land want to destroy all of humanity and feast on their flesh and souls. When the monsters have no humans to murder and mutilate, they do so to each other on a constant basis.
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