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Death World: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"We've run into [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever|scorpions the size of battle tanks]], three men died from [[Eye Scream|Eyerot]] last week, I've sweated enough to fill a lake, [[Quicksand Sucks|my boots just got sucked into a sink-swamp]] and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|the trees are so thick in places, you can't squeeze between them.]] Emperor help me, I love this place! It's just like home!"''|'''Captain Rock of Catachan''', ''[[Warhammer 40000 (Tabletop Game)|Warhammer 40000]]''}}
A [[Death World]] is a highly dangerous place, where simply ''going'' there is considered taking your life into your own hands. It could be from hazardous environmental conditions, such as an acidic swamp or poisonous fog, or from powerful native predators (Here there be Dragons, or worse, [[Always a Bigger Fish|something]] that ''eats'' them), dangerous flora, or even all of the above. It's like the entire place is deliberately hostile to human life. (Of course, if it's also a [[Genius Loci]], it just might be!)
Very few people would ever choose to live there, but since anyone who ''does'' is almost always a [[Badass]], expect any populated Death World to be a [[World of Badass]] by default. Sometimes, [[The Obi
In real life, every planet outside Earth is dangerous, because we have yet to find a single planet that can support human life. The difference is that fictional Deathworlds are more ''interesting.'' Generally this means they have a relatively breathable atmosphere, have a compelling reason for characters to get out and walk around, and have a variety of dangerous flora and fauna to menace them. A planet that cannot host human life for any amount of time is just "uninhabitable" and not actually a Deathworld.
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For more details, the various [[Video Game Settings]] actually do a decent job of describing the various kinds of dangers you might find in different ecosystems, since videogames almost universally have [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]. The [[Dark World]] is often a magical variant.
{{examples
== Anime and Manga ==
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* ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' has the Cursed Earth, the nuke-blasted wastelands outside of the few surviving Mega-Cities, inhabited only by [[Mutants]], criminals and exiled lawmen.
* ''[[Rogue Trooper]]'' has Nu Earth. [[Continuity Reboot|Both of them]]. Due to chemical warfare, the very air and water are poisonous, and the slightest rip in a soldier's isolation suit guarantees death. Only the [[Super Soldier|Genetic Infantrymen]] (GIs) can survive unaided.
* Bizarrely enough, the homeworld of [[Marvel Comics]]' [[Cheerful Child]]-ish [[Little Green Men|LittleGreenMan]] The Impossible Man was apparently one of these, with his species developing their [[Voluntary Shapeshifting]] as a survival mechanism. (When Galactus ate the planet, [[Too Spicy for Yog
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** ''Redliners''. Burned-out, over-wrought veterans with more than a few ill deeds on their consciences are sent along to safeguard a group of purely-civilian colonists on a new world. They were warned that the planet had dangerous wildlife, but {{spoiler|it turns out to be an enemy base gone wrong, of sorts -- the entire biosphere is a weapons system that evolves itself in response to the defenses (proactive and otherwise) that the protagonists devise}}. See [[When Trees Attack]] for examples.
** The world of Bellevue in ''[[The General]]'' series Drake co-wrote with [[SM Stirling]] is only partially [[Terraform|terraformed]] and the native fauna is highly dangerous.
** Drake seems to have a particular fixation with killer plants. Aside from the entries above, there are scenes in ''The Jungle'' and ''Cross the Stars'' where men die in their sleep because fast-growing plants grew '''into their bodies.''' The [[Man
** ''Cross the Stars'' also has the ocean world Tethys, where practically all the sea life large enough to see is carnivorous, and one species can grow to 40 metres long.
* Many of the planets in [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' books are [[Death World|Death Worlds]].
** Two notables are Prism in ''Sentenced to Prism'', where near everything is silica based (critters with [[Frickin' Laser Beams|frickin' lazerbeams]]), and the lush (and hungry) jungle of Midworld from the eponymous book as well as the Pip and Flinx vehicle ''Mid-Flinx''.
** Ironically ''Earth'' is considered a Death World in his series ''The Damned'', by a coalition of alien races whose worlds all have low gravity, low tectonics, practically no-axial tilt (preventing violent weather) and few true predators. The average unskilled couch-potato human is more than a match for their trained soldiers. Trained Earth military personnel, especially special-operations types, are essentially incarnate demigods of death by alien standards.
* C. S. Friedman has used this more than once.
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* Planet Hell in Joe and Jack Haldeman's ''There Is No Darkness''.
* Banshee, in John Steakley's ''Armor''. The cold, windy, acidic atmosphere of the planet itself is instant death, even before the Hive Mind alien insects come into play. The main character's survival strategy is to become an utterly nihilistic schizophreniac.
* [[H. Beam Piper]]'s ''Four Day Planet'' has Fenris, generally considered the second worst place to live in the Milky Way. It has ludicrous temperature extremes, and a vast array of downright unpleasant wildlife (that is also lethally poisonous to eat, although if you were [[Too Dumb to Live|dumb enough to eat a tread-snail]], you had it coming). The economy is based around ''whaling'' a gargantuan sea monster that has to be hunted using military-grade ammunition, and while the beastie is being cut up, the people doing the cutting have to have support fire from ''machine-gunners'' to make sure everything else in the ocean doesn't get itself a meal. (The ''worst'' place to live is Flourine-Tainted Niflheim, The Planetary Hell, which has an atmosphere made of inordinately reactive fluorine; it's not an example, since the only thing actively trying to kill you is the air...okay, that is pretty unpleasant).
* Ket in ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Animorphs]]: The Ellimist Chronicles''. The surface is covered in lava and poisonous gases. The Ketran death penalty is applied by sending someone to the surface. An alien scouting party that lands on Ket wanders around for hours on the surface in environment suits, before one of their scouts accidentally crashes into a [[Floating Continent]] miles above the ground.
* ''[[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant]]'':
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* The monster-infested main setting of [[Mortasheen]] '''''is''''' this, with the creator even mentioning that "[the setting] has enough deadly exponentially replicating organisms that ''they just cancel each other out''. "
* This is the official term used by the Imperium of Man in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' to designate [[Single Biome Planet|Single Biome Planets]] of this description. They're [[Crapsack World|depressingly common]], but any native populations are automatically prime recruiting stock for the Imperial Guard or Space Marines. ''[[Rogue Trader]]'' characters who hail from a Death World get some serious stat bonuses, because even the biggest wimp from that planet still survived to adulthood on a world seemingly crafted to kill them. Some examples are:
** Catachan, a jungle world where nearly every animal there is said to be a carnivore, [[Man
** Fenris, a world that is exclusively [[Grim Up North]]. Its elliptical orbit takes twice as long as Terran standard and means that its long winters freeze almost the entire planet, while its summers bring lava flows and tidal waves as the planet passes close to its sun. The land is constantly changing, making permanent settlement impossible, and its resources are so meager that its population must war amongst itself to survive. Other claims to fame include kraken, dragons, and wolves the size of tanks. The [[Space Wolf|Space Wolves]] wouldn't have their homeworld any other way.
** The [[Warhammer 40000|Blood Angels]] hail from Baal, an irradiated, mutant-infested, post-apocalyptic hellhole. They seek out similar worlds for training and recruitment purposes, such as an asteroid field orbiting a black hole where quakes can send mountains falling into the void, all sorts of evil nightmares lurk about, and it's a thousand miles to the nearest neighboring asteroid. The end result are Space Marines best suited for shock assault.
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** The Lower Planes. Besides the infestation of devils, demons, and other nasty things, 3.5 makes them quite literal death worlds. In several senses. The Abyss' colloquial description is "Too horrible for conventional wisdom to comprehend" (one of the random things you can encounter on its infinite layers is an ''ocean of insects'', for example), and the Nine Hells of Baator are all actively trying to kill you in some way shape or form:
{{quote| '''Avernus''': Giant fireballs from the sky. <br />
'''Dis''': Superheated environment meets government that makes [[Nineteen Eighty
'''Minauros''': Acid swamp perpetually absorbing the structures built on it, largely a wilderness in which giant [[Eldritch Abomination|things]] lurk which the ''devils'' are afraid of. <br />
'''Phlegethos''': Fire-dominant environment. The landscape is made of volcanoes and magma. The ''entire'' landscape.<br />
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* The world of Balaho from [[Halo]] has an atmosphere of methane, suffers from two winters, and is subject to random geysers of fire popping out of the ground. Disease is also rampant, forcing the inhabitants to burn the bodies of their relatives as basically an everyday chore. Considering that this is the Grunt homeworld, you'd think they'd be a bit tougher for all this. Though there are many hints that they are actually pretty dangerous in their native environment; the fact that they have to wear heavy and fragile environmental suits anywhere else drops their combat effectiveness to basically zero.
* ''[[Metroid]]'':
** SR388 Before Samus wiped out the Metroids (practically indestructible floating beings which can shoot destructive energy blasts and drain the life from any being they come across), they were the dominant lifeform on the planet (despite there apparently being only a few dozen of them) and any other creature had to be ''very'' strong in order to survive in such an ecosystem. After Samus wiped them out, the planet is taken over by a kind of shapeshifting bacteria ([[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|which the Metroids were the primary predator of]]) which most likely wiped out all other life on the planet, and prove a severe threat to human researchers (and eventually, the whole galaxy). Its very telling that Samus ultimately has to [[Earthshattering Kaboom|vapourise the whole planet]].<br /><br />SR388 hadn't even been given a proper planet name simply because it was so desolate, dangerous and just plain remote that nobody wanted to acknowledge it further. It's noted after the first game that Samus goes extremely out of her way just to get to the planet, nevermind the fact it hosts not one but ''two'' forms of life that, if left unchecked, could destroy the galaxy.
** You spend about half your time in ''[[Metroid Prime]] 2'' running around [[Dark World|Dark Aether]]. Not only does the resident [[Hive Mind]] and its troops want to kill you, but the toxic atmosphere constantly drains your health unless you find a spot to rest in.
** Zebes is a rather nasty place too. It's been described to be uninhabitable for normal humans (Samus was able to live there only because of being infused with Chozo blood, and even then she was only able to survive in the least deadly areas) and filled with miles of underground caverns crawling with all kinds of dangerous creatures. It got nastier when the [[Space Pirates]] conquered it, too (now the rain's acidic).
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* While most of the Ages of the ''[[Myst]]'' game-series are liveable, Age 233 (where Gehn's office is) is a rather nasty place, with caustic oceans that have deeply eaten away the mountains up to high tide level. Selenitic is geologically unstable and has suffered some nasty meteor strikes in the past, and one false step in Spire will send you plummeting to your death {{spoiler|in the fires of a green star}}. Riven becomes one at the end of the eponymous game. The [[Expanded Universe]] of the novels describes how Ages which haven't been visited in centuries have been known to turn into Death Worlds in the interim, forcing one of the Guilds to send scouts to check out such places in full-body protective armor.
* Char in ''[[Starcraft]]'' is a [[Single Biome Planet]] of [[Lethal Lava Land|volcanoes]], which the [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Zerg]] have come to call a de facto homeworld. One soldier reports that "the planet itself joins in the killing". Zerus, the real Zerg homeworld, was very similar.
* ''[[Borderlands (Video Game)|Borderlands]]'' brings us the wonderful planet of Pandora, which resembles many peoples idea of Hell. Days that are 90 hours long, seasons that are ''7 years long'', at least five wholly unique species of omnivorous creatures perfectly willing, and capable, of bagging humans, almost no natural food, ditto water, massive heat, horrendous weather, {{spoiler|a completely frozen area with active volcanoes}}, a population of untold numbers of angry ex-convicts, armed to the teeth, [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|and finally, midgets]]. The local plants get in on the act as well. One inhabitant experimented with rolling herbal cigars from the local flora. The result? Death from massive internal bleeding.
* The various [[Pokémon (Franchise)|Pokémon]] regions, where bugs the size of car tires are the norm. People in the Pokeverse say that traveling without a Pokemon companion of your own is dangerous. They are not joking.<br /><br />Even in a [[Lighter and Softer]] [[Death World]] like the Pokeverse, ''[[Pokémon Colosseum (Video Game)|Pokémon Colosseum]]'s'' Orre stands out in particular. First, it's based on real-world Arizona, which neighbors hellish California and Nevada. So, natural ''desert'' is the majority of the landscape. Second, if you think humans have it bad, wild Pokémon in Orre are said to be rarer than ''water'', and that's saying something given that the only flowing water in the Eclo Wastes is in Phenac City and Agate Village. Third, the place is a [[Wretched Hive]] with the criminals in charge, and [[Complete Monster|Cipher]] is top dog. Isn't it fitting, then, that the most [[Badass]] protagonist in the history of the series happens to come from this very hellhole?
* [[Discussed Trope|Discussed]] in ''[[Ultima Underworld]] II''. When speaking to Iolo about the worlds beyond the blackrock gem, he expresses concern that one of the gem's facets could lead to an ocean floor or a planet of poisonous gases. (It doesn't.)
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** The Gorak's Plane that was visited very shortly during the "Fairy Tale, Pt. II" quest, which is a [[Pocket Dimension]] populated entirely by powerful, vicious monsters.
** The God Wars Dungeon. Imagine a huge open space with dozens of deadly monsters running around, protecting insanely powerful bosses with powerful bodyguards. Even some of the most experienced players tend to avoid that place.
* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' has the Shadow Shard, four zones of floating rocks, populated by a conglomeration of minor [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abominations]] and spirit-replicas of all the baddies that you already hate to fight, all in the service of a demigod who ''eats universes''. The main means of travel are "Gravity Geysers" that launch you from rock to rock, and should you happen to miss your landing site, you will fall to you death and have to start again at the beginning of the zone.<br /><br />And now, in the backstory of ''Going Rogue'', we have Praetoria, an alternate Earth where the majority of the planet has been taken over by the [[Animal Wrongs Group|Devouring Earth]], led by the [[One
* The eponymous planet of Kalevala in ''[[Legend of Kalevala]]'' is brimming with biomechanical creatures that are all trying to kill the protagonist, pits of lava and acid, and all sorts of spikes, bombs, and other hazards. Turns out {{spoiler|it's ''only'' a [[Death World]] for the protagonist; he is inhabiting the body of a Kuririi, which everything on the planet has been ''programmed'' to destroy}}.
* Don't let the colorful, 2D graphics deceive you--the randomly-created worlds of [[Terraria]] are Death Worlds, one and all. Killer slime can be found in the safest environments. Vultures, sharks, hornets bigger than you are, killer bats, and even piranhas await you above ground. Razor-sharp feather-slinging harpies inhabit the upper atmosphere. The underground is filled with skeletons, killer roots, vampire bats, and far enough down, demons. The hills and caverns are steep enough that you can die from fall damage just by traversing the terrain, not to mention the risks of drowning or falling into pits of lava. Meteors and Hellstone will burn to the touch unless you've built a charm to ward them off. Legions of zombies and enormous, disembodied eyes will pound at your door all night, every night. Eventually, an army of goblins will descend upon you with little warning. And every night has a chance for the Blood Moon to rise, increasing the number and might of the zombies, and turning even the harmless bunnies of the wilderness into walking horrors.
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* [[Rainbow Brite|Rainbow Land]] is this before Wisp saves it. Giant monsters are everywhere including the rivers. There are constant earthquakes resulting in rock slides and lava flows. Oh and if you try to get close to the [[The Faceless|Evil One's]] [[Evil Tower of Ominousness|castle]]? Lightning strikes you and turns you into an ice/crystal statue.
* In most versions of [[My Little Pony]], the world the ponies are in usually is this, with any area outside the immediate dwelling location being full of incredibly powerful monsters, demons, and malicious magi. The ponies generally survive by a mix of plot devices and being surprisingly badass themselves.
** In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Animation)|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' the Everfree Forest that is ''right outside'' of Ponyville is populated with monsters taken straight from the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' Monster Manual such as dragons, sea serpents, hydras, manticores, cockatrices, etc. And they pale in comparison to the Ursa Major/Minor, Kaiju-scale bears ''made of stars''.
* The Realm in the old ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (Animation)|Dungeons and Dragons]]'' tv series. Not EVERYTHING was trying to kill the heroes, but most things were, including at least two beings operating on the deity level (one would attack them incidentally, the other was actively seeking to harm them). Most people with significant power were hostile or so totally preoccupied with their own problems that they couldn't help.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Death World]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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