Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Death's Door 1: Why Does Everyone Die?

With the first book in "The Clinic" sub-series of Discworld stories complete, the campaign moves onto the next book, Death's Door. Like all Discworld series, such as "The Guards," "The Wicthes" and so on, this features the same cast of characters but in a new story. This story begins a few months after the events of Alternative Medicine, with Ankh-Morpork now under a literal cloud, as the smoke of progress meets the fogs of Autumn and plunges the city into a week-long dark smog.

  • Analogue Cockaday now shares lodgings with her nephew Cosine, in newly built affordable housing in Dragon's Landing; she receives a disturbing legal document and needs Celia Woodruff's help to decipher it as a request for a dissolution of marriage form her husband Obediah, who is still managing the animal sanctuary back in Lancre!
  • At the clinic, Toby Determined examines new patient Clarrida Murphy, a banshee who no longer wails outside the homes where a death is going to occur, but finds herself compelled to wail at children's birthday parties, to the consternation of all. Toby determines to ask Death about this the next time he sees him, and with Toby's special relationship to causality, the intent is the same is the action, so he considers the job done.
  • Another patient is seen by Count Holloway Harris, when a highly inebriated merfolk stumbles through the door and collapses, their condition growing worse when Celia throws water over them. This is Saphy Mariana, who is suffering from the unusual ailment that they can't breathe water, only alcohol! Count Holloway decides to pickle them for the time being, but this goes a little too well and kills the patient, but the Count is confident he can revive them later!
  • Thackeray Ambrosius is away from Ankh-Morpork at this time: something to do with finances, again.
Celia encourages Analogue to get on the coach to Lancre to confront her husband, so of course Count Holloway and Toby come too, leaving the clinic under the care of Epidermis Foxglove, the reanimated skin puppet version of Analogue. On the way, they have some narrow encounters with Death, who seems to have something he wants to say to them, and also aid Langran Bilth, a dwarf emissary returning from Ankh-Morpork with a high, squeaky voice. A tap on the head from Analogue's hammer resets him to "Antonio Banderas" mode, which still isn't right, but Langran seems quite happy with the results, so takes them the rest of the way in his personal coach, so they complete the trip in luxurious but very cramped style.

A confrontation with Obediah, Analogue's husband, leads to more confusion as he knows nothing of the divorce papers, but suggests it looks like somethng that might have been drawn up by Mr. Kipling, a travelling lawyer who was in Lancre recently. Beside making rather disappointing, soggy individual apple pies, the lawyer explains that he didn't write the document yet; rather, it looks like something he may write, in the near future, when Analogue is missing, presumed dead. Meanwhile, Count Holloway and Toby take turns dying and resurrecting each other, enabling a more complete convesrsation with Death, who wants to know why everyone dies, a philosophical conundrum they have no answer for.

A consultation with the Queen of Lancre, and occasional witch, Magrat Garlick, only shows that the letter uses retrograde ink, that is, ink that travels backwards in time. Some near future event is so huge, so important, and so intimately woven into the lives of the clinic staff, that is has produced echoes in the past before it happens.

The staff get back on the coach with seven other dwarves, following the lead of Langran Bilth in the hope of getting sexy voices of their own, so they stop at the same dwarven long hall they enjoyed hospitality at on the way out. Toby goes to relieve himself on a convenient tree but a very inconvenient door opens and he stumbles into Death's domain again. The reaper is busy at his work, picking hourglasses from the shelves and arranging them on his desk, and asks the question again: "WHY DOES EVERYONE DIE?" The only consolation Toby can offer is that it's just their time, but Death shows Toby the huge collection of hourglasses on the table, thousands of them, with the names of everyone in Ankh-Morpork and clarifies his question.

"WHY DOES EVERYONE DIE... IN TWO WEEKS?"

Next Episode: Apocalypse How?

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