History Literature / TheNightLand

* CyanidePill: Anyone who ventures outside the Redoubt has a poison capsule implanted in one arm for emergencies.

* ThePowerOfLove: Its what differentiates mankind from the monsters.
* PowersThatBe: 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 it's actions have bought mankind millions more years.

* WorthyOpponent: 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 even evil, just enigmatic and dangerous.

* HeroicWillpower

** The Watchers: NighInvulnerable mountain sized beings who have unfathomable psychic powers. Their movements are so slow that they are barely perceptible, but they can control the lesser (much faster) horrors of the Night Land. They do not seem to require sleep, food, water, or really any of the standard needs of biotic life. Other than their shared traits of size, age, and speed, each one is totally unique,
** The Thing That Nods: A large entity whose face is always just out of sight. No one has dared get closer for a better look.

* EmpathicWeapon: The Diskos reacts to its users emotions, and is especially effective when combined with righteous fury.

** 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 was so deep it quite literally was too much for his brain to even remotely fathom and sent him into a panic attack.

* TheFuture

* {{Determinator}}

* DistressedDamsel

-->“This to be Love, that your spirit to live in a natural holiness with the Beloved, and your bodies to be a sweet and natural delight that shall be never lost of a lovely mystery…. And shame to be unborn, and all things to go wholesome and proper, out of an utter greatness of understanding; and the Man to be an Hero and a Child before the Woman; and the Woman to be an Holy Light of the Spirit and an Utter Companion and in the same time a glad Possession unto the Man…. And this doth be Human Love….”

* CosmicHorrorStory: Before Creator/HPLovecraft invented it.
* CrapsackWorld: 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.

* CrapsackWorld: Mankind can do nothing but wait out the Aeons for their last defenses to fail.

* {{God}}: No joke. You would think that a post-sun death universe where reincarnation, {{Eldritch Abomination}}s and PsychicPowers are a fact of life would be pretty alien to the notion of Yahweh, but the narrator tells us that men of our age should be "thankful unto God" that we live in the Days of Light and not the Night Land. The powers that defend the Redoubt from their enemies are vaguely defined and could be interpreted as God or angels providing protection.

* HauntedHouse: Taken to eldritch levels with the House Of Silence. An impossibly large ornate home on a hill, which seems to be empty but whose interior is lit by pale lights, it is considered the absolute worst of all the horrors of the Night Land, since it ''always'' inflicts [[FateWorseThanDeath Destruction]] on those it successfully ensnares.

* ReincarnationRomance

* ZergRush: The main reason the Night Hounds are TheDreaded.

* DarkWorld

* TheDreaded: The Night Hounds, as they are faster and far more persistant than most other night creatures.
* EldritchAbomination: Tons of them; the Night Land is crawling with them.

* LostTechnology:

* ThePowerOfLove

* TimeSkip

Creator/WilliamHopeHodgson's ''The Night Land'' was first published in 1912. On the most basic level, it's a heroic fantasy in which the KnightInShiningArmor [[DeathWorld braves terrible monsters and overcomes formidable challenges]] to rescue the DistressedDamsel. 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 Creator/HPLovecraft to describe it as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written" even in the face of its ludicrous [[AntiquatedLinguistics pseudo-17th-century writing style]].

* AlwaysNight

* CitadelCity: The Last Redoubt.

* CrapsackWorld: And how!

* TheDreaded: The Night Hounds.
* EldritchAbomination: Tons of them; the Night Land is crawling with them.
* EmpathicWeapon

* LostTechnology

* ScienceMarchesOn: The story was written at a time before the discovery of radioactivity when the age of the solar system (and remaining lifespan of the sun) was believed to be tens of millions of years rather than several billion.

* PurpleProse: The entire text is written to emulate 17th century literature, and overshoots the mark by several measures. Largely avoids SesquepedalianLoquaciousness, however.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Literally so, hence the poison capsules.

* {{Mordor}}

* {{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)

* AlwaysNight: [[SarcasmMode Believe it or not.]]

* {{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.

* TheRemake: ''[[http://www.amazon.com/Night-Land-Story-Retold/dp/0615508812/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1315432157&sr=8-2 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://www.thenightland.co.uk.

* {{Fanfic}}: Numerous works are collected at http://www.thenightland.co.uk, 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.

The complete work is available [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10662 here]] at Project Gutenberg, or [[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hodgson/1.html here]].

* FanSequel: Some critics believe that the book is meant to be this to HGWells's ''Literature/TheTimeMachine''.

The complete work is available [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10662 here]] at Project Gutenberg.

* ScienceMarchesOn: When the book was written, scientists indeed believed the Sun would slowly fade, eventually beyond visibility. We now expect it to get very slowly brighter over the next few billion years, before swelling into a red giant and destroying the Earth. (Though after that it will eventually die back down).
** Also, time scales; we now know the Earth's core will be completely cooled long before the sun runs down.

* FanSequel: Some critics believe that the book is meant to be this to HGWells's ''TheTimeMachine''.

* MadeOfIron:

* ArmorIsUseless: Averted - the narrator states several times that only his armor saved him from severe injury or death.

* MusclesAreMeaningless: Played straight and subverted: our [[TheHero 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 [[ButForMeItWasTuesday was something to brag about]] or rely on, since all monsters evolved or devolved from humans [[SuperStrength are far too strong to be beaten in close combat]] and had to be fought [[LightningBruiser by cunning, agility and Diskos fencing]].

* TheObstructiveLoveInterest: Zig-zagged; she alternates between absurd obstructiveness and considerable competence.

** Possibly justified in that most those inventions run off the "earth current", which may not exist outside of the redoubts. The Diskos (basically a chainsaw on a stick) presumably uses much less energy than a laser rifle.
** [[WordOfGod It has been said in the story itself]] firing energy weapons at range defied the defensive purpose of the Redoubt and only attracted more and more {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, so a melee weapon which [[LaserBlade could cut through anything]] was justified.
** Contact with Lesser Redoubt is lost for millennia until two telepaths happen to live in the two Redoubts, just like TheHero never attempts to broadcast any sort of info back home. Shouldn't an advanced humanity have ''radio''?

* SquareCubeLaw: The impossibly big Redoubts.
** Only the Greater Redoubt, really; the Lesser is "only" 3/4 mile tall. Since Burj Dubai will be over 1/2 mile tall when completed, and given that it's made of a far stronger metal than anything on modern Earth, 3/4 mile isn't too tall to be believably self-supporting.

* {{Vibroweapon}}: The Diskos works on this principle, but rotating rather than a back-and-forth vibration. It can also provide light, occasionally leaning toward LaserBlade (well, Electric Blade, since this was written before lasers) territory. Possibly the UrExample.
** Note that it's also listed under ChainsawGood.

* WackyWaysideTribe: Most of the enemies the hero faces seem to be these. Justified due to the sheer hostility of the setting.

* {{God}}: No joke. You would think that a post-sun death universe where reincarnation, EldritchAbominations and PsychicPowers are a fact of life would be pretty alien to the notion of Yahweh, but the narrator tells us that men of our age should be "thankful unto God" that we live in the Days of Light and not the Night Land. The powers that defend the Redoubt from their enemies are vaguely defined and could be interpreted as God or angels providing protection.

** [[WordOfGod It has been said in the story itself]] firing energy weapons at range defied the defensive purpose of the Redoubt and only attracted more and more [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]], so a melee weapon which [[LaserBlade could cut through anything]] was justified.