When the world was created, along with it were representations of everything in it. From Life to Death, to Past and Future, and to Memory and Technology. They reside, set apart from everything else, in a self-contained world, without conflict. Until the minor beings, the few humans that lived there, rebelled against their superiors. The lessers were called Mudes, and they were cursed, and left to die outside of the Litum, the greater beings.
Thousands of years later, Death claims a young girl as his own after she dies in a car accident, granting her the ability to pass between worlds at will. But when the Mudes gather forces again and revolt, shattering the link between worlds and casting all of the inhabitants out, things get... tricky, to say the least.
Half Past Dead provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Cain and Fem both have them, to different degrees. Cain's father is reckless and violent, and had no qualms giving his son's body over to dangerous experiment to test the limits of death. Fem's mother was emotionally abusive, and completely rejected her the moment she stood up to her.
- Body Horror: Life's curse causes the mudes to undergo this. Fem describes the actual transition as not being very painful, just tingly and awkward, but the transformation back is the hard part.
- Broken Ace: Cheyenne is an incredibly charming, badass Rebel Leader who is a mother to her men. Too bad she has dangerously low empathy and pushed herself harder than she had to because her only friend died in front of her.
- Mind Hive: Cain's body is this. There are about five spirits who live within him, each of which with their own agendas. Initially, they worked together. Now? Not so much.
- Scars Are Forever: If killed by external means, the wound that kills you never really heals and teeters between a scar and a barely healed wound, depending on how long it takes you to die. This makes things difficult when Luce dies after having his neck slit.
