Other Dimensions of The Discworld - Death's Domain

Death's Domain is the home of one of the series' principal characters, Death. It is shaped by human expectation and Death's own attempts to have a (for a lack of a better word) life beyond his allotted task. Death's Domain (ISBN 0-552-14672-2) is also a Discworld Mapp, drawn by Paul Kidby, with additional material by Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.

The first thing visitors notice is that the Domain is black. Everything in Death's Domain is either black, or bone white. On the Discworld, and congruent dimensions, splitting darkness with an eight-sided prism produces different colours of black. He has black peacocks with skull-shaped patterns on their tails, bees, plants and trout. They are all 'alive', as far as they can be in a place where time does not pass.

Everything in his garden is a copy of something he has seen elsewhere, since Death cannot create. Things that stand out are a swing that he built from scratch, with his own hands, for Susan (with some distinct flaws in its design to allow it to actually 'swing'), the cats, which come and go into the Domain as they please and vary in colour (Death likes cats), and the wheat field created at the end of Reaper Man, which is golden, and ripples in the wind (despite the fact that there is no wind). There are also distant mountains, and stars, neither of which belong to the Discworld.

The Domain gardens also include a hedge maze and a golf course. Since Death finds it impossible to get lost, nor has any difficulty hitting a sphere so it goes exactly where he wants, he doesn't really see the point, but they are part of his efforts to be more human. He even has an umbrella stand (despite the fact that it never rains in the Domain, but you have to put your scythe somewhere).

To one side of the Domain is the Well of Souls, which spirits briefly pass through on their way to wherever they think they're going. If one listens, they can hear the last words of souls as they enter.

At the centre of the Domain is Death's house. It is called "Mon Repos", (Quirmian for "my place of rest"). It looks like a fairly average detached house, apart from being black and bone-white and having an omega door knocker. Inside, however, it is of infinite size, (much larger on the inside, because Death has not quite mastered the art of scale), which can be crossed in an hour or an instant. Most humans who have stayed in the Domain can only deal with the size of the rooms by ignoring them, and staying on small patches of carpet surrounded by immensity. Although the interior maintains the black-on-black, skull-and-scythe motif it is, like its outside, very ordinary and average in its design. Some assume that Death's house would look like a mausoleum or a crypt, but in fact Death knows little of cemeteries, as very few people actually die in them.

Any clocks brought into Death's Domain get depressed and stop working. The only working clock is the special grandfather clock in the hall with a scythe for a pendulum. The 'minute' hand takes thousands of years to go around. The 'hour' hand will only go around once.

As well as the 'ordinary' rooms, maintained for appearance and the benefit of Albert, the Domain contains the life-timer room, where the sands of everyone's lives drain away. Off of the life-timer room, there is another room in which the life-timers of the gods rest (as seen in Hogfather). And there is the Library, where everyone's "autobiography" is being written by itself. Both of these rooms are even more conceptual and arbitrary in dimension than the rest of the Domain, and the clearest example of its status as a refined metaphor.

In Interesting Times, Death says that he lives in a parasite universe, though his domain does not appear to feed off the main universe in the same manner as the Elves' Fairyland. Most likely it is parasitic because it could not exist without the Discworld, and everything in it is copied, although not stolen.

Very few living people have entered the Domain, but among the notable exceptions are Albert, Ysabell, Mort, Susan, Cutwell, Twoflower, Rincewind (and, arguably, the Luggage). Cats also come and go as they please.