Trope-a-Day: I Don’t Like The Sound Of That Place

I Don’t Like The Sound Of That Place: The Last Darkness constellation (centered around the black hole, Eye of Night) would be one of these – even though it’s actually quite a nice place to visit – as would the three stargates leading into the Leviathan Consciousness Containment Zone, Hell’s Mouth, Conjoiner’s Gullet, and Unreturn.  The Charnel Cluster, where the entire population and ecology were slaughtered by a seed AI experiment Gone Horribly Right would also qualify.

On Eliera itself, the Frozen Hell is a long stretch of tundra which is, well, exactly what it says on the tin.  The Stonedeath Barrens and the Bloody Wastes both commemorate ancient battles – lots of them, in roughly the same place – and the Makerforges are an unpleasantly volcanic mountain chain.  Nightfall Crater doesn’t seem so bad, until you recall the Winter of Nightmares, what caused it, and therefore exactly how many people the thing you’re standing on killed.

A remarkable number of fortresses and walled cities with portentous names, on the other hand are actually perfectly lovely places to live or visit; the names were purely for advertising – adversetising? abvertising? – purposes.