Motif · from book 4
The collapse dead
'People who die in the collapse aren't really dead, but they're put in storage.' Maggie's claim, in Chris's voice, that the dead of the first night can be brought back, changed, and put in a crawler's path on the deeper floors; the Cookbook has hints of it and Mordecai has not been asked. The epilogue's word for them is the Collected.
First appears: Book 4
Series arc
Through book 6
Reconstituted loved ones, 'Sparingly', one molecule changed (B6 ch. 46).
Open threads
Status is open or resolved; the chapter after it is the last one that moved the thread.
| Thread | Opened | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The collapse dead in storage | B4 ch. 14 | open · B5 ch. 65 — Ifechi's twin on a country boss; the Popovs' guide chose their race so they would escape as children. |
| The Popovs, ineligible, on the surface | B5 ch. 77 | open · B7 ch. 86 — Katia goes the same way, on purpose. |
All threads: Open threads.
Through book 4
Where they appear
| Book | Chapters they are in (of the book's) | Where |
|---|---|---|
| 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods | 1/35 | Ch. 14 · the book's own page |
| 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride | 1/74 | Ch. 46 · the book's own page |
By book
The collapse dead in book 4 — The Gate of the Feral Gods
'People who die in the collapse aren't really dead, but they're put in storage' — Maggie, as Chris, about a daughter (ch. 14); Jennifer and Dale's three children (ch. 17); no pregnancies in the dungeon and no answer about pregnant crawlers (ch. 25); 'They have my other daughter' (ch. 34). The epilogue's null remembers Crawler Hoon's five children as hunter-killers guarding the elevator to the twelfth floor, and the ban on collected children that followed (epilogue).
The collapse dead in book 6 — The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
The AI's aside in Milk's chapter: seasons back the council decided that reconstituted loved ones under the age of maturity would no longer be used, and the rest only sparingly — so it changed one molecule on each (ch. 46).