Places in The Dark Tower series

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The Dark Tower series of novels, by Stephen King, contain references to numerous locations.^[1] Some of those locations are listed below.

Contents 1 All-world 2 Our world 3 Portals, magical places, and end-world places 4 References

[edit] All-world

All-World is the world/universe (see: parallel universe) also known as "Keystone Tower". It is the only world/universe in King's multiverse that contains the Dark Tower in its physical form. All others contain a representative of the Tower (such as a rose, a tiger, or an "ur-dog"), but not the Tower in an accessible form. From All-World, it is possible to actually enter the Dark Tower.^[2]

All-World is divided into three regions; In-World, Mid-World, and End-World. The geography is widely varied. It includes deserts, mountains, rolling plains and vast wastelands. All-World is said to have "moved on." This seems to mean that where there was once great order there is now little if any order. For example: the sun does not always rise in the right place and sometimes it does not even cross the sky in a whole day; also, the compasses directions themselves are at drift: What is East today, might be Southeast next week, and next year might be full-on South. According to Blaine the Mono, a talking monorail that functioned throughout Mid-World, his "Slo-Trans" engines were supposed to last for millions of years, but were already faltering after a few thousand. However, since time appears to run at different rates all throughout All-World, and given Blaine's dementia, this assessment may not be dependable.

It seems that an extremely advanced civilization once existed in All-World, a parallel United States. This can be inferred from the high degree of similarity between Old Ones (the name for these ancient people) architecture, automobiles, clothing and the fact that an Old Ones military outpost used an everyday phone modem and Microsoft products. They might have spoken English.

The civilization of the Old Ones is inferred to have collapsed because of the replacement of magic, which could last forever, with technology, which would disintegrate if left unattended, but which nevertheless was allowed to be responsible for maintaining the Beams of the Dark Tower.

The Beams are six invisible forces connecting the edge of the world/universe to the center. These Beams are the primary sources of force in All-World and they maintain order. Failure of the Beams causes changes in physical and astronomical constants, which causes chaos in nature, as well as in civilization. There were six Beams with twelve Guardians, one for each "Portal" (the end of a Beam) arranged like the spokes of a wheel with The Tower at the center. (see also: The Waste Lands). Guardians were based on novels like Shardik (for the bear) and Maturin for the turtle (Patrick O'Brian's character Dr. Stephen Maturin was a naturalist who named at least one species of turtle).

The Old One civilization used technology to maintain the Beams of the Dark Tower instead of magic, and sought to literally control reality. The final blow for the Old One civilization seems to have been nuclear war, biological warfare, chemical warfare, and something "else" that is hinted to be more horrible/powerful than those three. It is not known when such wars took place (but long ago enough that it is in the ancient past, and that the gene lines are finally starting to breed true, or "threaded"), why they took place, or even between which nations or organizations such wars were fought. It is widely hinted the Crimson King was ultimately working behind the scenes, manipulating people and events to bring about civilization's destruction, since such destruction serves his ultimate ends.

The All-World of most of the Dark Tower series seems to be sparsely populated and dangerous, filled with mutants both human and animal, and vast swaths of land are irradiated. Demons and robots are to be found, as well as Taheen, who are in the employ of the Crimson King. Governments do not extend beyond the town/local level. Resources are scarce, and relics of the Old One's technology exist mainly in perverted, deranged, or damaged forms that threaten instead of helping the last remnants of civilization.

The following locations occur in All-World.

• Barony of Mejis is a Barony of In-World and the primary setting for Roland Deschain's account of part of his past in the novel Wizard and Glass. Mejis is located roughly 1000 "wheels" east of Gilead on the coast of the Clean Sea. The county seat of Mejis is the town of Hambry. The economy of Mejis is based primarily on horse ranching and fishing.

• Blaine's route is the route a schizophrenic monorail named Blaine the Mono takes between a city named Lud and a version of Topeka, Kansas. In the book The Waste Lands, Roland and his companions board Blaine to escape Lud, eventually vying for their lives in a life-or-death riddling contest with Blaine. Blaine's route takes the travelers through Candleton, Rilea, The Falls of the Hounds, and Dasherville on its way to Topeka.^[3]

• Calla Bryn Sturgis is a fictional city located in an area of Mid-World called the Borderlands. It is neighbor to several other cities whose names begin with the word "Calla". Calla Bryn Sturgis is the primary setting for the novel Wolves of the Calla, in which a regiment of green-cloaked wolves visit the city once every generation and steal children.^[4]

• Lud is a fictional city in Stephen King's Dark Tower series and mentioned in his Rose Madder. In The Waste Lands, the book's protagonists travel from Lud to an alternate reality version of Kansas via a supersonic monorail. Lud resembles New York City in many ways, most notably by having a version of the George Washington Bridge. This "GWB" spans a massive river canyon that protected the city from marauders. The books explains that the bridge and the rest of the city have been in disrepair for at least five hundred years.^[5]

[edit] Our world

The following locations occur in the "real world" of the reader.

• New York City is the setting for many events in The Dark Tower series. The main characters Jake Chambers, Susannah Dean, and Eddie Dean all come from various time periods in New York, called "whens" in the novels. New York is also home to a rose that plays a central part in the theme of each novel. The rose is said to be our world's representation of The Dark Tower itself.^[6]

[edit] Portals, magical places, and end-world places

The following locations occur outside of the normal realms inhabited by humans in The Dark Tower series. Characters can only reach some of them using magic or man-made teleportation doors.

• Castle Discordia is first mentioned in the book Wolves of the Calla as a mystical location where Susannah Dean and her possessor Mia interact. In Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, we learn that the castle is a physical place that stands on the edge of a realm named Thunderclap. The castle contains 595 doors leading to other locations and worlds, one of which Susannah and her companions uses a number of times.^[7]

• Devar-Toi is a minimum-security prison located in Thunderclap, an area of End-World. A campus-like complex, Devar-Toi is also known as Algul Siento or "Blue Heaven." The complex houses numerous Breakers, psychics of various types employed by The Crimson King in using their powers to attack and destroy the Beams that tie all of existence together.

• Keystone Earth is one of only two "unique" worlds in the Dark Tower series (the other being All-world). Like All-world, the only worlds where changes made are permanent and can't be unmade (time flows in only one direction on both). This world is home to the rose, which they say is not merely the representative of the tower here, but is elsewhere referred to as the guardian of the Bear-Turtle Beam. At the end of the series it was being protected by the Tet Corporation, which Roland's ka-tet created in 1977, using Odetta Holmes's fortune as heiress to the Holmes Dental Corporation.^[8]

• Thunderclap is a desolate, sparsely-populated realm first described in Wizard and Glass as being part of End-World and the Borderlands. In Wolves of the Calla, we learn that the marauding wolves come from somewhere in Thunderclap, later named in the book The Dark Tower as the Devar-Toi.^[9]

[edit] References