Information AboutOuterworld |
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The Outerworld is comedy/fantasy novel of Canadian author Jean-Michel Morency , and is followed by a collection of short stories, The Chronicles Of The Outerworld . The works have so far only been released in French , but translations are being considered. It is packed with a series of inside jokes, most of them from his high school years. The Outerworld itself is actually the setting of the story, a hellish place which evolved almost overnight from the Earth. It is shaped in a series of concentric rings which culminate to a deep drop in the middle dubbed the Hole, where the demon lord Sinhep Gibh resides with his army. The climate and monsters inhabiting the Outerworld all vary from ring to ring, but the landscape is generally always the same: a rocky desert, with similarities to the Mojave Desert in the south-west United States . Where humans cities used to lay now remain only a desolate wasteland, with occasional ruins and objects. SYNOPSIS The story is set during October 2007 in the Canadian town of Vieille Lorette (Old Lorette), and begins when Fred and Math, two young men barely 20 years old, download through Kazaa a document claiming to be the fourth Dungeons & Dragons player book. They try to read it but realise the book is written in Spanish, and looks nothing like what they expected. Not wanting to translate it on screen, they decide to print it out and return to it later. While opening the file however, the two protagonists unknowignly unleash the demonic power of the file, much in the same way of The Evil Dead series' Necronomicon . Zombies rise from their graves and begin terrorizing Vieille Lorette. Weak and sluggish at first, the two men easily dispose of the group that surrounded their house, and go look for their besieged comrade Simon a mile away. On their way in the apparently deserted town, they encounter a slightly panicked young man driving a Nova SS , whom they recognize being P.O., a childhood friend they had not seen in 2 years. All together in the car, they rescue Simon from the zombies, who had in the meanwhile transformed into superpowerful undead, Dawn Of The Dead style. Looking for a safe haven to hide, the four men reach the Richard's, a fast food restaurant they frequented in their teenage years. Fred, slowly reading the book, finds out that the book is the trigger of an apocalyptic prophecy, which they had inadvertently set in motion by reading it in the first place. Ironically, the book explained how to stop the prophecy and prevent the demons of the Outerworld from taking over the Earth. Their study of the book is cut short when a titanic fecal Golem manifests across the street and almost kills the protagonists. They hurry to seek refuge in the cellar, and think up a strategy to eliminate the golem. They sneak up to a nearby gas station, and using the pumps as homemade flamethrowers, torch down the 200-foot-tall golem which comes crashing down on the city. Following the lead of the book, the four men attempt to locate throughout the city some relics to protect them from the evil they would encounter during their quest. First stopping at a bank, they collect mint conditon, out-of-circulation 2 dollar bills, but are stopped by an insane midget, threatening to kill them all. Not wanting to negotiate further, a bored P.O. promptly shoots him dead. Coincidentally, they find on the midget another one of the relics: a midget porn magazine. They quickly evacuate the place as a new demon, a 600 foot underground worm, begins to chase them. After a dangerous speed chase, they lose the worm, and decide to go to their next destination, a grocery store warehouse to pick up supplies and two more relics: a chicken wings necklace and untalented Normand L'Amour Best-Of CD. Their search is almost done when the worm catches up with them and promptly destroys the warehouse, along with the group's food supplies. Then begins another chase, faster and harder than before and almost kills them, but manages to lose the worm a second time. They head to the Vieille Lorette High School, where they hope to find supplies and another relic: water from the school's fountains. They are quick to take the food to the car, but find out none of the fountains work. Heading to the basement where they hope to adjust the water pressure, they encounter one of their old science teachers, Jacques, who wound up to becoming a mad scientist and using the teachers' bodies to make cyborgs. After a savage gunfight, the former students eliminate the cyborg and their maker, collecting some school water before going back up. Once on the surface however, they realise the worm had caught up with them again and laid waste to much of school. In one final chase, they drag the worm all the way to a broken bridge, and using the Nova's high speed, fly all the way to the other side, the worm crashing down on the ground far below. The group now isolated on the east side of the bridge, they follow the road out of the Vieille Lorette and into the desert that has become of the surroundings. After a while in the desert, they end up in a totally dark place, the Abyss. Light from the car is not reflected anywhere, the asphalt itself not even visible. Not wanting to ditch the car somewhere, they stop there. Soon, the abyss itself tries to destroy the car and its passengers, but are saved in extremis as the glowing 2 dollar bills are taken out, their light destroying the creature around them. Like some form of radar, they also point out the direction they must head to. One hour or so later, the fuel tank goes dry, and they must go on on foot, the weather itself starting to colden up. On the verge of despair, they arrive to their destination: an isolated house. They instantly recognize the house as being Jim's, an old friend they had not seen in years, now dead. Exhausted, they try to get some sleep, but in the end can only stay awake. Fred then proposes to resurrect Jim, using his Ouija board. After a few failed tries, they manage to bring Jim back to life, but their joy is short lived as they are attacked by cursed painting, who tries to steal their souls. They are saved by the use of the midget porn magazine, which replaces the man on the painting by a picture of Holy One, a midget porn actor. The five adventurers refit the Hummer in the garage that belonged to Jim's father, and leave the abyss in direction of the Outerworld. After some driving and exchanged memories, they encounter sacred fragments of a city which, prior to the abyss, was just beside Vieille Lorette. However, the ruins are guarded by one of the demons' field operatives, the Bonhomme Carnaval , which can in a kick teleport people to Hell, and use his arrowed belt like a deadly long range weapon, but cannot directly enter the sacred ruins, and must wait outside. The first building investigated turns out to be a Pub , and the men decide to rest there for a while. Having all satisfied their hunger, a desperately drunk Jim punches Simon in they eye, who passes out while Jim burst through the door to vomit outside. With Math sleeping, Simon passed out and P.O. too drunk to follow, Fred must find Jim alone. After having followed a series of clues, Fred is trapped in a dead-end alleyway by the Germaine Succubus , one of the stronger demons of the Outerworld. Unable to defend himself, Fred gets his soul stolen by the succubus before she takes off. A few hours later, Jim wakes up in the middle of a street in a pool of his own vomit. Intrigued by strange noises, he follows their trail to find a naked, desperate and seemingly insane Fred, who keeps repeating in agony "Heavens have no scent". Unsure of what he should do with him, Jim carries him back to the pub and puts him to sleep with the others. Jim and P.O., both sobered up, find the solution in the book: they must do a voodoo ritual to take Fred's soul back from the succubus. The group awake, they do the ritual using various elements from the pub, and after a loud and supernatural ceremony, Fred gets his soul back and is instantly cured of his strange sickness. Now with everyone okay, they decide to leave and take out the Bonhomme Carnaval on the way. The battle starts with the three armed guys trying to shoot the demon to pieces, but fails, and must take cover while the Bonhomme uses his belt to counter-attack. When all seems lost and the Bonhomme is almost to them for a finishing blow, Jim catches the belt with both hands using all his strength, and slowly pulls the demon to the ground, which catches fires on its own, and dies very slowly and painfully on the pavement. After a quick celebration, they take the road again, and leave the abyss to get to the outer ring Outerworld. In few hours past when they reached the outer ring, Jim stops abruptly and jumps out the Hummer to chase a butterfly that flew past them. The rest of the men, surprised, wonder what happened, but quickly their conversation loses all sense, and Fred, the only one not yet affected, realises what his happening: the spores of the Robert-Giffard butterfly, an Outerworld creation, which drives people insane. With no second to lose, Fred desperately seeks a relic while his senses give away one by one, but saves them all at last by uncovering the porn magazine, which swiftly absorbs the spores. All four become normal again, and Jim walks back to the car with deep cuts in his face. Being already dead, he feels no pain but disinfects himself anyway, so as not to rot to fast. After having cleaned up, the five of them hit the road again. On the way, the Hummer stumbles upon a toilet seat, right in the middle of the desert. Surprised, the five investigate the scene, only to find someone forgot to flush. Disgusted, they flush it, but as they are about to leave, a second fecal golem emerges from the ground below, and with no flamethrowers this time around, they must flee to survive this monster. Jim figures a way to kill it, but the Hummer crashes before he can tell it and P.O. is injured. After taking him to safety, Jim explains his plan. Using Simon, Fred and Math as a diversion, Jim climbs up the golem, and plants an object in it before being shaken off. Too late for the golem to take it off, the object ignites and sets it ablaze, and collapse quickly on the ground. The group safe again, Jim explains the object was actually a Pepsi - Coca-Cola mix, which turns into an incendiary bomb. On the evening before hitting the road again, he builds a homemade flamethrower nicknamed PCT out of Pepsi and Coke bottles, should they need it again. While everybody else is sleeping, Fred and Simon argue about whether or not they should stop, and simply try to survive, for there is no world left to save. The next day, a short while after they resumed their trip, but Fred sees something on the road: a recently-dead, squashed groundhog. He warns the group about how dangerous those animals are, as they are very intelligent and are protected by the major demons of the Outerworld, and thus musn't be harmed in any way. But by the time he's done with his speech, the group realises they have been surrounded by a gigantic horde of , and a battle Snowblower . A Mad Max -esque road fight begins, and after a lot of killing, explosions and mayhem, the Hummer emerges victorious again. The trip becomes normal again for a few days, with nothing unusual happening. Then one day on the road, Jim finds out that all of a sudden all of their food has rotten completely, all within a few hours. Everything is lost except their Pepsi and Coke provision, and a great quantity of unmarked cans. Later that day, during the dinner they called 'Mystery Meals', they are attacked by a group of five Incubi , elite soldiers and infiltrators of Sinhep Gibh, the demon king. They reveal to the adventurers that they have been given the task to either capture or kill them. The men refuse, and before they have time to react, all of the incubi are shot dead. They take the demons' weapons, and quickly leave the place, knowing that they now are being hunted by the Outerworld's major commanders. Later that day, the guys drive under what appears to be a gathering storm, and indeed, it soon starts to rain. Far from being the Acid Rain they had always been used to, it was literaly a rain of acid. With no hard top on the Hummer, they rush to find a shelter before they fry to death on the road. Luckily for them, they run across a deserted house, another vestige of another destroyed city. They rush inside the house after leaving the truck in the garage, where they decide they will stay until the storm subsides. They do not rest long, though. A few hours after their discovery, they are attacked by incubus lord Elzear, who takes hold of Simon and starts to strangle him slowly. The four others try to shoot the demon, but the bullets only went through it, leaving no damage. Just as it was about to take a bite out of Simon, the guys throw a rolled 2 dollar bill, which Elzear swallows instinctively. The bill acts quickly, and the incubus vaporizes. Simon seeming fine, they go to sleep. During the night, Fred and Jim wake up to find Simon possessed by Elzear, who will try to use him to kill his fellows. They must tie him to a bed and practice an exorcism to save him, and themselves in the process. Using Math as a disguised priest, school water as holy water, a bagpipe to play holy anthems and a celtic dance, they successfully destroy the enchantment and seriously hurt Elzear, hidden far away in Sinhep Gibh's tower of doom. The next morning, the storm subsides and the travellers can be on the move again. For two days nothing happens, but the third day, when investigating ruins they had found in the desert, they are ambushed by an army of pink feathery monsters, bearing a distant resemblance to Star Wars 's Wookiees . Knowing they can't fight their way out of this one, P.O. tries to subdue them by playing with their stupidity. The plan fails, but leaves them with another chance: these demons will only let them go if they can make them laugh. Math, famous for his terrible jokes, tries himself without the consent of the others, and lets out his worst joke he ever made. Expecting to be shot for hearing one that bad, they are most surprised when the monsters burst out laughing, and let them go. They ride carefully a few hours before they finally reach their destination: the Hole, center of the Outerworld, with its scarlet red sky, smoke clouds and unstopped thunder, and in the center, miles away, a huge pillar of stone, the tower fortress where Sinhep Gibh awaits. Changing direction and heading toward the tower, they suddenly cross the border of the Hole, which, true to its name, is a fall hundreds of feet high. In their fall, they buckle up their seat belts, and apparently through the protection of some spell, the Hummer crashes into the ground to bounce back on its wheels as clean as new, leaving its passengers safe and unharmed, if only a little sore. On the very moment they are about to start back the engine, they find themselves surrounded by dozens of shock troopers, armed to the teeth. As they are about to blast all five of them away, they are stopped short by a group of incubi, who say they are acting in the demon lord's name. They capture them all but Jim, who is left behind with the troopers, and all five are then knocked unconscious. Jim wakes up a few hours later in a dark and closed space, surrounded by zombies. Before he has time to realise the danger he's in and fight his way out, loud noises are heard, and a huge door opens right in front of him. The light reveals he's surrounded by zombified bodybuilders, and the wide open space in front of them is a giant arena. Listening to a Spanish announcing voice, he learns he's been put along with the other zombies in a big gladiator game, and must fight dozens of incubi if he wants to survive. The brawl begins quickly and soon turns to his advantage, killing incubus after incubus, with the unknowing help of his would-be zombie comrades. After a long and bitter fight, he's the last man standing, with the arena crowd shocked and ashamed. Elpparg Ni Sunob, the greatest fighter and general of the Outerworld, jumps into the arena to end this mascarade once and for all. Jim finds himself quickly outpowered and gets himself within and inch from death. Ni Sunob, thinking an easy victory is at hand, lets out a loud laugh, looking down at the man laying on the ground. Jim gets on both his feet, and the General had just enough time to see the Anger, Jim's infinite fuel, in his eyes just before his own eye is pierced by the yound man's thrown sword. In a lighting quick movement, the human jumps on the demon's back, and using his sword, hacks him to pieces in absolute fury. Exhausted, Jim drops his weapons to the ground and stands to watch the crowd as they started to descend to finish him off, but all of a sudden a large shadow appears on the ground, that of a huge falling object. Meanwhile, in one of the tower's dungeons, the four other heroes wake up chained to a wall and guarded by an incubus. Soon another batch of incubi arrive, including Elzear and the Germaine succubus, who reveal the nature of their kidnapping from the troops: it turns out that Sinhep Gibh's price on their head was the rule of the entire extern Outerworld. Whichever race, either the succubi and incubi or Ni Sunob's forces, brought back the humans would gain the prize. The demons free them from their chains to bring them to their leader, but instantly Fred takes command and starts throwing orders at Math & P.O., to use their exorcism rituals and bagpipe respectively. The effect is instantly felt by the monsters, and they fall down to their knees in pain. Fred quickly takes out the Normand L'amour CD from P.O. back jeans pocket and throws it. Like a magical Boomerang , the CD flies through the room and kills all of the demons in a single run, coming back quickly in Fred's hand. Free from danger and captivity, the four young men prepare for the last step of their adventure: destroy the mastermind of all this evil: Sinhep Gibh himself. They walk their stairs all the way to penthouse, killing everything in their path. At last they reach the top, and finally meet the source of all their pains: the demon lord in the flesh. After a few lines of taunting, Sinhep Gibh rises from his throne to reveal himself: a gigantic worm-like entity, with the chest of a huge wasp and three pair of arms eventually culminating to a mandible-filled mouth. Not waiting for their reaction, he immediately charges on P.O., knocking him down to the ground and out of the fight for the moment. Math attacks with a large slash of his axe in a flank, letting out noxious pus. Although with a manhole-sized wound on one side, the beast doesn't even seem to notice or care, and proceeds to disarm Math and start squashing his head between his hands. Acting quickly, Simon starts spraying it with the PCT while Fred throws the CD. Letting Math go, Sinhep Gibh turns to Fred and charges with all its mass, which he barely dodges. Acting as decoys, Simon and Math turn-attack the demon while Fred goes to help a badly hurt P.O., who laids down a plan to make the ceiling collapse on the beast. They get to it instantly and the three of them act as diversions while Math works the ceiling. In a moment of inattention, Fred is tackled by Sinhep Sorgh and loses consciousness, helpless to his fate at the demon's hands. However, he is saved ''in extremis'' as the ceiling finally comes crashing down on the monster, which seems to kill it once and for all. Fred comes back to his senses and the four get back together, but see from the balcony that the action is not yet over, judging from the activity in the arena, but they can't discern what exactly is going on. Their questioning is short-lived, though, as Sinhep Gibh emerges wounded, but still very much alive, from the pile of debris that used to be his roof. Knowing resistance is futile this time, the four align themselves with the balcony's edge, letting the king of the Outerworld make his final charge towards them. But at the last second, as it was about to seize them with its huge arms, they all take a final step back in emptiness, taking Sinhep Gibh to crash down with them. While Math thought it was a suicidal move, P.O. wisely figures a way to save them all. Just a few feet above the surface, all of the group jumps up, and they all land on their feet as if they had just jumped down a chair, and Sinhep Gibh's colossal body disintegrates on impact, leaving a huge hole on the arena's floor. As it turns out, what they saw from the tower's summit was actually Jim fighting for his life against the zombies and incubi. The group now complete again, they must escape quickly from a growing mob of angry demons through the hole left in the ground, which leads to what appears to be a Vault . The computer reveals a map, on which is shown a self-destruction room, and a hangar leading to the outside, directly on the opposite way. Setting aside the obvious cliché one moment, P.O. realises they cannot simply turn on the countdown and leave, because as soon as the red button is pressed, the whole place explodes instantly. Jim volunteers to sacrifice himself, while the others run away. After a quick farewell, the five part ways for the last time. P.O., Math, Sim and Fred run into the hangar, where they find a heavily tuned-up Lawnmower . They quickly jump onto it, and wheelie out into the desert while Jim jogs toward the self-destruction room. But his way is soon blocked by a massive barrage of mini Sinhep Gibhs, spawned from the king's carcass. He doesn't stop however, and forces his way through while they rip him apart piece by piece. Using the everlasting power of hate, he manages to crawl up to the panel, and in a last effort, punch the self-destruction button. The demonic spawns rush to finally get the best of him as the whole place goes alight. The entire complex goes ablaze, and the Hole itself is blown away by the massive nuclear detonation. One hour later, the lawnmower runs out of gas, and they walk on foot with no real direction. As they talk about what happened, a bus loaded with sexy women drives up to them. Unexpectedly, they were survivors from the original onslaught that followed the Outerworld's awakening. The novel end when, offered a ride with the party, the four get in, realising that they now have a chance at rebuilding their lives and have a great time doing so. |
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