The Descent

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Adventure isn't dead. It's just gone to Hell.

What if Hell was an actual place on Earth?

The Descent is a 1999 science-fiction/horror novel by American author Jeff Long focusing on the discovery and exploration of an extensive labyrinth of tunnels and passages stretching throughout the sub-surface of the entire world, inhabited by several species of alternately-evolved troglobitic hominids. While presently degenerate and brutal, the "hadals" had once possessed a high level of civilization, having reached the Iron Age as far back as 20,000 years ago and mentored subsequent human civilizations. Their fall from grace formed the basis of the historical belief in demons.

The book is split between two storylines. The first concerns an ill-fated expedition into the sub-planet. The other about the Beowulf Club, a group of highly-determined scholars who set out to find the historical figure who inspired the legends of The Devil. Eventually, these two stories intersect as the expedition comes face-to-face with Satan himself.

Has nothing to do with the video game series Descent. Nor the 2005 British horror film The Descent written and directed by Neil Marshall, although there are certainly similarities. The novel was followed by a sequel, Deeper, and The Ascent.

The Descent contains examples of

• Abhorent Admirer: Clemens to Rebecca.
• All Of Them: Used twice in a row in Deeper.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Reconstructed. Lip service is paid to the idea that the hadals simply act out of a culture with a different set of expectations about good and evil. None of that changes the fact that hadal behavior towards outsiders involves hefty doses of what humans would consider slavery, rape, mutilation, torture and cannibalism.
• Beneath The Earth: The discovery and exploration of the sub-planet drives the plot of the novel.
• Better To Die Than Be Killed: Considering that hadal captivity often leads to cannibalism and trauma-induced psychosis among humans, many characters choose to commit suicide instead.
• Blackmail Is Such an Ugly Word:

  Clemens: I believe we can put a quick end to what seems to be brewing.

  Rebecca: A mutiny? Is that what you mean?

  Clemens: There's an ugly word. It sounds so old-fashioned, don't you think?

• Church Militant: Deconstructed with Rebecca. She's on an one-person crusade to rescue the only other person left to her - her child. And if she has to pretend to be this, to be the "patron whore" of a Rag Tag Band of... well, Ax Crazy Awesome Too Dumb To Live Jerk Asses to get her daughter back, so be it.
• The Corruption: Turns out to be Satan.
• Doing In The Wizard: The novel goes to great lengths to show that seemingly supernatural phenomena observed in the sub-planet are rooted in science. Weird Science but science nonetheless.
  • Subverted in Deeper, though.
• Enemy Mine: Rebecca invokes this and thinks it'll go smoothly, but she tends to forget Humans Are Bastards.
• Gone Horribly Right: The attack on "The Studio".
• Guns In Churches: Guns for Rebecca's posse are seen as this when above ground, since they're received through unsavory means and would destroy their credibility if seen in the open with them, or worse, would trigger a We Are Struggling Together moment before they even have the chance to "go under".
• Human Resources: An artifacts exhibit shows hadal weapons made of human bones.
• Humans Are Bastards: A lot chunk of them, at least.
• I Am A Humanitarian: One of the defining characteristics of Homo hadalis.
• I Did What I Had To Do: Rebecca pitches this as her excuse. Nobody's buying it.
• Mama Bear: Rebecca.
• Our Demons Are Different: First off, there are not demons. They are cave-dwelling hominids with a culture that makes the Aztecs look like the Amish. Also, they are revealed to be able to transmit the consciousness of their dead into other sapient lifeforms via electrical currents.
  • But then an expy of Satan appears...
• Powder Keg Crowd: Poor Li triggered it...
• Satan Is Good: What he'd like you to think. Arguably, he may be, but more of a Psychopathic Manchild, as he himself admits it. He'll make creatures, he'll save creatures, but he can't give life, and if you try to ditch on him, he'll cut pieces of your body and make you eat them because he may be genuinely answering your requests to feed him.
• Shaming The Mob: It almost worked...
• Shout Out: Where to begin.
  • The expedition into the sub-planet is called The Jules Vernes Society.
  • The group of scholars looking for The Devil are called the Beowulf Club.
  • An entrance into the sub-planet inspired Dante in his depiction of Hell.
  • We have people in a certain area "warped" by "corruption", having "mutations" that keep the poor soul alive and functional.
• Thirty Pileup Gambit:

  There were twelve hundred different agendas out there, one for each man, each waiting to be unfolded in the days ahead.

• Torches and Pitchforks.
• Unreliable Narrator: Satan's "disciple" in Deeper has doubts that Satan can actually remodel life, and some of his other stories can be seen as unreliable, including saying God is nothingness and implying he knows of no such entity, but getting pissed at the name of God nonetheless.
• Xanatos Roulette: Rebecca plays this. Even she's scared what she got herself into and how it'll end.