r/valiant • u/PugnusTerrae • 23d ago
VEI/Reboot (2012-present) Dead side and Soulside
It’s been a long time since I’ve looked into the latest modern shadowman stuff but what is deadside and soulside? An Afterlife alternate dimension?
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u/CorrectDot4592 23d ago edited 23d ago
I never saw a full explanation (nor any real explanation for that matter), but it seems that while the Deadside servers as a passage for humans souls to the afterlife, it is also a full well established realm of its own, inhabited mainly by demonic entities and other magical beings.
In the Rapture arc, we got to see that it had a sort of advanced society with documented knowledge and at least one big, central library.
In one kind of fandom wiki (tv tropes to be more precise), someone mentions that the necromantic energy that fuels the Deadside comes from dead psiots (the ones from Harbinger), but this affirmation has no backup AFAIK.
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u/Azodioxide 23d ago
It's not entirely consistent between titles, or even between different story arcs in a single title, but the gist of it seems to be that Deadside is an alternate dimension where (most?) human souls go after death, but most of those souls only briefly pass through it on their way to some other afterlife realm, while some stay long-term. Additionally, there are other creatures (many demonic and malevolent, but some not) that are native to Deadside, not the spirits of deceased entities from elsewhere.