What Goes Down, Must... Trivia Quiz

Answer: White

Gandalf was the wise and powerful wizard who helped guide and protect the Fellowship in their quest to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom and kill Sauron. "You cannot pass", he said as he faced off against the demonic Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Tolkien's 'The Fellowship of the Ring' (1954).

The bridge collapsed with Balrog and Gandalf in tow, but the fight continued: through an icy subterranean lake with the chill of death; within deep and dark abyssal tunnels; atop the Endless Stair; and at Durin's Tower where the beast finally succumbed.

However, so too did Gandalf, his spirit travelling "out of thought and time". He eventually did return. In his words: "Naked I was sent back - for a brief time, until my task is done.". When he was found by Galadriel and taken to Lothlorien, he was clothed in white, hence his 'rebirth' in white. White was a significant colour as it signified that Gandalf, not Saruman, was the most appropriate to lead the White Council formed by Elves and wizards to counteract Sauron's growing influence.

Answer: Discworld

In Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' series, Death was personified as a skeleton who could only be seen by those who believe in him. Whilst originally callous, he became more sympathetic and light-hearted as the series went on, coming to begrudge the inevitability of death and on occasion bending the rules to help people to survive at least for a while longer. One such bending was that he would offer the chance to retain one's soul if they could beat him in a game. Typically, this was impossible, but he could choose to lose as he once did playing poker with Granny Weatherwax (playing on behalf of a sick child).

She had four Queens to his four Aces - he winked and considered them four 'ones' instead.

Answer: No

Near the end of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' (2007), Harry revealed the Resurrection Stone in the Golden Snitch he carried, which, as prophesied 'opened at the close'. He used this stone to see images of his parents and dead friends, who were likened as 'patronuses' protecting him from the chilling Dementors as he made his way to the final battle with Voldemort. As he had united the Hallows and had shown he was prepared to die, he had become a 'Master of Death'. The Resurrection Stone, at best, seemed to be able to bring people back in a form somewhat less than a living being, and something more than a spirit.

One of the running themes in these stories is that Voldemort was, well, deathly afraid of dying. He sought immortality, splitting his spirit into eight fragments and embedding them within cursed items called Horcruxes, which Potter and his friends destroyed over the course of the books. In fact, because souls were not intended to be split into fragments, Voldemort's tortured and mangled soul became stuck in Limbo, a fate worse than the death he so feared. J.K. Rowling had also brushed with the theme of unattainable immortality with the Philosopher's Stone (or Sorcerer's Stone) in the first novel.

Answer: Horrific: mankind was enslaved under insane creatures

The vision was fantastically dreadful: humanity would become enslaved in perpetuity under insane horrors in a chaotic dimension. One such horror would then possess Mary Fay and attempt to kill Charles Jacobs who was running the experiment. Jamie Morton, acting as his assistant, shot the possessed Mary Fay and Jacobs subsequently had a fatal stroke. Jacobs was a faith healer who had been using 'special electricity' to heal people of illnesses and conditions: everyone he had 'healed' would eventually go insane. Morton survived, but took little solace in knowing where he would go once his time on Earth was up.

Answer: Balefire

A concept inspired from Buddhism and Hinduism is that, usually, nothing is truly created or destroyed in the Wheel of Time: "There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time". Whilst there were reincarnation 'rules' for certain beings, such as the Dragon, and for heroes, many of the specifics were left shrouded in obscurity. Balefire was a powerful taboo magic that could erase existence itself, and therefore could prevent any kind of rebirth, even that granted by the Dark One - the chaotic destroyer figure in the series' mythos. Due to the cyclical nature of the future and past in the Wheel, balefire could potentially bring people back to life retroactively if used on their killer(s).

Answer: Consciousness

The protagonist, Takeshi Kovacs, is written of as being "180 light years from home, wearing another man's body on a six-week rental agreement" and was tasked with investigating the purported suicide of a rich man on Earth in the 25th century. Bodies set up for the purposes of consciousness transfer were called sleeves. Most people could afford to resleeve, but the burdens of ageing multiple times proved too unappealing for most, whereas the rich could afford to swap bodies at will and sidestep this issue. Without destroying the stack, someone was never 'truly' dead in essence.

Although the author Richard Morgan had received a seven-figure sum from Warner for a film adaptation, it fell through, with Netflix instead running a television series in 2018.

Answer: They would all eventually become crazed zombies.

Herbert West, as a medical student at Miskatonic University - a recurring venue in Lovecraftian works - postulated that the human body was an organic machine and as such could be 'restarted'. Therefore, he began experimenting on human cadavers with the help of an unnamed narrator. West used a range of different serums, none of which ended up working entirely as intended.

His passion for his craft soon crossed a line - it was revealed by one of the revived cadavers that West actually was the one who killed him in the first place.

By the last chapter, a zombie outbreak had taken place, with West voluntarily letting them disembowel him and the narrator going mad with all he had seen.

Answer: The Monkey's Paw

W.W. Jacobs' 'The Monkey's Paw' was, quite literally, about a cursed and mummified monkey's paw. Mr. White's friend Sergeant-Major Morris brought the paw to a dinner, explaining that it granted three wishes, but which came with a hellish punishment for attempting to defy fate.

He then threw it into the fireplace. White, against his friend's wishes, retrieved the paw and innocently wished for £200 to pay off his mortgage. His son was mysteriously found dead at his factory the next day. Struck with grief, his wife implored him to wish the son back to life; he capitulated but found that his son had taken a grotesque form.

His final wish was left to the reader's imagination, but there is a strong implication that he wished either to undo the second wish or to make a visitor knocking at the door - implied to be his son - disappear.

Answer: The White Witch's betrayal paralleled Judas' kiss of death.

Aslan had voluntarily sacrificed himself so that Edmund, one of the four children who visited the magical land of Narnia, could survive. Because he was a willing and innocent sacrifice, the Stone Table broke and he came back to life. C.S. Lewis himself had acknowledged basing the Stone Table on the tablets that Moses had brought down from Mount Sinai. When Christ was resurrected in the Bible, a new covenant with man was made - it is probable that the cracking of the ancient tablet was symbolic of Aslan's new covenant with Narnia.

Edmund was more of a Judas figure than the White Witch; he had previously betrayed his siblings for power and Turkish Delight, but came to regret these actions as Judas did with his 'blood money' earned by betraying Jesus.

Answer: Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle had become so associated with Sherlock Holmes that he felt as though he was being kept from writing historical novels and other 'more important' works. So, Sherlock had to die, and in a dramatic fashion at that - the recently visited Riechenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps seemed like the ideal backdrop. A public outcry lead to over 20,000 subscribers to the Strand Magazine unsubscribing, so although Conan Doyle really had 'killed' Sherlock here, he wrote another Sherlock story in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' (1901) and explained how he'd evaded death in 'The Adventure of the Empty House' (1903).

Agatha Christie had also had some issues in shaking off her famous detective, Hercule Poirot, who she stated a personal dislike of on several occasions. She had planned the deaths of both Poirot and Miss Marple to be published posthumously during the Second World War... she of course then survived for over thirty years to write many more Poirot books! Of course, both Poirot and Holmes have lived on through film, television and other adaptations.