The Sartan use powerful magic to shatter the ancient world into four elemental realms, imprisoning the Patryns in the Labyrinth.
The Sartan build the Death Gate, a magical nexus linking the four sundered worlds, intending to oversee and eventually reunite them.
The Sartan mysteriously abandon their posts across the Four Worlds, leaving Patryns to fend for themselves in the Labyrinth.
Haplo distinguishes himself as a skilled and cunning survivor within the Labyrinth, catching the attention of the Patryn Lord Xar.
The Patryn Haplo finally escapes the deadly Labyrinth and is sent by Lord Xar to explore the sundered worlds through the Death Gate.
Haplo returns briefly to the Nexus to inform his Lord of his survival and to receive his mission to the world of Arianus.
Haplo encounters the last known Sartan, Alfred Montbank, amid the political turmoil of Arianus's divided elven, human, and dwarven societies.
Haplo uncovers ancient Sartan structures on Pryan, hinting at the deeper machinery binding the four worlds together.
Haplo and Alfred journey to Pryan, a jungle world lit by eternal suns, where they discover the giant war-machine city of Thurn and the fractured Sartan legacy.
Haplo travels to the stone realm of Abarrach, discovering a dying Sartan civilization consumed by necromancy and the pursuit of forbidden power.
In the necropolis of Abarrach, Alfred Montbank confronts the ancient lazar and the terrible truth of the realm's necromancy.
Haplo journeys back to the Nexus to report to Lord Xar on the horrors and secrets uncovered in Abarrach.
Haplo and Alfred confront the ancient chaos-serpents threatening Chelestra, the water realm, forcing an uneasy truce between Sartan and Patryn survivors.
Lord Xar, obsessed with reuniting the worlds under Patryn rule, seeks the mythical Seventh Gate believed to hold the key to remaking the sundered creation.
Haplo, having turned against Xar's tyranny, returns to the Labyrinth to help free his people through compassion and truth rather than conquest.
With Xar's downfall, the surviving Sartan and Patryn factions begin the long, uncertain work of reconciliation and possibly reuniting the sundered worlds.
Fearing the rise of the Patryns and hoping to reshape existence into something more perfect, the Sartan wizard-scholars cast a cataclysmic spell that tears the single ancient world apart into four separate realms: Arianus (air), Pryan (fire), Abarrach (stone), and Chelestra (water). The Patryns, their rivals, are cast into the Labyrinth, a deadly magical prison-maze designed to destroy them or forge them into something stronger. This single act sets the entire tragic history of the Death Gate Cycle in motion.