by Robin Furth
As the followers of the CRIMSON KING know all too well, at the Fedic Dogan, magic and technology can still be merged. This Dogan’s technological magic made possible Mia’s transformation from spirit to flesh. This Dogan’s technological magic also made the conception and birth of MORDRED (child of four parents) possible.
Although we do not know the original purpose of the Fedic Dogan, like most of the other wreckage left by the Old Ones, it is now being used for evil ends. Several centuries after the Red Death decimated Fedic’s human population, the Crimson King’s servants began to use this experimental station to extract the twin-telepathy enzyme from the children of the BORDERLAND CALLAS. They did this in the EXTRACTION ROOM, which is also the room in which Mia gives birth to Mordred. Roland calls this place devar-tete or “little torture chamber.”
The Fedic Dogan is connected to CASTLE DISCORDIA by a series of subterranean tunnels. According to NIGEL THE BUTLER, the Fedic Dogan and the adjacent castle contain 595 operational DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS. At one time, 30 one-way doors connected Fedic to NEW YORK CITY, but after Door #7 (leading to the Extraction Room) burns out, all that is left is Default Door #9, located in the ROTUNDA. VI:237–38, VI:244–45, VI:247, VI:249, VI:251, VI:378–84, VII:21–23 (Extraction Room via aven kal), VII:27, VII:55–80 (77–80 Rotunda), VII:141–96 (141–58 Extraction Room setting), VII:206, VII:222, VII:232, VII:532, VII:537–40, VII:549–52 (kitchen, pantry, office), VII:553, VII:557, VII:558–70 (tunnels under Discordia; 559 Rotunda; 563 Main Street), VII:591, VII:708
CONTROL CENTER (“THE HEAD”): The Arc 16 Experimental Station’s nerve center is located four levels down from the EXTRACTION ROOM. During his short stay in the Fedic Dogan, baby MORDRED installs himself here so that he can view the Dogan’s many monitors. (He uses them to spy on Roland’s ka-tet.) Mordred kills and eats WALTER here. VII:159–64, VII:166–86
EXTRACTION ROOM: According to Roland, the Extraction Room’s true name is the devar-tete, or “little torture chamber.” The NEW YORK/FEDIC door (#7), which SUSANNAH is dragged through at the end of Song of Susannah, leads directly to this room. The Extraction Room gained its terrible name from the awful procedures done on its many beds. The BORDERLANDS children were brought to this room so that the twin-telepathy chemical could be extracted from their brains. MORDRED was also born here. VI:378–84, VII:21–23, VII:27 (indirect), VII:55–75, VII:141–58
NIGEL’S QUARTERS: Nigel’s three-room apartment is located near the Fedic Dogan’s kitchen. It contains no bedroom, but it does have a living room and a butler’s pantry full of monitoring equipment. It also contains a book-lined study. Nigel is a big fan of STEPHEN KING’s novels. VII:158–59, VII:164–66, VII:189–90, VII:538
ROTUNDA: Deep below the Fedic Dogan and CASTLE DISCORDIA is a Rotunda, whose shape reminds SUSANNAH DEAN both of GRAND CENTRAL STATION in NEW YORK CITY and of BLAINE’S CRADLE in LUD. Around the circumference of this rotunda are a series of doors that lead to other wheres and whens. Among them are portals labeled SHANGHAI/FEDIC, BOMBAY/FEDIC, DALLAS (NOVEMBER 1963)/FEDIC, and NEW YORK/FEDIC. All these doors are one-way. (For more information, see DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS, listed separately.) VII:77–80, VII:559
STAGING AREA: Deep in the entrails of the Fedic Dogan, our tet finds a hangar-sized door marked To Horses. Beyond this is a door marked Staging Area. When our tet enters this staging area, they find that it is thick with hanging WOLVES awaiting repair, as well as the utility bays used to fire them up. To the left of the utility bays is the DOORWAY leading to THUNDERCLAP STATION. VII:192–96, VII:207, VII:232
JAKE’S MIND-DOGAN: While trying to escape the CRIMSON KING’s gunbunnies in the tunnels below the DIXIE PIG, Jake feels an unseen hand fiddling with his mind’s control center. He slams all doors shut, but the damage has been done. By the time Jake realizes what has happened, the OLD ONES’ MIND-TRAP has already located a memory which it can use to scare Jake to death. (The memory is of a dinosaur film called The Lost Continent.) The only way Jake survives the mind-trap is by switching bodies with OY. Oy’s mind-Dogan isn’t affected by the Old Ones’ machinery. In fact, he finds the controls of Jake’s mind-Dogan to be much more mesmerizing. Luckily, he ignores them. VII:88 (mind-trap), VII:101 (Oy)
NORTH FOREST KINNOCK DOGAN (NORTHERN AERIE, GATEWAY OF OUT-WORLD): The Dogan closest to the FAGONARD swamp was the North Forest Kinnock Dogan. When the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS guidance module, DARIA, located it for TIM ROSS, the Dogan was already off-line. Although Daria recommended detouring around the Dogan (she detected a magical disturbance at that location as well as a Changed Life form), Tim decided to visit it. Luckily he did, since he found the magician MAERLYN there (albeit in the form of a caged TYGER), and shelter from the approaching STARKBLAST.
The round, metal-roofed Dogan sat in a large clearing amid a stand of IRONWOOD trees, at the base of a huge tower made of metal girders. Atop the tower was a blinking red light. Small windows, made of very thick glass, marched around the building’s sides at the height of Tim’s head. The door was made of metal, but had no knob or latch, only a slot like a narrow mouth. Above the slot, on a rusting steel plate, were the following words, written in a strange mixture of High and Low Speech:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
North Forest Kinnock
Bend Quadrant
OUTPOST 9
Low Security
USE KEYCARD
Scrawled below this was a single phrase: ALL HERE ARE DEAD. At the base of the door was a box that looked like a metal version of NELL ROSS’s trinket box. The box was locked, and was so heavy that Tim could not lift it. The box’s keyhole was shaped like the High Speech letter for “S.” Engraved on the box top were words in a language that Tim could not read.
The Dogan’s clearing ended in a rocky precipice a hundred wheels wide, but the clearing was crossed by a path paved in a smooth dark material so bright that it reflected the trees and the clouds. To the left of the metal road, about three yards from the place where the world dropped off into nothingness, there stood a round cage made of steel bars. Inside the cage was an enormous green-eyed TYGER. Around the tyger’s neck was a silver collar from which hung a keycard and a key. Beneath a silver bucket, located just in front of the cage, was a note from the wicked COVENANT MAN, and a key to the tyger’s cage. The keys to both the Dogan and the box hung from the tyger’s collar. Although faced with a decision as awful as that in the folktale, DIANA’S DREAM, Tim decided to open the tyger’s cage. His kindness paid off, as the tyger’s key opened the metal box, and the tyger himself showed Tim how to use the magic DIBBIN within to create a shelter from the approaching starkblast. After the storm passed and Tim helped the tyger transform back into his wizard-shape, the sorcerer gave Tim magic drops to restore his mother’s sight. W:222, 232–55
CLEARING WITH ENORMOUS TOWER AND BLINKING BEACON (NORTH FOREST KINNOCK DOGAN CLEARING): Soon after escaping the TENTACLED MONSTER in the CHASM OF WHITE FLOWERS, TIM ROSS saw this enormous clearing ahead of him, at the end of a long upslope. From three wheels distant, the most prominent feature of this clearing was its tall tower, made of metal girders, which was topped by a blinking red light. Later, when he drew closer, he realized that the tower and clearing were both part of the NORTH FOREST KINNOCK DOGAN. W:232
SUSANNAH’S MIND-DOGAN: This Dogan, which actually exists within SUSANNAH DEAN’s mind, is a version of the CALLA DOGAN, which JAKE CHAMBERS entered in Wolves of the Calla. (Susannah uses a visualization technique to create it.) Susannah’s Dogan acts as a kind of inner control room. From this place she can see the CHAP growing inside her body, and can control (or at least regulate) the birth contractions racking her body. She can also use this control room to send urgent psychic messages to EDDIE DEAN. Much to Susannah’s dismay, some of the Dogan’s machinery is stamped with the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS insignia. VI:62, VI:64, VI:67–72, VI:82, VI:89, VI:107, VI:124, VI:150, VI:171, VI:210, VI:222–29 (Susannah in it), VI:247, VI:259–60, VI:321, VI:348, VI:351 (gulag), VI:3
57–61, VII:142, VII:182, VII:239
UNDERGROUND TUNNELS OF THE OLD ONES: According to the ferryman BIX, this maze of tunnels between the GREEN PALACE and the RIVER WHYE stretched for miles. Although we can’t say for certain, it seems likely that these underground tunnels were once a type of bunker or Dogan. When Bix visited the tunnels, he saw hundreds of artyfax that had belonged to the OLD PEOPLE and heard strange, tooth-rattling music playing from overhead speakers. Unfortunately, after visiting the place Bix broke out in sores, puked, and started to lose his teeth. W:12
WALTER’S MIND-DOGAN: According to baby MORDRED, the controls in Walter’s mind-Dogan are similar to the ones in SUSANNAH’S MIND-DOGAN. However, instead of switches labeled Emotional Temp and the Chap, Walter’s switches control functions such as ambulation. Mordred turns this latter switch off. VII:182.
WAYPOINT NINE: According to DARIA, the NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS Portable Guidance Module that the MUTANT FAGONARD TRIBE gave to TIM ROSS so that he could find the sorcerer MAERLYN, Waypoint Nine was located in the FAGONARD swamp. We never discover exactly what Waypoint Nine might be, but it was definitely related to the Dogans. (According to Daria, there was no Dogan in Fagonard swamp, but there was a charging station.) W:222
YOUNG THROCKEN’S MIND-DOGAN: According to baby MORDRED, the machinery inside a young BILLY-BUMBLER’S mind-Dogan is no more complicated than a series of granny knots. OY might disagree. VII:164, VII:182
DOORWAY CAVE (CAVE OF VOICES, KRA KAMMEN)
CALLA BRYN STURGIS’s Doorway Cave, high in the garnet-veined hills of the BORDERLAND’S ARROYO COUNTRY, plays a major part in Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah. Located about three hours north of Calla Bryn Sturgis and an hour north of MANNI CALLA, this cave contains two significant magical features. The first, situated about twenty feet from the cave’s mouth, is the freestanding UNFOUND DOOR (for more information about the Unfound Door, see DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS, listed below). The second, placed much deeper in the cave, is the noxious-smelling Pit of Voices. Before the sudden appearance of the magical Unfound Door (which came to the Calla at the same time as FATHER CALLAHAN), this nasty cavern was known to the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis as the Cave of Voices. To the MANNI folk, it was Kra Kammen, or the House of Ghosts.
As HENCHICK, the Manni dinh, warns Roland, the twisting arroyo PATH which leads to Doorway Cave is “rather upsy.” The cave itself is not much more welcoming. Its ragged mouth, measuring nine feet by five feet, is partially blocked by a fallen boulder, so to enter it a seeker must ease his way around this huge stone, letting his heels hang over a two-thousand-foot drop. Once inside, the seeker is assailed by the Pit’s noxious fumes, as well as the terrible voices which rise from it, accusing him of any misdeed (real or imaginary) which he has ever committed.
The chasm known as the Pit of Voices functions as a kind of distorted psychic mirror. It is almost as if the cave (or some entity or mechanical device haunting the cave) can hear the voices that play through an individual’s mind. When a person stands in the cave, all of his ghosts scream up from the depths of the pit, accusing him of all his most painful failings and awful wrongdoings.
Despite the horror of the Pit of Voices and the dangers of using BLACK THIRTEEN (MAERLYN’s evil magic ball, which opens the otherwise locked Unfound Door), in Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah, every member of our tet travels to this cavern. EDDIE uses the Unfound Door to travel to NEW YORK CITY, circa 1977. Pere Callahan travels through it to visit both New York City and EAST STONEHAM, MAINE. At the end of Wolves of the Calla, SUSANNAH DEAN (controlled by her demon, MIA) wheels her way up to the cave so that Mia can escape through the door to 1999 New York, where she is destined to bear her CHAP. (In this final instance, Mia takes Black Thirteen with her.)
At the beginning of Song of Susannah, Roland, Eddie, JAKE, OY, and Callahan travel to the Doorway Cave once more. Although the door initially seems to have lost its magic, and though the voices in the Pit of Voices seem to have tipped over into complete insanity, our tet (with quite a bit of help from the Manni) manage to use the Unfound Door two more times. Jake, Oy, and Callahan are propelled to 1999 New York, to pursue Susannah-Mio. Roland and Eddie are sent to East Stoneham, Maine (circa 1977), to track down CALVIN TOWER.
V:335, V:399–400, V:407 (indirect), V:408–16 (two thousand feet up; 408–10 described; 411 previously Cave of Voices), V:421, V:458–65 (Unfound Door only), V:466, V:468, V:505, V:508, V:509–48 (Roland waiting there), V:549, V:550–51 V:573, V:584, V:590–600 (door), V:618–27, V:642, V:687, V:699, V:702, V:703–9, VI:3–8 (under discussion), VI:12, VI:21, VI:26 (cave), VI:28–43 (34 kra kammen means “house of ghosts”), VI:49 (indirect), VI:64, VI:80–82, VI:122 (Unfound Door), VI:124, VI:129, VI:142, VI:164, VI:167, VI:307, VI:308, VII:36 (Cave of Voices), VII:88 (Cave of Voices), VII:123 (Unfound Door), VII:143, VII:196, VII:239, VII:416, VII:447 (inside sai King’s head), VII:540, VII:743
DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS
Both MID-WORLD and KEYSTONE EARTH contain numerous doorways between worlds. These doorways can be divided into two types—MAGICAL and MECHANICAL. Magical doorways can be formed either from the same substance as the PRIM (the magical soup of creation), or from the magical tension between two people. STEPHEN KING’s home, CARA LAUGHS, is an example of the first type of magical door. The BEACH DOORS through which Roland drew EDDIE and SUSANNAH DEAN are examples of the latter. Most magical doors are two-way. Others (such as the UNFOUND DOOR found in the BORDERLANDS) are doors to anywhere. What world or time period they open onto depends completely upon the mind-set, and desire, of the user.
Unlike Magical Doorways, Mechanical Doorways are dedicated. In other words, they always open onto the same location, if not the same time period. The majority we see in the Dark Tower series were created by the GREAT OLD ONES’ sinister company NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS. Few are in good working order. Unlike Magical Doorways, most Mechanical Doorways are one-way only. Both NEW YORK CITY and the subterranean tunnels joining the FEDIC DOGAN with CASTLE DISCORDIA are lousy with Mechanical Doorways.
GENERAL REFERENCES: III:43, III:52 (Eddie’s dream door—Tom and Gerry’s), III:62 (Walter’s door), III:261, III:275, V:72 (indirect), V:89, V:97, V:102, V:104, V:105–6 (doors you can aim in time), VI:40–41 (Jake must imagine them), VI:147 (need to find one), VI:247–48, VI:251 (Mia’s doorway to mortality), VII:73–74 (595 doorways in Castle Discordia and Fedic Dogan)
MAGICAL DOORWAYS:
ARTIST’S DOOR (UNFOUND DOOR, EBERHARD-FABER DOOR): See UNFOUND DOOR, below
BEACH DOORS (WESTERN SEA): In The Drawing of the Three, Roland Deschain encountered three magical Beach Doors. These doors, located on the LOBSTROSITY-infested beach of the WESTERN SEA, were the result of the magical tension that existed between Roland and his nemesis WALTER. The first door, labeled The Prisoner, led him to heroin-addicted EDDIE DEAN. The second, labeled The Lady of Shadows, opened into the mind of ODETTA HOLMES/DETTA WALKER. The final door, named The Pusher, led to the exceedingly seedy personality of the sociopath JACK MORT. (At different times, Mort tried to kill both Susannah Dean and JAKE CHAMBERS. Hence, he was tied to Roland’s ka-tet.) All three of these doors were made of ironwood and stood six and a half feet tall. None had any visible support. III:38, III:62, IV:44, V:105, V:409, V:410 (indirect), V:411, V:478, V:479, V:597, VII:177, VII:560, VII:724, VII:741
DOOR #1 (THE PRISONER): II:32, II:33–40, II:44, II:54, II:55, II:62–63, II:72 (72–82 it is present), II:82, II:92–95, II:99, II:100–102, II:135–43, II:156–57, II:259, II:268–69, III:41
DOOR #2 (THE LADY OF SHADOWS): II:178 (Roland sees), II:179–82, II:245, II:256–57, II:259, II:268–69, II:306, III:41
DOOR #3 (THE PUSHER): II:259, II:268–69, II:286–96 (looking for it), II:300–312, II:325, II:328, II:329, II:332, II:385–87
BEAM PORTALS: See BEAMS, PATH OF THE, listed separately
BLACK THIRTEEN: See MAERLYN’S RAINBOW, in CHARACTERS
CARA LAUGHS: Cara Laughs is the name of the house located at 19
TURTLEBACK LANE in LOVELL, MAINE. In 1979, two years after JOHN CULLUM takes EDDIE and Roland there so that they can transport themselves to the subterranean tunnels below the 1999 DIXIE PIG, STEPHEN KING purchases it. Obviously, either King has a nose for magic, or magic has a nose for him.
Like the BEACH DOORS, Cara Laughs is a magical doorway. However, unlike them, it is created not by the magical tension between two people but from the pure, undifferentiated magic of the PRIM. The Cara Laughs Doorway is the source of the many WALK-INS found throughout western Maine and northern NEW HAMPSHIRE. The name Cara Laughs is very similar to SARA LAUGHS, the summer home of Mike Noonan, the main character of Bag of Bones. VI:394–95, VI:397, VI:403, VI:405, VI:408, VI:410, VII:116–17, VII:129–32, VII:304, VII:435–39, VII:441–43, VII:444, VII:446, VII:453, VII:463 (indirect), VII:542–45
CHEWING DOOR: This doorway (and its hidden chewing monster) is located in the tunnels beneath the FEDIC DOGAN and CASTLE DISCORDIA. VII:560–61
DOOR TO EVERYWHERE: See general entry for DOORWAYS BETWEEN WORLDS, listed above
DOOR TO TODASH DARKNESS: This door is located beneath CASTLE DISCORDIA. The CRIMSON KING sends his worst enemies through it to be devoured by TODASH’s many hideous monsters. VI:248–49
DOORWAY CAVE: See DOORWAY CAVE, listed separately
GREEN PALACE: See GREEN PALACE, listed separately
JAKE’S DOOR (DOOR #4: THE BOY): See MANSION DOOR, below, and STONE CIRCLES (SPEAKING RINGS): SPEAKING RING ALONG THE PATH OF THE BEAM, listed separately
