Twilight of the Gods (BNA novel)

Twilight of the Gods was the eighty-fourth and final Virgin New Adventures novel. It was written by Mark Clapham and Jon de Burgh Miller.

Publisher's summary
''"Oh, why not," Benny said. "After all, I've died before and it never did me any harm then."''

The once peaceful planet of Dellah lies in ruins. The god-like beings who infest the place have lured the inhabitants into holy wars, suicide cults and genocidal pogroms. As they run out of victims, the deities plan to invade more planets — and other races are preparing pre-emptive strikes to stop them. Humankind's small sector of the galaxy is about to become the battleground of leviathans.

There is just one hope. Professor Bernice Summerfield is, surprisingly, alive and well. And she's coming home. Bernice and her friends are determined to dispose of the gods once and for all — at any cost.

Chapter titles

 * 1) Clouds Across the Moon
 * 2) The Land of the Gods
 * 3) Revelations
 * 4) The Blockade Run
 * 5) Falling Angels
 * 6) The Hidden City
 * 7) The Journey to Casmov
 * 8) One True God (Accept No Substitutes)
 * 9) Inside the Mountain
 * 10) We Want You as a New Recruit
 * 11) Sacrificial Flames
 * 12) God Botherers
 * 13) Falling Through Infinity
 * 14) The Dying Universe
 * 15) Fractal Futures
 * 16) The Last Word

Plot
After setting up the weather-control system on the Braxiatel Collection, Braxiatel returns to the Mansionhouse and discusses his missions to ensure peace on Vremnya and Dellah with Emile Mars-Smith, who is now his assistant. The Stratum Seven Agent has declined to join the mission to Dellah, but Cwej, Clarence and Jason answer the call and arrive ahead of Benny, who has been trying to find a job at another university.

Cepachi San, a recent convert to the Children of Maa'lon, is keeping an eye on the camp of the Followers of Moht when the god Tehke visits him. Tehke transforms a mountain into a statue of himself which attacks the camp, leading Cepachi to renounce Maa'lon and become Tehke's first servant. The god presents Reverend James Harker with the head of Maa'lon and adopts the Children as his followers, having already killed several other gods due to the scarcity of faith on Dellah following the blockade. Tehke goes to the palace and speaks with the Sultan of Tashwari of the imminent Day of Reckoning, overheard by Palma Tabaa, a handmaid who provides information to the resistance.

Emile informs Benny, Jason, Cwej and Clarence that the Time Lords and the People are planning to hide in their respective bottle universe and Worldsphere whilst a Doomsday Probe destroys Dellahan space if the situation is not dealt with in two days. To prevent this, the plan is to fly the Revelation to Dellah and send the planet into the gods' original universe using a node which, as representatives of the Time Lords and the People, neither Cwej nor Clarence can use without dying. As a result, Braxiatel wants the two of them to recover Teran Sevic from Tashwari to assist in brokering peace on Vremnya whilst Benny and Jason use the node at the power station at Mount Casmov.

After being attacked by EGAs, Officer Witwicky of the Dellahan Transit Authority allows the Revelation to land before realising that the god Benny claims that they worship, Vokarebull, is fictional and sending the Sultan's fleet to give chase. Benny and Jason parachute out, landing near twelve arctic serpents from which they are saved by Heldov, an atheist who takes them to the hidden city of Kasakech. When Benny discovers Gruat's daughter Meil communicating with the New Moral Army, she covers for her due to her motivation being to get the gods the heal her father's terminal illness and tells Gruat that they have to evacuate.

Cwej and Clarence leave the Revelation and meet Maande, a member of the resistance who assumes based on Clarence's appearance that they are agents of the gods. They manage to convince her otherwise and flee with her from armed fanatics on a skimmer. In Tashwari, Maande hands Cwej and Clarence over to the New Moral Army as gifts for the Sultan, who has Cwej enslaved and forced to help build a statue. Clarence, however, is assumed to be a creation of Tehke's and fed biscuits and wine until the Belief Amplifier protecting Tashwari from the parasite's influence is damaged by a smart missile, causing the slaves to begin to worship fire. Palma shoots the Sultan dead and joins Cwej and Clarence in looking for Teran Sevic, but they are captured by Mor'yuchi, the Sultan's former god.

Benny and Jason enter Mount Casmov with Heldov and Damko. A quake opens a chasm which Damko jumps into, being influenced by the gods, and Benny and Jason almost follow suit before their alpha-wave disrupters bring them to their senses. Heldov is captured by Tehke's followers and Jason dresses up as one of them to save him whilst Benny goes to find the reactor. Jason learns that Tehke intends on destroying the mountain with a nuclear detonator, which he speculates will, paired with the followers' belief, allow Tehke to leave the confines of Dellah, and is unable to keep Cepachi from sacrificing Heldov. He is imprisoned and due to be sacrificed.

Cwej and Clarence learn that Maande is a follower of Mor'yuchi, who wants to defeat his fellow gods and begin diplomatic relations with the Time Lords and the People; with no other option, Cwej agrees to join him, but he knocks Maande out whilst she is giving him a tour of the troop carrier and escapes on a skimmer, having realised that a slave kept in a box at the Sultan's palace is Teran Sevic. Hurting Maande also hurts Mor'yuchi, whom Clarence engages in a swordfight and reveals that he can take over and transform the bodies of his followers whenever he is killed. Palma realises that Mor'yuchi's essence is inside of Maande and shoots her.

Benny is captured by Tehke and condemned to death by burning, but Jason, having convinced Harker to release him from his cell, saves her and keeps Tehke and his followers distracted so that Benny can go and activate the node. Instead, she rescues him by hurtling into his attackers on a gurney and sending him onto the river in a barrel to be recovered by the villagers, although not before Jason gets her to admit that she loves him. She pretends to join Tehke and activates the node as the power station burns, transporting Dellah to the gods' universe where they have no power, which destroys the disembodied spirit of Mor'yuchi. She knocks Tehke out with a punch and takes a helicopter.

Tehke's people teleport him away, killing Harker in the process, and take Jason. Benny learns from the villagers of Jason's disappearance and returns to the Revelation to scan the area for her friends, plugging the node into the ship before going to look for them. Tehke's people restore Cwej's memories and he realises that they are the Ferutu; he learns that the Pantheon were Ferutu who wanted to escape the death of their universe by recreating it in Cwej's. The Ferutu decide to punish Benny, Jason, Cwej and Clarence for the inconvenience of bringing Dellah to their universe and denied the gods' chance to survive.

When Cwej, Clarence, Palma and Sevic try to escape on a skimmer, the Ferutu flip it over with energy bolts and attempt to kill Palma. Clarence jumps in the way and holds the Ferutu off whilst his friends escape to the Revelation. They force Clarence's body to revert to the !C-Mel before he breaks up, killing him, and then begin to revert Cwej as well. Benny hits the lead Ferutu over the head with a spanner and gets the now-thirteen-year-old Cwej onto the ship with Palma and Sevic. The Ferutu threaten to torture Jason unless she hands over the node for them to use to colonise her universe, but she refuses and uses it to return the Revelation to her universe, promising to one day come back for him.

Jason is kept tied up in a cell and told that Benny, Cwej and Clarence have died in a temporal explosion. Dellah is to be protected and to become a utopia, but Jason, believed to hold the key to allowing the Ferutu to colonise his universe because of his knowledge and experience, is to be kept prisoner. He vows to find a way to escape to his universe and find out whether Benny really is dead.

Sevic helps bring peace to Vremnya, where Braxiatel decides to set up a university where he hires Benny as head of the Archaeology Department. Emile and Palma also start working there. The Time Lords are in their bottle universe and the People in the Worldsphere, threatened by Braxiatel with being sent to the universe of the Ferutu, and Cwej is now a free agent. Benny begins her new life on Vremnya, assured by Braxiatel that they will recover Jason, and knows that her story is far from over.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Irving Braxiatel
 * Jason Kane
 * Clarence
 * Chris Cwej
 * Damko
 * Gruat
 * James Harker
 * Heldov
 * Lead Ferutu
 * Maande
 * Emile Mars-Smith
 * Meil
 * Mor'yuchi
 * Cepachi San
 * Sekari
 * Sultan of Tashwari
 * Palma Tabaa
 * Tehke
 * Witwicky

Animals

 * Benny and Jason are attacked by arctic serpents.
 * Heldov rides a junlagi.

Colleges and universities

 * Heldov graduated from Centennial College.
 * Benny ends up working at the University of Vremnya.

Entertainment

 * Chris and Clarence watch a show that ran for thirty-odd years, which involved characters being captured and lots of running.
 * Benny listens to the Foundations.
 * Jason is reminded of the Ewoks worshipping C3PO in Jedi.

Food and drink

 * Clarence eats pizza.
 * Chris eats muesli yoghurt.
 * Chris and Clarence eat cornflakes with milk.

Individuals

 * Benny and Chris have a toast to dead friends: Chris to Roz Forrester and Benny to Clarence.
 * Bernice receives a message from Christine Summerfield.
 * Wolsey is with Bernice as she settles in at her new university.
 * Emile Mars-Smith is working for Braxiatel.
 * The Pantheon includes:
 * Jerr'm
 * Lud
 * Maa'lon
 * Moht
 * Mor'yuchi
 * Tehke

Locations

 * A war was once fought at the Valley of the Defeated, later renamed by the Children of Maa'lon as the Valley of the Devoted.
 * Tehke killed a man in Tashwari.
 * Mount Casmov is the site of Dellah's only remaining major power station. The subsurface hypertunnel to access it was destroyed by the Sons of Lud.
 * Iacon City is a city on Dellah. Heldov lived in a small village nearby.
 * Heldov and his people escaped to Northern Islands before the parasite was brought to Dellah.
 * Heldov and his people live in Kasakech.

Objects

 * Braxiatel carries an umbrella and a pocket watch.

Planets

 * Benny mentions her trip to Heaven.

Species

 * The Time Lords planned to launch a Doomsday Probe and wipe out Dellah and everything in that corner of the galaxy to remove the god problem.
 * According to Braxiatel, his "former people" have retreated into their bottle universe, and the People are locked inside their sphere.

Technology

 * Emile uses a palmtop organiser.
 * Benny arrives at the Collection on the Nervous Norvin.
 * Braxiatel provides the ship Benny and the others use to dimension hop the planet Dellah.
 * Benny and Jason are protected from the gods' influence by alpha-wave disrupters.
 * Dellah is protected by the Dellahan Transit Authority's EGA 97 Proximity Detectors. Considered childish by the Time Lords, they are weapons satellites which fry the passengers of any unauthorised spaceships with projected energy which causes a nuclear reaction. They can scan several hundred quare kilometres.
 * Bantuthol is the galaxy's "best-loved" accelerant.
 * The leader of the fanatics uses Bowman's Everlasting.
 * Jason has antiseptic healing spray.
 * The Belief Amplifier protected Tashwari from the parasite.
 * Braxiatel messages Benny using a Chronoscope.

Continuity

 * Emile mentions the parasite that was in Benny's mind.
 * The Ferutu first appeared in Cold Fusion.
 * Benny visited Heaven and met the Doctor in Love and War.
 * Christine Summerfield got out into the "real" universe in Dead Romance.
 * Tehke was previously mentioned in The Taking of Planet 5.
 * One of Tehke's other forms is that of Urmungstandra. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)
 * Benny mentions dying before. (PROSE: Falls the Shadow)
 * Jason mentions Charlene Connor. (PROSE: Deadfall)
 * Benny remembers the Oracle of the Lost telling her that the war between the Time Lords and the People was less likely, but still possible. (PROSE: Tears of the Oracle)