Death gods' reality

By some accounts, various death gods all originated from "the same place", a reality outside time, the universe, (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook) and nature and separate from the Void. Upon entering life-based universes, such as the Doctor's universe, beings from this reality would be weakened and become living creatures. Several of these beings thus fought the Doctor and, upon defeat, were banished to the Void. (COMIC: Old Girl)

This reality possessed an equivalent to the Time Lords known as the Death Lords. (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook, Old Girl) Various "deities of dust and destruction" were also native to this reality, including the Beast, the Destroyer, the Great Vampires, the Early Ones, and the Gods of Ragnarok. (COMIC: Cindy, Cleo and the Magic Sketchbook) Additionally, the King Nocturne, a conceptual being of chaos from a dimension outside the universe, (COMIC: The Jazz Monster) considered himself among this group of death gods. A Dragon was also allied with these death gods, (COMIC: Old Girl) although the Doctor believed he came from the Chinese gods' dimension. (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)

Other accounts gave similar descriptions of an origin-point outside the universe for these beings. The Vampires came from Spiral Yssgaroth, a strange universe hostile to life. (PROSE: The Pit, The Book of the War) The Gods of Ragnarok were theorised to come from a universe which existed long before other universes. (PROSE: Divided Loyalties) The Beast claimed to have existed before the Doctor's universe. (TV: The Impossible Planet)

Behind the scenes

 * Year Three of Doctor Who: The Tenth Doctor follows up on the other-dimensional death god storyline by introducing a parallel universe Nestene which manipulates life rather than inert plastic. The relationship of this Nestene to the death gods is left ambiguous, but there is a similarity between the Para-Nestene and the Death Lords in their inversion of Doctor Who iconography.