Day:

There are those who feel that, when it all comes down, it's going to happen fairly quickly - quite possibly within the span of a single day. Anyone who's seen the outbreak of a severe Maelstrom - especially a Great Maelstrom - can well imagine that Doomsday would come much in the same, swift fashion. They believe a scouring wall of Doomshades will shoot straight from the Void, through the Tempest and out of the Nihils, destroying the Shadowlands in only as much time as it takes a Force Five storm to cover the whole of the land. Only, this time, there will be no beating back of the Storm, for it will only get worse from there on out, rather than evening out and eventually receding in strength.

On the other hand, there's also the argument that Doomsday will be a slow and ponderous affair: a gradual shift towards entropy, rather than a bang and a flash. Wraiths with a sense of history note that things change for the worse with each new Great Maelstrom, as though the leavings and dribbles of the great Storms infuse the Shadowlands with cynicism, despair, hate and horror. Meanwhile, honesty, hope, love and joy are leeched out of the very soil, and seem to be less evident with each passing age.

So perhaps Doomsday simply prophesies the time, who knows how many Great Maelstroms from now, when the Shadowlands truly becomes like unto Hell? The world of the dead will be nothing more than a blighted, carnivorous landscape - one almost-indistinguishable from the darkest and most surreal recesses of the Labyrinth. The cities will all be Amphiskiopoli, the barrier between the land of the dead and the living will be as strong as Stygian Steel, and all who die will either be eaten straightaway by the Void, or else spend time as a Spectre before also plummeting into Oblivion's waiting arms

Needless to say, those who look at both sides of the "day" question often prefer the more literal idea; It would all be over fairly quickly, that way, and future generations of wraiths would be spared the monstrosity of such a world. It goes without saying that the Quick would be spared this lingering horror as well, but wraith philosophers rarely think of the living at this point in the argument.

Devours:

Another point of contention in the debate on what Doomsday means is exactly what being "devoured" stands for. An observation of the natural world shows that there are many ways to devour something, and not all of them are as sudden and total as tossing a morsel down one's gullet.

One deviation from the norm falls under the alternate meanings of "Day"; Rather than a sudden swallow, the Underworld will slowly become permeated with Oblivion over time, to the point where it becomes the Void. In this sense, Oblivion would be acting something like a virus - one that gradually took over the world, and turned it to its use, instead of merely killing it from the strain of the sickness.

Another version of The End - perhaps the most common - posits that a final Great Maelstrom will vomit forth from the Void: a Maelstrom that will dwarf every conception of a Maelstrom ever seen. There will be no fighting this Storm, ever, for it will not slow down at any point; Wave after wave after wave of Stormfronts of Force Five, or even higher, will shred the Underworld. Foulness and soul-garbage will be deposited across the entirety of the Shadowlands. And when the storm does recede, perhaps years later, it will do so with such inertia and force that the Underworld will actually be sucked back down along with it.

Still others wonder if the final Great Maelstrom will be a Maelstrom, as we understand them. What if, instead of the mighty wind from the Labyrinth, and attendant Spectres, there was instead a never-ending geyser of the black, anti-material stuff that lies within the Void? One that erupted straight out of the Labyrinth, up through the Tempest, and then into the Shadowlands? A fast-spreading blanket of the stuff would doubtlessly dissolve the Underworld in less than a day, and who knows what it might do to the Skinlands...?

And then there is the theory that, perhaps, best suits the word "devour": the belief that, one day, the Void will become so large that it will literally engulf the Underworld, just like a Nihil might engulf a building in the Shadowlands. This day may come when the Labyrinth is plainly visible from Nihils in the Shadowlands, as some warn that it one day will be. Or this day may come at any time, when the Void reaches some strange, critical mass, or the balance at last tips within it.

Either way, what was once a passive devouring of whatever falls into it instead becomes a loud, heavy sucking down of all that stands before it. The Labyrinth will be funneled down first, followed by the Tempest and all shores within it. Byways will buckle, bend and bow down into the darkness. And then the Underworld itself will buckle, crack and implode - ghost continents tumbling through space into the waiting maw of Oblivion...

Everything:

And then there is the question as to whether Oblivion will take all, take most, or take only the "unworthy," or those It has marked for Its own.

The most common interpretation of The End has it that everything is, well, everything. When it comes, there shall be no escape, no respite and no safety. All will fall before it, sooner or later, and nothing will be able to withstand it for long. The mountains will crumble, the seas will be whirlpooled away, the cities will burn and the dead stars will wink out, one by one, as all things fall down to the Void.

However, there are those who feel that even the greatest of Great Maelstroms cannot destroy the Shadowlands, themselves, and therefore must eventually break and return. This view is based on the philosophy that mankind, as a whole, cannot properly envision total nothingness; The thought of the complete and utter cessation of existence is alien, even to the most committed atheist - who can really think about not thinking?

Therefore, no matter how powerful the storm and the fury, something will eventually win out over nothing, if only because the Quick will subconsciously demand it. Doomsday, then, will be a strong and terrible scouring of the Underworld - perhaps long overdue - that may rewrite certain spiritual laws and remove long-useless structures. But in the end, the storm winds will recede, and there will be the Shadowlands, once more - broken, but unbowed.

Another, more "moral" viewpoint says that Doomsday is only for the Doomed. It is a well-known fact that giving into one's Shadow aids Oblivion, just as it is understood that surrendering to it produces a servant for Oblivion, or at least a meal for the Void. Therefore, there is some connection between the personal battle between darkness and light, and the greater battle between the Void and the Underworld. And perhaps Doomsday will come when the Void decides at last to harvest its crop of foul, rotten souls, and only those whom It has marked will be uprooted and spirited away?

An even more liberal - or hopeful, if you prefer - interpretation of this doctrine holds that Doomsday is not a "when," but an "if." If wraiths do not fight Oblivion at all times - keeping their Shadows in check, and watching for the agents of the Void - then the Underworld will decay and decline as a result. And if the Underworld is allowed to decay and decline past a certain point, then the Doomed {or perhaps all wraiths} will reap a final and terrible reward in Doomsday, as a quickened and swelled Darkness comes forth. But The End can be forestalled, and perhaps even driven back, so long as wraiths resist their darker impulses, and give Oblivion no quarter.