Irredeemable Charn

The great question of Charn lies in Who is missing. In Lewis' Multiverse, Narnia has Aslan and Earth has Jesus. The third world has nothing but Jadis and her sorcery - and ruin. Charn feels like an Old Testament empire, as we kick the gray dust along the dead canals of Tanis or Ashur or Larsa. Once Charn had temples, home to Powers. Here, listening to the beat of drums, their servants offered sacrifice. No Power here offered any alternative as the people would accept. Did any try?

The Worldmender series would answer that Aslan simply doesn't exist. Kressel's "Gehinnom" (a name on the same theme, note) exists because it is a shard of Creation. Therefore, incidentally, this series can't use the Wood Between Worlds.

For Lewis, Aslan exists and so does the Wood. That opens up other questions... like, why isn't Aslan here. Lev Grossman got you covered in Magicians, with its Neitherlands for the Wood. Every pool enters into its own world/universe, each of which might or might not host a pantheon. You like Narnia? Quentin Coldwater likes Fillory... whatever pleases you, mon cheri. Maybe you'd like Syrena's Charn.

Leaving aside if Lewis' Charn needs any attachment to the Wood, or even if Lewis needed the device of the Wood at all: by not even introducing Aslan to Charn, one is left asking - with Kressel - if Charn needs an Aslan. Maybe it's enough that it get a helpful Jew to mend the world. Or just to lead the righteous out of it, from the sheol into the land of milk and honey.

Lewis prefers that gods come first, who Create. Charn's Creators are those who wielded the Words of Power for that purpose, attaching their world to the Wood. Syrena suggests - further - these evolved to become the kings. The onus would then be upon the pharaohs, to relinquish their power. This permits what Lewis wants: a world of reason, with a path to intercession before Judgement. Which didn't happen.

Now we can evaluate Syrena's vision. Like our pharaohs, Charn's last kings are mortal, like in Tolkien's Númenor. Charn is nothing if not a land of entropy. Also like our pharaoh, the kings sponsored their own religion. They knelt to Powers of their own, or at least directed so to their people. Syrena's vision however interesting does not belong to Lewis nor to Tolkien.

Charn's mortal kings, therefore, enslaved or expelled their kinder and Creative gods. If anyone here wanted better, it wasn't enough; the people ultimately didn't want an Aslan, so didn't get one. On that - what would Tolkien say?

Once the periodic table of elements is discovered, is this what drives gods to give up as to build new worlds?